Brain mechanisms of interaction between working memory and sentence processing in Japanese

• Project/Area Number: 15K02554
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities
• Principal Investigator: Makuuchi Michiru 国立障害者リハビリテーションセンター(研究所), 研究所 脳機能系障害研究部, 研究室長 (70334232)
• Research Collaborator: IWABUCHI Toshiki 浜松医科大学, 子どものこころの発達研究センター, 特任助教 (20711518)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Project Status: Completed (Fiscal Year 2017)
• Budget Amount: ¥4,290,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥990,000); Fiscal Year 2017: ¥1,170,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥270,000); Fiscal Year 2016: ¥1,170,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥270,000); Fiscal Year 2015: ¥1,950,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥450,000)
• Keywords: かき混ぜ文 / fMRI / 日本語 / 系列位置効果 / ワーキングメモリ / 統語 / 階層構造 / 統語処理 / 脳 / 言語 / 文法 / ブローカ野 / 心理言語学 / かき混ぜ / 機能的ＭＲＩ / 読み時間

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Neuroimaging studies have observed that scrambling construction requires more cost for processing in many languages. Why we produce such a costly sentences? Analysis of Japanese corpus found that scrambled sentences often have 'heavy' object noun phrase (NP) modified with a clause. We examined brain activation during the processing of sentences with heavy object NP.Results showed that the heavy object NP scrambling did not cause brain activation increase compared to its canonical counterpart. We conclude that the motivation to produce scrambled word orders is that placing the longer NP at the sentence initial position can mitigate the cost of processing than having it in the middle position as in the serial order effect in working memory.

Research Products

• [Presentation] 文処理脳メカニズムにおける構造的距離と線的距離の処理負荷の分離 (2016)
  • Author(s): 岩渕 俊樹, 幕内 充
  • Organizer: 日本言語学会
  • Place of Presentation: 福岡大学
  • Year and Date: 2016-12-03
• [Presentation] かき混ぜ文の処理における名詞句の長さの影響：実験研究 (2015)
  • Author(s): 岩渕 俊樹, 幕内 充, 水落（遠藤） 智美
  • Organizer: 日本言語学会
  • Place of Presentation: 名古屋大学
  • Year and Date: 2015-11-28
• [Book] 発達科学ハンドブック 8 脳の発達科学 第14章 成人失語 (2015)
  • Author(s): 幕内充
  • Total Pages: 344
  • Publisher: 新曜社
• [Remarks] 高次脳機能障害研究室
  • URL: http://www.rehab.go.jp/ri/noukinou/hibrain/index.html