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{
    "pk": 49313,
    "title": "The role of language-specific and domain-general working memory resources in predictive language processing",
    "subtitle": null,
    "abstract": "A core aspect of language comprehension is predictive processing, which supports real-time inferences under uncertainty. Real-time prediction is constrained by the mind's limited working memory (WM) resources, which are required for maintaining the context that supports prediction, and for reallocating degrees of belief across inferred interpretations as new pieces of information (e.g., words) are perceived. What is the nature of this WM resource? Is it language-specific or shared between language and other cognitive domains? Do both domain-general and domain-specific resources support prediction? Here, we study this question using an individual differences approach. We collected self-paced reading times of naturalistic paragraphs in English and measured, for each participant, their domain-general WM (backwards digit span) and linguistic WM (reading span). We quantified predictive processing as the relationship between surprisal and reading time. We found that surprisal influenced reading times more strongly in participants with (1) stronger domain-general WM, but (2) weaker linguistic WM, although the latter relationship was less reliable. Our results indicate that domain-general WM could contribute to predictive processing during language comprehension. We discuss several theoretical interpretations of this finding, we well as potential reasons for the discrepancy between our results and past studies.",
    "language": "eng",
    "license": {
        "name": "",
        "short_name": "",
        "text": null,
        "url": ""
    },
    "keywords": [
        {
            "word": "Linguistics; Psychology; Language Comprehension; Memory; Predictive Processing"
        }
    ],
    "section": "Papers with Oral Presentation",
    "is_remote": true,
    "remote_url": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/18t463mw",
    "frozenauthors": [
        {
            "first_name": "Tovah",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Irwin",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "University of California, Los Angeles",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Idan",
            "middle_name": "A",
            "last_name": "Blank",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "University of California, Los Angeles",
            "department": ""
        }
    ],
    "date_submitted": null,
    "date_accepted": null,
    "date_published": "2025-01-02T00:00:00+06:00",
    "render_galley": null,
    "galleys": [
        {
            "label": "PDF",
            "type": "pdf",
            "path": "https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49313/galley/37274/download/"
        }
    ]
}