Give and take: Syntactic priming during spoken language comprehension

Abstract

Syntactic priming during language production is pervasive and well-studied. Hearing, reading, speaking or writing a sentence with a given structure increases the probability of subsequently producing the same structure, regardless of whether the prime and target share lexical content. In contrast, syntactic priming during comprehension has proven more elusive, fueling claims that comprehension is less dependent on general syntactic representations and more dependent on lexical knowledge. In three experiments we explored syntactic priming during spoken language comprehension. Participants acted out double-object (DO) or prepositional-object (PO) dative sentences while their eye movements were recorded. Prime sentences used different verbs and nouns than the target sentences. In target sentences, the onset of the direct-object noun was consistent with both an animate recipient and an inanimate theme, creating a temporary ambiguity in the argument structure of the verb (DO e.g., Show the horse the book; PO e.g., Show the horn to the dog). We measured the difference in looks to the potential recipient and the potential theme during the ambiguous interval. In all experiments, participants who heard DO primes showed a greater preference for the recipient over the theme than those who heard PO primes, demonstrating across-verb priming during online language comprehension. These results accord with priming found in production studies, indicating a role for abstract structural information during comprehension as well as production.

Syntactic priming and the lexical boost effect during sentence production and sentence comprehension: An fMRI study

“…Bock, 1986;Bock & Loebell, 1990) or in faster speech onsets for repeated syntactic structures (Corley & Scheepers, 2002;Segaert, Menenti, Weber, & Hagoort, 2011;Smith & Wheeldon, 2001;Wheeldon & Smith, 2003;Wheeldon, Smith, & Apperly, 2011). Syntactic priming in comprehension is shown in anticipatory eye-movements to pictures (Arai, van Gompel, & Scheepers, 2007;Carminati, van Gompel, Scheepers, & Arai, 2008;Thothathiri & Snedeker, 2008a;Traxler, 2008), in faster reading (Traxler & Tooley, 2008) and in picture-matching choices for ambiguous phrases (Branigan, Pickering, & McLean, 2005). In comprehension tasks, ERP studies revealed the attenuation of the P600 amplitude as a result of syntactic priming (Ledoux, Traxler, & Swaab, 2007;Tooley, Traxler, & Swaab, 2009).…”

Evidence for Implicit Learning in Syntactic Comprehension

“…The conditional probability p(structure|context story, Subject, Thothathiri and Snedeker (2008). The display contains two referents (horse and horn) whose labels share their onset ("hor…").…”

“…By reanalyzing data from a syntactic priming experiment (Thothathiri & Snedeker, 2008), we find that the error signal associated with a syntactic prime influences comprehenders' subsequent syntactic expectations. This follows directly from error-based implicit learning accounts of syntactic priming, but it is unexpected under accounts that consider syntactic priming a consequence of temporary increases in base-level activation.…”

“…Thothathiri and Snedeker (2008) show that comprehension of a syntactic structure is facilitated after exposure to that structure. They focus on the ditransitive alternation, where speakers of English can encode the same meaning using the double object (DO) or prepositional object (PO) structure:…”

“…To address this question, we conduct a reanalysis of a visual world eye-tracking experiment on syntactic priming in comprehension conducted by Thothathiri and Snedeker (2008)(Experiment 3). Thothathiri and Snedeker (2008) show that comprehension of a syntactic structure is facilitated after exposure to that structure.…”