Persistent structural priming from language comprehension to language production

To examine the relationship between syntactic processes in language comprehension and language production, we compared structural persistence from sentence primes that speakers heard to persistence from primes that speakers produced. [Bock, J. K., & Griffin, Z. M. (2000). The persistence of structural priming: transient activation or implicit learning? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129, 177-192.] showed that the production of target priming structures increased the probability of spontaneously using the same structures to describe events in subsequent pictures that were semantically unrelated to the primes. These priming effects persisted across as many as ten intervening filler trials. The present studies replicated these results using auditorily presented primes to which participants only listened. The results indicated persistence of priming across all lags, with relative magnitudes of priming as large as those observed by Bock and Griffin. The implication is that structural priming is persistent regardless of the modality in which language structures are experienced, underscoring the power of priming as an implicit learning mechanism.     

The development of Japanese passive syntax as indexed by structural priming in comprehension

A number of previous studies reported a phenomenon of syntactic priming with young children as evidence for cognitive representations required for processing syntactic structures. However, it remains unclear how syntactic priming reflects children's grammatical competence. The current study investigated structural priming of the Japanese passive structure with 5- and 6-year-old children in a visual-world setting. Our results showed a priming effect as anticipatory eye movements to an upcoming referent in these children but the effect was significantly stronger in magnitude in 6-year-olds than in 5-year-olds. Consistently, the responses to comprehension questions revealed that 6-year-olds produced a greater number of correct answers and more answers using the passive structure than 5-year-olds. We also tested adult participants who showed even stronger priming than the children. The results together revealed that language users with the greater linguistic competence with the passives exhibited stronger priming, demonstrating a tight relationship between the effect of priming and the development of grammatical competence. Furthermore, we found that the magnitude of the priming effect decreased over time. We interpret these results in the light of an error-based learning account. Our results also provided evidence for prehead as well as head-independent priming.     

Self‐Priming in Production: Evidence for a Hybrid Model of Syntactic Priming

Syntactic priming in language production is the increased likelihood of using a recently encountered syntactic structure. In this paper, we examine two theories of why speakers can be primed: error‐driven learning accounts (Bock, Dell, Chang, & Onishi, 2007; Chang, Dell, & Bock, 2006) and activation‐based accounts (Pickering & Branigan, 1999; Reitter, Keller, & Moore, 2011). Both theories predict that speakers should be primed by the syntactic choices of others, but only activation‐based accounts predict that speakers should be able to prime themselves. Here we test whether speakers can be primed by their own productions in three behavioral experiments and find evidence of structural persistence following both comprehension and speakers’ own productions. We also find that comprehension‐based priming effects are larger for rarer syntactic structures than for more common ones, which is most consistent with error‐driven accounts. Because neither error‐driven accounts nor activation‐based accounts fully explain the data, we propose a hybrid model.     

Syntactic processing in Korean-English bilingual production: Evidence from cross-linguistic structural priming

A structural priming experiment investigated whether grammatical encoding in production consists of one or two stages and whether oral bilingual language production is shared at the functional or positional level [Bock, J. K., Levelt, W. (1994). Language production. Grammatical encoding. In M. A. Gernsbacher (Ed.), Handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 945-984). San Diego, CA: Academic Press] by manipulating syntactic structure and argument order in structurally parallel Korean and English dative sentences. The results revealed that structural priming across languages can occur when both languages share syntactic structure, independent of argument order. Specifically, cross-linguistic argument-order-independent structural priming in canonical Korean postpositional and English prepositional dative structures was observed, providing evidence for shared bilingual syntactic processing occurring at the abstract, functional level within a two-stage grammatical encoding process. This is the first demonstration of cross-linguistic priming of argument-order-independent structural information.     

Priming ditransitive structures in comprehension

Many studies have shown evidence for syntactic priming during language production (e.g., Bock, 1986). It is often assumed that comprehension and production share similar mechanisms and that priming also occurs during comprehension (e.g., Pickering & Garrod, 2004). Research investigating priming during comprehension (e.g., Branigan, Pickering, & McLean, 2005; Scheepers & Crocker, 2004) has mainly focused on syntactic ambiguities that are very different from the meaning-equivalent structures used in production research. In two experiments, we investigated whether priming during comprehension occurs in ditransitive sentences similar to those used in production research. When the verb was repeated between prime and target, we observed a priming effect similar to that in production. However, we observed no evidence for priming when the verbs were different. Thus, priming during comprehension occurs for very similar structures as priming during production, but in contrast to production, the priming effect is completely lexically dependent.     

