Abstract
The paper presents an experimental evidence on differences in the
sentence-picture verification under additional memory load between
parity and proportional quantifiers. We asked subjects to memorize
strings of 4 or 6 digits, then to decide whether a quantifier sentence is
true at a given picture, and finally to recall the initially given string
of numbers. The results show that: (a) proportional quantifiers are
more difficult than parity quantifiers with respect to reaction time
and accuracy; (b) maintaining either 4 or 6 elements in the working
memory has the same effect on the processing of parity quantifiers;
(c) however, in the case of proportional quantifiers subjects performed
better in the verification tasks under the 6-digit load condition, and (d)
even though the strings of 4 numbers were better recalled by subjects
after judging parity there is no difference between quantifiers in the
case of the 6-element condition. We briefly outline two alternative
explanations for the observed phenomena rooted in the computational
model of quantifier verification and the different theories of working
memory.