

We suggest that while the locality effects are compatible with memory-based explanations, the speedup of low-capacity readers can be explained by an increased probability of retrieval failure. Contrary to our predictions, low-capacity readers showed faster reading with increased distance, while high-capacity readers showed locality effects. Furthermore, we expected stronger locality effects for readers with low working memory capacity. We predicted only locality effects, that is, a slowdown produced by increased dependency distance ( Gibson, 2000 Lewis and Vasishth, 2005). We examined the effects of argument-head distance in SVO and SOV languages (Spanish and German), while taking into account readers' working memory capacity and controlling for expectation ( Levy, 2008) and other factors. 2Grupo de Lingüística y Neurobiología Experimental del Lenguaje, INCIHUSA, CONICET, Mendoza, Argentina.

1Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany.

Bruno Nicenboim 1 *, Pavel Logačev 1, Carolina Gattei 2 and Shravan Vasishth 1
