Methodological Synthesis of Working Memory Capacity Measures in Relative Clause Attachment Ambiguity Resolution Studies

This synthesis reviews the methodological issues in empirical studies investigating the effect of working memory capacity (WMC) on relative clause ambiguity resolution where results have failed to be consistent cross-linguistically and even intra-linguistically. This discrepancy might have occurred due to ‘methodological inconsistencies’ in the design (Liu & Brown, ۲۰۱۵), administration, and scoring of WMC measures. This study aimed to investigate the aggregative and developmental status of the methodological practices of WMC measures and describe how transparently such practices have been reported. Based on a comprehensive search, ۳۹ experiments were retrieved from ۲۵ studies, culminating in a collection of studies with a time span of ۲۲ years from ۱۹۹۹ to ۲۰۲۱, and coded for ۴۶ features. Results revealed that although over the past ۲۲ years, the field has witnessed significant improvements in the employment of WMC tests, there are still a lot of variations and inconsistencies calling for attempts to raise methodological awareness among researchers to afford more attention to quality and transparency in reporting WMC tests. The article concludes with a call for reform in standardizing WMC tests and a number of other recommendations for future primary and secondary research.

Keywords:

methodological awareness , methodological synthesis , methodological transparency , Relative Clause Attachment Ambiguity Resolution , working memory capacity