Syntactic priming of relative clause attachments: persistence of structural configuration in sentence production

Three sentence completion experiments will be reported in which participants had to generate German equivalents of "the servant of the actress who..." (NP-of-NP-RC) constructions. Target fragments (which were unconstrained as to whether the relative pronoun permitted high or low attachment) were preceded by constrained prime fragments, which were either structurally congruent with the targets (Experiments 1 and 2) or structurally incongruent with the targets (anaphoric adverbial clauses rather than relative clauses (RCs), Experiment 3). While the first two experiments established reliable repetition of RC attachments between primes and targets, Experiment 3 failed to obtain a significant priming effect, indicating that RC attachment priming is dependent on a syntactic overlap between primes and targets. The results suggest a tendency of language producers to retain hierarchical syntactic relations over consecutive trials. Current models of syntactic priming in production do not offer an explanatory mechanism for this kind of observation as they presently stand.     

Tracking the continuity of language comprehension: computer mouse trajectories suggest parallel syntactic processing

Although several theories of online syntactic processing assume the parallel activation of multiple syntactic representations, evidence supporting simultaneous activation has been inconclusive. Here, the continuous and non-ballistic properties of computer mouse movements are exploited, by recording their streaming x, y coordinates to procure evidence regarding parallel versus serial processing. Participants heard structurally ambiguous sentences while viewing scenes with properties either supporting or not supporting the difficult modifier interpretation. The curvatures of the elicited trajectories revealed both an effect of visual context and graded competition between simultaneously active syntactic representations. The results are discussed in the context of 3 major groups of theories within the domain of sentence processing.     

Language comprehension vs. language production: age effects on fMRI activation

Normal language acquisition is a process that unfolds with amazing speed primarily in the first years of life. However, the refinement of linguistic proficiency is an ongoing process, extending well into childhood and adolescence. An increase in lateralization and a more focussed productive language network have been suggested to be the neural correlates of this process. However, the processes underlying the refinement of language comprehension are less clear. Using a language comprehension (Beep Stories) and a language production (Vowel Identification) task in fMRI, we studied language representation and lateralization in 36 children, adolescents, and young adults (age 6-24 years). For the language comprehension network, we found a more focal activation with age in the bilateral superior temporal gyri. No significant increase of lateralization with age could be observed, so the neural basis of language comprehension as assessed with the Beep Stories task seems to be established in a bilateral network by late childhood. For the productive network, however, we could confirm an increase with age both in focus and lateralization. Only in the language comprehension task did verbal IQ correlate with lateralization, with higher verbal IQ being associated with more right-hemispheric involvement. In some subjects (24%), language comprehension and language production were lateralized to opposite hemispheres.     

Perceptual simulation in developing language comprehension

We tested an embodied account of language proposing that comprehenders create perceptual simulations of the events they hear and read about. In Experiment 1, children (ages 7–13 years) performed a picture verification task. Each picture was preceded by a prerecorded spoken sentence describing an entity whose shape or orientation matched or mismatched the depicted object. Responses were faster for matching pictures, suggesting that participants had formed perceptual-like situation models of the sentences. The advantage for matching pictures did not increase with age. Experiment 2 extended these findings to the domain of written language. Participants (ages 7–10 years) of high and low word reading ability verified pictures after reading sentences aloud. The results suggest that even when reading is effortful, children construct a perceptual simulation of the described events. We propose that perceptual simulation plays a more central role in developing language comprehension than was previously thought.     

Give and take: syntactic priming during spoken language comprehension

Syntactic priming during language production is pervasive and well-studied. Hearing, reading, speaking or writing a sentence with a given structure increases the probability of subsequently producing the same structure, regardless of whether the prime and target share lexical content. In contrast, syntactic priming during comprehension has proven more elusive, fueling claims that comprehension is less dependent on general syntactic representations and more dependent on lexical knowledge. In three experiments we explored syntactic priming during spoken language comprehension. Participants acted out double-object (DO) or prepositional-object (PO) dative sentences while their eye movements were recorded. Prime sentences used different verbs and nouns than the target sentences. In target sentences, the onset of the direct-object noun was consistent with both an animate recipient and an inanimate theme, creating a temporary ambiguity in the argument structure of the verb (DO e.g., Show the horse the book; PO e.g., Show the horn to the dog). We measured the difference in looks to the potential recipient and the potential theme during the ambiguous interval. In all experiments, participants who heard DO primes showed a greater preference for the recipient over the theme than those who heard PO primes, demonstrating across-verb priming during online language comprehension. These results accord with priming found in production studies, indicating a role for abstract structural information during comprehension as well as production.     

Structural priming as structure-mapping: children use analogies from previous utterances to guide sentence production

What mechanisms underlie children’s language production? Structural priming—the repetition of sentence structure across utterances—is an important measure of the developing production system. We propose its mechanism in children is the same as may underlie analogical reasoning: structure‐mapping. Under this view, structural priming is the result of making an analogy between utterances, such that children map semantic and syntactic structure from previous to future utterances. Because the ability to map relationally complex structures develops with age, younger children are less successful than older children at mapping both semantic and syntactic relations. Consistent with this account, 4‐year‐old children showed priming only of semantic relations when surface similarity across utterances was limited, whereas 5‐year‐olds showed priming of both semantic and syntactic structure regardless of shared surface similarity. The priming of semantic structure without syntactic structure is uniquely predicted by the structure‐mapping account because others have interpreted structural priming as a reflection of developing syntactic knowledge.     

