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Abstract

Although semantic influences on verbal short-term memory (STM) are well-documented, substantially less research has examined influences of syntactic representation. In the present study, both syntactic and semantic factors were manipulated in order to explore how each affects verbal STM. Subjects (N=20) performed immediate, serial recall on lists of six Dutch words composed of three sets of adjective-noun pairs. Lists were factorially manipulated within a 2 (Noun Gender; common vs. neuter) X 2 (Grammatical; legal vs. illegal morphological agreement) X 2 (Meaningful; more vs. less) within-subjects design. Results on serial order memory revealed significant main effects of meaningfulness and grammaticality and a meaningfulness X grammaticality interaction, whereby the effects of the grammaticality were only present for more meaningful lists. The present results demonstrate that although syntactic factors can influence verbal STM, they only seem to do so in the presence stronger semantic constraints.