Project leader: Dr Elizabeth Jefferies
This project investigates the mechanisms by which lexical and semantic
knowledge contributes to verbal short-term memory. Studies of healthy
participants and patients with semantic dementia indicate that linguistic
knowledge helps to bind the elements of words together in verbal short-term
memory, preventing "spoonerisms" (e.g., "heart, dog" recalled as "dart,
hog"). Similar mechanisms are thought to underlie the sequencing of phonemes
in other speech production tasks.
