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Abstract Dependency distance is a widely used measure of syntactic complexity, often considered to reflect cognitive abilities such as memory. However, empirical support for this claim remains limited. This study aims to examine whether dependency distance (DD) measures are associated with global cognitive function and single-domain memory performance, and identifies which variant best reflects these abilities. A sequential picture description task elicited clinical speech data from Mandarin-speaking older adults with varying cognitive levels. Multiple regression analyses are used to examine relationships between several DD variants and cognitive performance, as measured by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment–Basic (MoCA-B) and a single-domain Memory Index Score. Results show that all DD variants associated with sentence length are significantly correlated with global cognitive level, whereas removing the influence of sentence length substantially reduces their discriminative power. Among them, mean dependency distance per sentence is the best indicator of cognitive status. In contrast, no DD measure shows a significant association with the memory index. These findings suggest that DD measures can capture speakers’ global cognitive status, with sentence length playing a key role. The study deepens our understanding of the relationship between language and cognition, providing empirical evidence for the Cognitive Commitment in usage-based linguistics.
Yih et al. (Thu,) studied this question.