ERIC Number: EJ1204098
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Feb
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-7393
EISSN: N/A
Persistent Structural Priming during Online Second-Language Comprehension
Wei, Hang; Boland, Julie E.; Cai, Zhenguang G.; Yuan, Fang; Wang, Min
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v45 n2 p349-359 Feb 2019
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.
Descriptors: Language Processing, Priming, Second Language Learning, Phrase Structure, Reading Comprehension, Chinese, Verbs, Native Language, English (Second Language), Undergraduate Students, Second Language Instruction, Foreign Countries, Computer Assisted Testing, Language Tests, Linguistic Theory
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: China
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A