Haskins Publications

Number	1421
Year	2006
Drawer	26
Entry Date	04/17/2008
Authors	Van Dyke, J.A. & McElree, B.
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Publication	Journal of Memory and Language, V. 55, pp. 157-166.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL1421.pdf
Abstract	The role of interference effects in sentence processing has recently begun to receive attention, however whether these effects arise during encoding or retrieval remains unclear. This paper draws on basic memory research to help distinguish these explanations and reports data from an experiment that manipulates the possibility for retrieval interference while holding encoding conditions constant. We found clear support for the principle of cue-overload, wherein cues available at retrieval cannot uniquely distinguish among competitors, thus giving rise to interference effects. We discuss the dat in relation to a cue-based parsing famework (Van Dyke & Lewis, 2003) and other interference effects observed in sentence processing (e.g., Gordon, Hendrick, & Johnson, 2001, 2004). We conclude from the available data that the memory system that subserves language comprehension operates according to similar principles as memory in other domains.
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