RT Journal Article
T1 The word order of languages predicts native speakers’ working memory
A1 Amici, Federica
A1 Sánchez-Amaro, Alex
A1 Sebastián Enesco, Carla
A1 Cacchione, Trix
A1 Allritz, Matthias
A1 Salazar-Bonet, Juan
A1 Rossano, Federico
AB The relationship between language and thought is controversial. One hypothesis is that language fosters habits of processing information that are retained even in non-linguistic domains. In left-branching (LB) languages, modifiers usually precede the head, and real-time sentence comprehension may more heavily rely on retaining initial information in working memory. Here we presented a battery of working memory and short-term memory tasks to adult native speakers of four LB and four right-branching (RB) languages from Africa, Asia and Europe. In working memory tasks, LB speakers were better than RB speakers at recalling initial stimuli, but worse at recalling final stimuli. Our results show that the practice of parsing sentences in specific directions due to the syntax and word order of our native language not only predicts the way we remember words, but also other non-linguistic stimuli.
PB Nature
SN 2045-2322
YR 2019
FD 2019
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/95075
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/95075
LA eng
DS Docta Complutense
RD 13 abr 2025