Structural priming persists for (at least) one month in young adults, but not in healthy older adults

Abstract

Implicit learning theories suggest that we update syntactic knowledge based on prior experience (e.g., (Chang et al., 2006). To determine the limits of the extent to which implicit learning can influence syntactic processing, we investigated whether structural priming effects persist up to one month post-exposure, and whether they persist less long in healthy older (compared to younger) adults. We conducted a longitudinal experiment with three sessions: Session A, session B (one week after A), and session C (four weeks after B). For young adults, we found passive priming effects to persist and accumulate across sessions (one week and four weeks). However, for older adults the effects persisted for one week but not four. This suggests that for young adults, who unlike older adults experience no age-related decline in implicit memory, the limit to the duration of structural priming persistence is longer than four weeks. In a second longitudinal experiment with two sessions one-week apart we found that priming in session A affected syntactic processing in a different, independent task in session B, both for young and older adults. Experiment 2 suggests that implicit persistence of the learned syntax is not limited to a specific context or task. Together, our findings give insight into how structural priming can contribute to language change throughout the lifespan, showing that implicit learning is a pervasive and robust mechanism that contributes to syntactic processing.

L2 Learners’ Adaptation to an L2 Structure That Is Different From L1

“…After exposure to seven instances of a causative structure, however, they produced active transitive sentences only 30% of the time. Given that the cumulative priming effect is assumed to reflect the operation of an implicit learning mechanism (e.g., Jaeger & Snider, 2013) and that structural priming persists over four weeks for young adult speakers (Heyselaar & Segaert, 2021), the results may suggest that structural priming could facilitate L2 development by promoting L2 learners' acquisition of and access to the abstract syntactic representation of an L2 structure through implicit learning.…”

Structural priming and cross-linguistic influence in L2 comprehension of Dutch relative clauses and PP-attachments: Differences between German and English learners of Dutch

“…To further investigate whether structural priming can serve as a learning mechanism for L2 speakers, it would be interesting to examine whether the priming of Dutch subject RCs among English L1 speakers could also lead to the correct production of this structure. Furthermore, research on within-structural priming in L1 production has shown that the effects of structural priming can persist for as long as a week (Kaschak et al, 2011) or in some speakers even for a month (Heyselaar & Segaert, 2021). To gauge the potential implications and possibilities for educational practices in the field of L2 acquisition, more research is needed to investigate how long structural priming effects persist in L2 learners.…”