COGNITIVE OVERLOAD AND ORTHOGRAPHIC ERRORS - WHEN COGNITIVE OVERLOAD ENHANCES SUBJECT VERB AGREEMENT ERRORS - A STUDY IN FRENCH WRITTEN LANGUAGE

Three experiments were carried out to test the hypothesis that cogniti ve overload enhances the occurrence of subject-verb agreement errors i n French. Highly educated adults were presented orally with sentences they were required to write down. The sentences were of the types ''N1 de N2 V'' (Noun 1 of Noun 2 Verb: Le chien des voisins arrive/The nei ghbours' dog is arriving) versus ''Pr1 Pr2 V'' (Pronoun 1 Pronoun 2 Ve rb: Il les aime/He likes them). In these sentences, N1 (Pr1) and N2 (P r2) matched or mismatched in number. In the three experiments, the sen tences had to be recalled either in an isolated condition (i.e. every presented sentence had to be immediately recalled) or with a concurren t task: click counting (Experiment 2) or serial recall of series of fi ve words presented immediately after the sentences (Experiments 1 and 3). Participants showed errors when performing two concurrent tasks an d almost no error when recalling isolated sentences. As expected, erro rs occurred when N1 (Pr1) and N1 (Pr2) mismatched in number. The resul ts are consistent with our hypothesis and with a functional approach o f written composition.