ERIC Number: EJ1113058
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-Sep
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-7393
EISSN: N/A
The Role of Verb Repetition in Cumulative Structural Priming in Comprehension
Fine, Alex B.; Jaeger, T. Florian
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v42 n9 p1362-1376 Sep 2016
Recently processed syntactic information is likely to play a fundamental role in online sentence comprehension. For example, there is now a good deal of evidence that the processing of a syntactic structure (the target) is facilitated if the same structure was processed on the immediately preceding trial (the prime), a phenomenon known as structural priming. However, compared with structural priming in production, structural priming in comprehension remains relatively understudied. We investigate an aspect of structural priming in comprehension that is comparatively well understood in production but has received little attention in comprehension: the cumulative effect of structural primes on subsequently processed sentences. We further ask whether this effect is modulated by lexical overlap between preceding primes and the target. In 3 self-paced reading experiments, we find that structural priming effects in comprehension are cumulative and of similar magnitude both with and without lexical overlap. We discuss the relevance of our results to questions about the relationship between recent experience and online language processing.
Descriptors: Syntax, Priming, Sentences, Repetition, Verbs, Reading Comprehension, Language Processing, Psycholinguistics
American Psychological Association. Journals Department, 750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002. Tel: 800-374-2721; Tel: 202-336-5510; Fax: 202-336-5502; e-mail: order@apa.org; Web site: http://www.apa.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: NSFIIS1150028