Abstract
The phonological trace of perceived words starts fading away in short-term memory after a few seconds. Spoken utterances are usually 2–3s long, possibly to allow the listener to parse the words into coherent prosodic phrases while they still have a clear representation. Results from this brain potential study suggest that even during silent reading, words are organized into 2–3s long ‘implicit’ prosodic phrases. Participants read the same sentences word by word at different presentation rates. Clause-final words occurring at multiples of 2–3s from sentence onset yielded increased positivity, irrespective of presentation rate. The effect was interpreted as a closure positive shift (CPS), reflecting insertion of implicit prosodic phrase boundaries every 2–3s. Additionally, in participants with low working memory span, clauses over 3s long produced a negativity, possibly indicating increased working memory load.
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