EXALANG

The project aimed at exploring the cognitive cost associated with written language processing. Based on the hypothesis of a temporal sharing of resources between language processing and the maintenance of verbal information, we developed a complex-span paradigm in which the verbal material to be memorized and processed was interleaved. More specifically, we manipulated syntactic processing difficulty (passive voice, negative form) to examine its effects on concurrent memory performance. Preliminary results are inconclusive and interindividual differences will need to be controlled in the next stages of the project.