Short-term memory and sentence processing: evidence from neuropsychology.

Traditional models of memory assume that short-term memory, as measured by memory span, plays an important role in linguistic processing and the learning of verbal information. Contradicting this view are findings from a brain-damaged patient, E.A., who, despite a verbal memory span of about two items, demonstrated normal sentence comprehension in a variety of tasks. She was, however, impaired whenever verbatim phonological information had to be maintained or learned. These results and those from other patients with reduced span suggest that the phonological storage capacity that is critical to memory span plays only a limited role in language processing, specifically in the maintenance and learning of phonological forms. Implications for models of short-term memory are discussed. It is argued that short-term memory should be seen as deriving from the processing and retentive capacities of language processing modules, with span tasks drawing on only a subset of these modules.