Repository: OpenScienceRepository
Depends: R (>= 2.14)
Date: 2005-01-01 00:00:00
Title: An Activation-Based Model of Sentence Processing as Skilled Memory Retrieval
Description: We present a detailed process theory of the moment-by-moment working-memory retrievals and as- sociated control structure that subserve sentence comprehension. The theory is derived from the applica- tion of independently motivated principles of memory and cognitive skill to the specialized task of sen- tence parsing. The resulting theory construes sentence processing as a series of skilled associative memory retrievals modulated by similarity-based interference and fluctuating activation. The cognitive principles are formalized in computational form in the Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational (ACT-R) architecture, and our process model is realized in ACT-R. We present the results of 6 sets of simulations: 5 simulation sets provide quantitative accounts of the effects of length and structural interference on both unambiguous and garden-path structures. A final simulation set provides a graded taxonomy of double center embeddings ranging from relatively easy to extremely difficult. The explanation of cen- ter-embedding difficulty is a novel one that derives from the model's complete reliance on discriminat- ing retrieval cues in the absence of an explicit representation of serial order information. All fits were ob- tained with only 1 free scaling parameter fixed across the simulations; all other parameters were ACT-R defaults. The modeling results support the hypothesis that fluctuating activation and similarity-based in- terference are the key factors shaping working memory in sentence processing. We contrast the theory and empirical predictions with several related accounts of sentence-processing complexity.   Cognitive Science  
Author: Richard Lewis and Shravan Vasishth
Maintainer: Richard Lewis
Authors@R: c(person(given ="Richard", family = "Lewis", role = c("aut", "cre")), person(given ="Shravan", family = "Vasishth", role = c("aut")))
Package: LewisVasishth2005
Version: 1.0
License: CC BY-NC (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/de/)
