Verbal Working Memory: BBS Call for Commentators

Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article on: VERBAL WORKING MEMORY AND SENTENCE COMPREHENSION by David Caplan and Gloria S. Waters This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please send EMAIL to: bbs(a)cogsci.soton.ac.uk or write to: Behavioral and Brain Sciences Department of Psychology University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/ http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/ ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/ ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/ gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator. An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection with a WWW browser, anonymous ftp or gopher according to the instructions that follow after the abstract. ____________________________________________________________________ VERBAL WORKING MEMORY AND SENTENCE COMPREHENSION David Caplan Neuropsychology Laboratory Vincent Burnham 827 Massachusetts General Hospital Fruit Street, Boston, MA, 02114 Gloria S. Waters Department of Communication Disorders Boston University KEYWORDS: working memory, syntactic processing, sentence comprehension ABSTRACT: This target article discusses the verbal working memory system used in sentence comprehension. We review the idea of working memory as a short duration system in which small amounts of information are simultaneously stored and manipulated in the service of a task and that syntactic processing in sentence comprehension requires such a storage and computational system. We inquire whether the working memory system used in syntactic processing is the same as that used in verbally mediated tasks involving conscious, controlled processing. Various forms of evidence are considered: the relationship between individual differences in working memory and individual differences in the efficiency of syntactic processing; the effect of concurrent verbal memory load on syntactic processing; and syntactic processing in patients with poor short term memory, poor working memory, or aphasia. The experimental results suggest that the verbal working memory system specialized for assigning the syntactic structure of a sentence and for using that structure in determining sentence meaning is distinct from the working memory system that underlies the use of sentence meaning to accomplish further functions. We present a theory of the components of the verbal working memory system and suggestions as to its neural basis. -------------------------------------------------------------- To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the World Wide Web or by anonymous ftp or gopher from the US or UK BBS Archive. Ftp instructions follow below. Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive: http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/ http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.caplan.html ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.caplan ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/Archive/bbs.caplan gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either: ftp ftp.princeton.edu or ftp 128.112.128.1 When you are asked for your login, type: anonymous Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid: yourlogin(a)yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@") cd /pub/harnad/BBS To show the available files, type: ls Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example): get bbs.caplan When you have the file(s) you want, type: quit