The effect of syntactic knowledge on verbal working memory: evidence from French and German languages

A large body of research demonstrates robust interactions between verbal working memory (WM) and phonological and lexico-semantic language knowledge, particularly for item recall. The role of syntactic knowledge, involving knowledge about word positioning in a verbal sequence, has been explored to a lesser extent but is of theoretical interest given that this
type of knowledge may also support serial order recall in multi-item sequences. This hypothesis has not been supported so far, either by French or German language studies. The present research reexamines the impact of syntactic knowledge on WM for lists of adjective–noun pairs by controlling for short-term syntactic predictability of memoranda. Contrary to
previous studies, across two experiments involving French and German, we observed enhanced order recall accuracy for adjective–noun pairs presented in legal syntactic order, as well as more order migration errors for pairs in illegal syntactic order. This study is the first to demonstrate that long-term syntactic structures do support recall of serial order information in WM, consistent with hybrid and full linguistic accounts of verbal WM.