Persistent structural priming during online second-language comprehension.

Abstract

We report 2 self-paced reading experiments investigating the longevity of structural priming effects in comprehending reduced relative clauses among adult Chinese-speaking learners of English. Experiment 1 showed that structural priming occurred both when prime and target sentences were immediately adjacent and when they were separated by 1 or 2 filler sentences of unrelated structures. Moreover, the magnitude of the priming effect held constant across different lag conditions. Experiment 2 replicated the persistent priming effect and ruled out the possibility that the effect was due to verb repetition priming. Taken together, the current results suggest that recent experience with a given structure can have relatively long-lived facilitation effect on the language-processing system in second-language learners. As such, structural priming may serve as a learning mechanism for second-language speakers. (PsycINFO Database Record

Lingering misinterpretation in native and nonnative sentence processing: Evidence from structural priming

“…The extent to which priming is lexically mediated in L2 processing is however debated. Some studies have shown lexically independent structural priming during comprehension (e.g., Nitschke et al, 2014;Wei et al, 2019), while others suggest lexically mediated structural priming (e.g., Wei et al, 2018). Thus, as also found in L1 studies of priming during comprehension discussed above, priming during comprehension in L2 speakers appears stronger in the presence of lexical overlap.…”

“…Most importantly for present purposes, L2 participants showed that unambiguous but not ambiguous prime sentences facilitated processing of the globally correct interpretation of ambiguous target sentences, as also found in L1 participants. This suggests that the structural representation that L2 speakers create during online reading is stable enough to cause priming effects during language comprehension (Nitschke et al, 2010(Nitschke et al, , 2014Wei et al, 2019).…”

“…However, given some previous studies have observed lexically independent structural priming in L2 language comprehension (e.g., Nitschke et al, 2014;Wei et al, 2019), further research is required to examine the extent to which structural priming is lexically mediated in L2 sentence processing. 4 Also, we acknowledge that we found priming effects in only one measure, total viewing times.…”

“…Fewer studies have examined structural priming in L2 speakers. However, most relevant to current purposes, existing studies have shown that L2 speakers are similarly subject to immediate and long-lasting structural priming in language comprehension (Nitschke et al, 2010;Weber & Indefrey, 2009;Wei et al, 2019). The extent to which priming is lexically mediated in L2 processing is however debated.…”

The Research Trends of Multilingualism in Applied Linguistics and Education (2000–2019): A Bibliometric Analysis

“…Second, researchers are interested in the relationship between multilingualism and second/additional language acquisition. For example, researchers are interested in how the language information of a bilingual or multilingual is represented and processed in the mind [18][19][20][21][22]. In addition, people have investigated how the languages are acquired or learned [23][24][25][26] or attritted or lost [27][28][29].…”