Working memory training improves children’s syntactic ability but not vice versa: A randomized control trial

Abstract

We tested several hypotheses about the relation between syntax and working memory (WM). In a pretest/posttest randomized control trial, 104 native Cuban Spanish-speaking children (Mage = 7 years 2 months; 54 girls) took part in syntax training in their first language, syntax training in their second language, WM training, or no training (control). Compared with the control, children in the training conditions showed cognitive transfer from WM to syntax but not from syntax to WM. The result was most striking in the case of their first language, where WM training was as effective as language training in boosting syntactic performance. As well as establishing cognitive transfer at the group level, we also found that individual differences in WM performance, both at baseline and in training, predicted the extent to which children’s syntax improved. The directionality of transfer, the group-level and individual-level results, established in the context of a randomized control design, all point to a strong causal role for domain-general cognition in the processes of language acquisition.