ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the research that investigates the memory processes that enable language comprehension. It analyses the study to investigate the effective size of focal attention in comprehension by capitalizing on the finding in basic memory research that a breakpoint in processing speed will be observed at the point when required information is no longer actively maintained in attention. The chapter discusses the feasible way to investigate whether the principles and properties identified in basic memory research are found in real-time comprehension. It examines the procedures and experimental manipulations that have been useful in basic research in ways that enable them to be used to investigate core memory operations in comprehension. The response-signal speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) procedure has figured in the research, as it provides conjoint measures of the accuracy or quality of information processing and the speed with which the information is computed, that are confounded in timing measures in other experimental procedures.
