Do structural priming and inverse preference effect demand cognitive resources? Evidence from structural priming in production

ABSTRACT

Implicit learning theories assume that structural priming is based on an error-based prediction mechanism (e.g. Chang et al. [2006]. Becoming syntactic. Psychological Review, 113(2), 234–272.), which predicts stronger priming when the bias of the verb in the prime sentence towards a syntactic structure mismatches the actual sentence’s structure (inverse preference priming). We investigated whether structural priming and inverse preference priming are modulated by cognitive resources such as demand on memory. Experiments 1 and 2 showed inverse preference priming in a priming task that exerted a relatively low cognitive load (sentence reading followed by picture description), but Experiments 3 and 4 found no such effect in a more demanding task (i.e. sentence reading, sentence recognition judgment, picture description, and picture recognition judgment). In the less demanding experiments, structural priming was always stronger and inverse preference priming was marginally stronger. These findings suggest an important role of cognitive resources in error-based learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Verb bias
• structural priming
• cognitive resources
• memory
• production

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Participants were only allowed to participate in one of the experiments (including the baseline experiment in the general discussion). In the online payment procedure, their personal information (name and account) was checked.

2 Given that it was impossible to find verbs that were exactly equally biased, the verbs that we chose here were slightly PO-biased.

3 We also analysed the predictor of trial order in Experiments 1 and 2. There was no significant interaction between trial order and prime structure.

4 We replaced the dative prime sentences with intransitive sentences in Experiment 1 (e.g., “The baby cries”, as baseline) and then tested the distribution of structure responses with the same materials. We recruited 24 native Mandarin speakers (19 females and 5 males with an average age of 22) via the same social platform (i.e., Wechat).

5 Participants in the within-subject experiment were recruited online from the similar population of the experiments in our study. None of them has participated in the previous experiments. Given that the within-subject design for the priming task and dual tasks might induce the carry-over effect between blocks with different tasks, we did not include this experiment in the current study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) and The Development Project for Young Researchers of South China Normal University (22KJ06).