摘要：Sentence comprehension often requires the ability to link non-adjacent constituents. Studies withhealthy individuals implicate an associative, direct-access mechanism in this operation (McElree etal, 2003), which has been taken as evidence against a role for working memory capacity incomprehension. However, prior studies with aphasic patients support a role for semantic (but notphonological) STM in maintaining word meanings prior to integration (Martin et al., 1994). A recentstudy with healthy young subjects found evidence for a role for semantic but not phonological STMin resolving interference from semantically related nouns (Tan et al., unpub.). Neither STM capacitywas related to the ability to resolve syntactic interference, though reading span was related. Theresults were interpreted as suggesting separable capacities for maintaining semantic and syntacticinformation. The present study examines interference resolution in aphasic patients, who showdramatic variation in their semantic and phonological STM capacities.
