Not only the apples: Focus sensitive particles improve memory for information-structural alternatives

• Preceding a focused element by a focus particle improves recall of alternatives.
• Recall benefit is present for both inclusive (even) and exclusive (only) particles.
• Particles highlight the relevance of alternatives for discourse interpretation.
• Higher discourse relevance leads to improved memory encoding for the alternatives.

Focus sensitive particles highlight the relevance of contextual alternatives for the interpretation of a sentence. Two experiments tested whether this leads to better encoding and therefore, ultimately, better recall of focus alternatives. Participants were presented with auditory stimuli that introduced a set of elements (“context sentence”) and continued in three different versions: the critical sentences either contained the exclusive particle nur (“only”), the inclusive particle sogar (“even”), or no particle (control condition). After being exposed to blocks of ten trials, participants were asked to recall the elements in the context sentence. The results show that both particles enhanced memory performance for the alternatives to the focused element, relative to the control condition. The results support the assumption that information-structural alternatives are better encoded in memory in the presence of a focus sensitive particle.