%0 Journal Article
%A Amici, Federica
%A Sánchez Amaro, Alex
%A Sebastián-Enesco, Carla
%A Allritz, Matthias
%A Cachhione, Trix
%A Salazar-Bonet, Juan
%A Rossano, Federico
%+ Junior Research Group of Primate Kin Selection, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society
Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society
Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society
%T The word order of languages predicts native speakers’ working memory : 
%G eng
%U https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0003-0B24-9
%R 10.1038/s41598-018-37654-9
%7 2019-02-04
%D 2019
%8 04.02.2019
%* Review method: peer-reviewed
%X The relationship between language and thought is controversial. One hypothesis is that language fosters habits of processing information that are retained even in non-linguistic domains. In left-branching (LB) languages, modifiers usually precede the head, and real-time sentence comprehension may more heavily rely on retaining initial information in working memory. Here we presented a battery of working memory and short-term memory tasks to adult native speakers of four LB and four right-branching (RB) languages from Africa, Asia and Europe. In working memory tasks, LB speakers were better than RB speakers at recalling initial stimuli, but worse at recalling final stimuli. Our results show that the practice of parsing sentences in specific directions due to the syntax and word order of our native language not only predicts the way we remember words, but also other non-linguistic stimuli.
%J Scientific Reports
%V 9
%] 1124
%I Nature Publishing Group 
%C London
%@ 2045-2322