On the universality of language comprehension strategies: evidence from Turkish

A fundamental question in psycholinguistic research concerns the universality of comprehension strategies. We investigated this issue by examining the so-called "subject preference" in Turkish, a language which allows for a natural (unmarked) object reading of an initial ambiguous argument. Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we observed increased processing difficulty in the form of a broadly distributed positivity when an initial ambiguous argument was disambiguated towards an object reading. This effect was independent of the animacy (i.e. semantic subject prototypicality) of the ambiguous argument. Our results therefore speak in favour of a universal tendency to interpret the first argument encountered as the "subject" of the clause, even in languages providing no obvious structural motivation for such a strategy. However, we argue that the underlying explanation for this preference must be modified in accordance with cross-linguistic considerations.     

Bilingualism influences inhibitory control in auditory comprehension

Bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals at suppressing task-irrelevant information. The present study aimed to identify how processing linguistic ambiguity during auditory comprehension may be associated with inhibitory control. Monolinguals and bilinguals listened to words in their native language (English) and identified them among four pictures while their eye-movements were tracked. Each target picture (e.g., hamper) appeared together with a similar-sounding within-language competitor picture (e.g., hammer) and two neutral pictures. Following each eye-tracking trial, priming probe trials indexed residual activation of target words, and residual inhibition of competitor words. Eye-tracking showed similar within-language competition across groups; priming showed stronger competitor inhibition in monolinguals than in bilinguals, suggesting differences in how inhibitory control was used to resolve within-language competition. Notably, correlation analyses revealed that inhibition performance on a nonlinguistic Stroop task was related to linguistic competition resolution in bilinguals but not in monolinguals. Together, monolingual-bilingual comparisons suggest that cognitive control mechanisms can be shaped by linguistic experience.     

Persistence of emphasis in language production: A cross-linguistic approach

This study investigates the way in which speakers determine which aspects of an utterance to emphasize and how this affects the form of utterances. To do this, we ask whether the binding between emphasis and thematic roles persists between utterances. In one within-language (Dutch-Dutch) and three cross-linguistic (Dutch-English) structural priming experiments, we measured persistence effects for four different Dutch transitives (actives, PP-initial passives, PP-medial passives, and PP-final passives). Whereas English allows only one passive (PP-final passive), Dutch allows three different variants with the same functional assignment, but different constituent structures. Additionally, the degree of emphasis on the agent differs significantly between the PP-initial passive and the other passives (Experiment 1). Experiment 2 showed persistence of actives, PP-medial, and PP-final passives in Dutch, but no priming between passives with different constituent structures. Experiments 3 and 4, however, showed that both PP-medial and PP-final passives prime the use of English passives. Experiment 5 confirmed that the emphasis on thematic roles persists: the proportion of passives in the PP-initial passive condition fell midway between the proportions produced in the active and PP-medial passive condition.     

Neural network processing of natural language: II. Towards a unified model of corticostriatal function in learning sentence comprehension and non-linguistic sequencing

A central issue in cognitive neuroscience today concerns how distributed neural networks in the brain that are used in language learning and processing can be involved in non-linguistic cognitive sequence learning. This issue is informed by a wealth of functional neurophysiology studies of sentence comprehension, along with a number of recent studies that examined the brain processes involved in learning non-linguistic sequences, or artificial grammar learning (AGL). The current research attempts to reconcile these data with several current neurophysiologically based models of sentence processing, through the specification of a neural network model whose architecture is constrained by the known cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CSTC) neuroanatomy of the human language system. The challenge is to develop simulation models that take into account constraints both from neuranatomical connectivity, and from functional imaging data, and that can actually learn and perform the same kind of language and artificial syntax tasks. In our proposed model, structural cues encoded in a recurrent cortical network in BA47 activate a CSTC circuit to modulate the flow of lexical semantic information from BA45 to an integrated representation of meaning at the sentence level in BA44/6. During language acquisition, corticostriatal plasticity is employed to allow closed class structure to drive thematic role assignment. From the AGL perspective, repetitive internal structure in the AGL strings is encoded in BA47, and activates the CSTC circuit to predict the next element in the sequence. Simulation results from Caplan's [Caplan, D., Baker, C., & Dehaut, F. (1985). Syntactic determinants of sentence comprehension in aphasia. Cognition, 21, 117-175] test of syntactic comprehension, and from Gomez and Schvaneveldts' [Gomez, R. L., & Schvaneveldt, R. W. (1994). What is learned from artificial grammars?. Transfer tests of simple association. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 20, 396-410] artificial grammar learning experiments are presented. These results are discussed in the context of a brain architecture for learning grammatical structure for multiple natural languages, and non-linguistic sequences.     

