Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 1999 - Volume 22, Issue 01  


Open Peer Commentary
Caplan & Waters: Working memory and sentence comprehension

Complexity effects are found in all relative-clause sentence forms

Glenda Andrews a1 and Graeme S. Halford a2
a1 School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia 2678 gandrews@csu.edu.au
a2 School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland Australia 4072 gsh@psy.edu.au www.psy.uq.edu.au/people/department/gsh/index.html

Abstract

We argue that if a different definition of sentence complexity is adopted and processing capacity is assessed in a way that is consistent with that definition, then the Caplan & Waters distinction between interpretive versus postinterpretive processing is unnecessary insofar that it applies to the thematic role assignment in relative-clause sentences.