Can Infinitival to Omissions and Provisions Be Primed? An Experimental Investigation Into the Role of Constructional Competition in Infinitival to Omission Errors

An experimental study was conducted on children aged 2;6–3;0 and 3;6–4;0 investigating the priming effect of two WANT‐constructions to establish whether constructional competition contributes to English‐speaking children's infinitival to omission errors (e.g., *I want ___ jump now). In two between‐participant groups, children either just heard or heard and repeated WANT‐to, WANT‐X, and control prime sentences after which to‐infinitival constructions were elicited. We found that both age groups were primed, but in different ways. In the 2;6–3;0 year olds, WANT‐to primes facilitated the provision of to in target utterances relative to the control contexts, but no significant effect was found for WANT‐X primes. In the 3;6–4;0 year olds, both WANT‐to and WANT‐X primes showed a priming effect, namely WANT‐to primes facilitated and WANT‐X primes inhibited provision of to. We argue that these effects reflect developmental differences in the level of proficiency in and preference for the two constructions, and they are broadly consistent with “priming as implicit learning” accounts. The current study shows that (a) children as young as 2;6–3;0 years of age can be primed when they have only heard (not repeated) particular constructions, (b) children are acquiring at least two constructions for the matrix verb WANT, and (c) that these two WANT‐constructions compete for production.     

Does Talker‐Specific Information Influence Lexical Competition? Evidence From Phonological Priming

In this study, we examined whether the lexical competition process embraced by most models of spoken word recognition is sensitive to talker‐specific information. We used a lexical decision task and a long lag priming experiment in which primes and targets sharing all phonemes except the last one (e.g., /bagaR/“fight” vs. /baga?/“luggage”) were presented in two separate blocks of stimuli. In Experiment 1, the competitor prime block was presented only once to listeners, and no modulation of the competitor priming effect as a function of a talker change between the primes and targets was observed. However, attenuation in the competitor priming effect in the case of a talker change between the primes and targets was observed in Experiment 2 in which the competitor prime block was presented five times to listeners. We discuss our findings in reference to hybrid models of spoken word recognition in which repetition of words with the same talker could be a key factor in the formation and access to talker‐dependent representations.