Representing object colour in language comprehension

Embodied theories of cognition hold that mentally representing something red engages the neural subsystems that respond to environmental perception of that colour. This paper examines whether implicit perceptual information on object colour is represented during sentence comprehension even though doing so does not necessarily facilitate task performance. After reading a sentence that implied a particular colour for a given object, participants were presented with a picture of the object that either matched or mismatched the implied colour. When asked if the pictured object was mentioned in the preceding sentence, people's responses were faster when the colours mismatched than when they matched, suggesting that object colour is represented differently to other object properties such as shape and orientation. A distinction between stable and unstable embodied representations is proposed to allow embodied theories to account for these findings.     

Time in language: event duration in language comprehension

This work investigates how we process and represent event duration in on-line language comprehension. Specifically, it examines how events of different duration are processed and what type of knowledge underlies their representations. Studies 1–4 examined verbs and phrases in different contexts. They showed that durative events took longer to process than non-durative events and that the duration attributed to the stimulus events correlated with on-line processing times. Studies 5 and 6 indicated that durative events occur in semantically more diverse contexts and elicit semantically more diverse associations than non-durative events. Semantic and contextual diversity also correlated with attributed durations and processing times. Results indicate that (a) event-specific durations are computed on-line from multiple unfolding cues, (b) processing cost and duration representations emerge from semantic and contextual diversity reflecting our experience, and (c) key components of duration representations may be situation-specific knowledge of causal and contingency relations between events.     

The effects of late acquisition of L2 and the consequences of immigration on L1 for semantic and morpho-syntactic language aspects

It has been hypothesized that some aspects of a second language (L2) might be learned easier than others if a language is learned late. On the other hand, non-use might result in a loss of language skills in one's native, i.e. one's first language (L1) (language attrition). To study which, if any, aspects of language are affected by either late acquisition or non-use, long-term German immigrants to the US and English native speakers who are long-term immigrants to Germany as well as two additional control groups of native German speakers were tested with an auditory semantic and morpho-syntactic priming paradigm. German adjectives correctly or incorrectly inflected for gender and semantically associated or not associated with the target noun served as primes. Participants made a lexical decision on the target word. All groups of native German speakers gained from semantically and morpho-syntactically congruent primes. Evidence for language attrition was neither found for semantic nor morpho-syntactic priming effects in the German immigrants. In contrast, English native speakers did not gain from a morpho-syntactic congruent prime, whereas semantic priming effects were similar as for the remaining groups. The present data suggest that the full acquisition of at least some syntactic functions may be restricted to limited periods in life while semantic and morpho-syntactic functions seem to be relatively inured to loss due to non-use.     

Syntactic priming in Chinese sentence comprehension: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

Using the event-related potential (ERP) technique, this study examined the nature of syntactic priming effects in Chinese. Participants were required to read prime-target sentence pairs each embedding an ambiguous relative clause (RC) containing either the same verb or a synonymous verb. In Chinese, the word de serves as a relative clause marker. During reading a potential Chinese RC structure (either the prime or the target sentence), Chinese readers initially expect to read an Subject–Verb–Object (SVO) structure but the encounter of a relative clause marker de would make readers abandon the initial strategy and reanalyze the structure as a relative clause. A reduced P600 effect was elicited by the critical word de in the target sentence containing the same initial verb as in the prime sentence. No significant reduction of the P600 was observed in the target sentences in the synonymous condition. The results demonstrated that verb repetition but not similarity in meaning produced a syntactic priming effect in Chinese. The constraint-based lexicalist hypothesis and the argument structure theory were adopted to explain the syntactic priming effect obtained in the current study.     

The relationship between sentence meaning and word order: Evidence from structural priming in German

Most theories of human language production assume that generating a sentence involves several stages, including an initial stage where the prelinguistic message is determined and a subsequent stage of grammatical encoding. However, it is contentious whether grammatical encoding involves separate stages of grammatical-function assignment and linearization. To address this question, we examined the mapping between the message level and grammatical encoding in two structural priming experiments in which German speakers choose between three different structures expressing ditransitive events. Although speakers showed a tendency to repeat the order of constituents (noun phrase–prepositional phrase, NP–PP, vs. NP–NP), they were additionally primed to repeat the order of thematic roles when constituent structure was constant (NP_RECIPIENT–NP_THEME vs. NP_THEME–NP_RECIPIENT). Experiment 2 found that the latter effect could not be due to persistence of the order of phrases referring to animate and inanimate entities. These results suggest a direct mapping of thematic roles to word order, consistent with a model in which the message is mapped onto syntactic structure in a single stage.