Parsing Model and a Rational Theory of Memory

• Main Authors: Jakub Dotlačil, Puck de Haan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-06-01
• Series: Frontiers in Psychology
• Subjects: computational psycholinguistics; cognitively constrained parsers; memory retrieval; rational theory of memory; modeling reading data
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.657705/full

This paper explores how the rational theory of memory summarized in Anderson (1991) can inform the computational psycholinguistic models of human parsing. It is shown that transition-based parsing is particularly suitable to be combined with Anderson's theory of memory systems. The combination of the rational theory of memory with the transition-based parsers results in a model of sentence processing that is data-driven and can be embedded in the cognitive architecture Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational (ACT-R). The predictions of the parser are tested against qualitative data (garden-path sentences) and a self-paced reading corpus (the Natural Stories corpus).