{"pk":25749,"title":"Memory Capacity Limits in Processing of Natural Connected Speech:\nThe Psychological Reality of Intonation Units","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Many theories of memory propose some type of short-\nterm store limited in capacity to a small number of in-\nformation chunks. However, although short-term ver-\nbal memory is generally considered to be a crucial\ncomponent of language processing, the relevant infor-\nmation chunk level that may de?ne capacity limits in\necologically-valid spoken language has never been inves-\ntigated. The Intonation Unit (IU), an intermediate-level\nprosodic phrase, has been theorized to be a fundamental\nunit of spoken language, the focus of a speaker's mental\nprocessing. This suggests that IUs might play a role as\nthe relevant unit representing \\chunks\" of spoken lan-\nguage. We report the results of an experiment investi-\ngating the role of IUs in short-term memory in a serial\nrecall task. We found a signi?cant non-linear e?ect of\nstimulus size in IUs, but not clauses. We conclude that\nIntonation Units are the primary linguistic unit used for\nchunking spoken language input in memory.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"short-term memory; working memory ca-\npacity; information chunks; memory capacity; serial re-\ncall; verbal recall; sentence processing; prosody; atten-\ntion"}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8v18c50x","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Heather","middle_name":"Elizabeth","last_name":"Simpson","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California { Santa Barbara","department":""},{"first_name":"Fermin","middle_name":"Moscoso del Prado","last_name":"Martin","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California { Santa Barbara","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2015-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/25749/galley/15373/download/"}]}