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Invited paper presented at the ANC Open House Workshop, Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Individual Differences in Language Processing: Reconsidering the Role of Experience and Working Memory
Morten H. Christiansen
Abstract
Various language processing theories weigh the effects of biology and
experience differently in accounting for individual differences. This
talk outlines a new account of individual differences in sentence
comprehension based on a combined connectionist and constraint-based
approach to language. This account emphasizes the importance of
variations in language experience as a cause of comprehension
differences. Predictions are explored concerning the importance of
experience in interpreting unambiguous subject and object relative
clauses. These predictions were tested by manipulating language
exposure in both connectionist networks and human subjects. In the
simulations, simple recurrent networks were tested after varying
degrees of language exposure and their performance was compared to
reading times for subjects with high and low working memory capacity
(King & Just, 1991). In the experiment, subjects had two training
session and their comprehension abilities were tested before and after
training using a self-paced reading task. In both cases, the
performance profile changed from "low-capacity" to "high-capacity" as
a function of exposure. These results point to the importance of
experience in sentence comprehension, and offer a reassessment of the
importance of a fixed "working memory" in accounting for individual
differences in language processing.
