How working memory development influences recursive structure production

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between working memory and the production of recursive linguistic structures in language acquisition. Particular attention was paid to the ability of children of different ages to produce these complex structures. The following questions were posed: To what extent are children able to produce recursive possessives, relative clauses and complex postpositional structures? How does working memory capacity affect the use of recursive linguistic structures?

We hypothesised that the development of working memory would be closely related to the rate of language development and that children aged 7–8 years would perform significantly better than younger age groups in the production of recursive structures. In contrast, the results of this study showed that not only age or sentence length, but also the complexity of the structures played a key role in children's performance. Relative clauses (RCs), which are the longest of the three structures, performed better on memory tests than complex postpositional structures (PPs), which are shorter but require more complex semantic relations. These findings provide a new perspective for understanding children's language development and the acquisition of recursive structures.

Sections 1, 2, 3 and 4 discuss the relationship between working memory and language, and the concept of recursion. This is followed by a detailed description of experiments (Section 5) that analyse the acquisition of recursive structures by children of different ages. Section 6 discusses the research findings and their implications, highlighting the role of working memory development in the development of language skills.