Changes in task-extrinsic context do not affect the persistence of long-term cumulative structural priming

Implicit and Explicit Memory Factors in Cumulative Structural Priming

Although researchers have argued that short-term structural priming is driven by both implicit and explicit memory processes, accounts of longer-term structural priming tend to focus on implicit memory processes. We explore this claim in five experiments. In the first two experiments, we replicate the finding that stronger cumulative structural priming is observed for the prepositional object (PO) construction than for the double object (DO) construction. The next three experiments explore the possibility that explicit memory effects may contribute to cumulative priming. The results of these experiments suggest that any explicit memory effects on cumulative priming are likely to be very weak. We conclude by conducting an analysis across all 5 experiments, and find that an examination of individual participants’ base rates of DO production helps to explain the circumstances under which cumulative priming for the DO and PO will be observed.

Verb biases are shaped through lifelong learning

Verbs often participate in more than 1 syntactic structure, but individual verbs can be biased in terms of whether they are used more often with 1 structure or the other. For instance, in a sentence such as "Bop the bunny with the flower," the phrase "with the flower" is more likely to indicate an instrument with which to "bop," rather than which "bunny" to bop. Conversely, in a sentence such as "Choose the cow with the flower," the phrase "with the flower" is more likely to indicate which "cow" to choose. An open question is where these biases come from and whether they continue to be shaped in adulthood in a way that has lasting consequences for real-time processing of language. In Experiment 1 we replicated previous findings that these language-wide biases guide online syntactic processing in a computer-based visual-world paradigm. In Experiment 2, we tested the malleability of these biases by exposing adults to initially unbiased verbs situated in unambiguous contexts that led to either instrument or modifier interpretations. During test, participants interpreted sentences containing either modifier- or instrument-trained verbs in ambiguous contexts. Eye-movement and action data show that participants' considerations of the candidate interpretations of the ambiguous with-phrases were guided by the newly learned verb biases. These results suggest that co-occurrence information about specific verbs and syntactic structures embedded in language experiences plays a role in forming, and continuously shaping, the verb biases that constitute a part of the broader representation of the language. (PsycINFO Database Record