幼児の文理解発達に及ぼす作動記憶容量の影響 : 日本語児における単一項文の理解から

概要

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In this paper, I demonstrated that there must be enough working memory capacity for Japanese children to correctly comprehend case-markers. Case-markers represent the relationship between a noun and the predicate, and this relationship cannot be determined until the predicate is given. In other words, if the predicate is not realized, information of case-markers will be retained up to the timing of predicate input. It is generally considered that information is retained in the working memory, and the accuracy of the retained information depends on the working memory’s capacity. We predict that children’s ability to retain the information of case-markers is dependent on their working memory capacity, and hypothesize that children with insufficient memory capacity cannot utilize case-markers to interpret a sentence due to the inability to retain the information accurately. We conducted a listening span test to assess the working memory capacity, and a picture selection task to examine children’s interpretation of a sentence. In the latter test, we used single-argument sentences to test the children’s comprehension of a sentence with case-markers. The results show that only children in the high memory span group can comprehend both types of single-argument sentences correctly, and support the claim that there must be sufficient working memory capacity in order to comprehend case-markers correctly.