A paradox of syntactic priming: why response tendencies show priming for passives, and response latencies show priming for actives

Corley, M., Segaert, K., Menenti, L., Weber, K. and Hagoort, P. (2011) A paradox of syntactic priming: why response tendencies show priming for passives, and response latencies show priming for actives. PLoS ONE, 6(10), e24209. (doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0024209)

Abstract

Speakers tend to repeat syntactic structures across sentences, a phenomenon called syntactic priming. Although it has been suggested that repeating syntactic structures should result in speeded responses, previous research has focused on effects in response tendencies. We investigated syntactic priming effects simultaneously in response tendencies and response latencies for active and passive transitive sentences in a picture description task. In Experiment 1, there were priming effects in response tendencies for passives and in response latencies for actives. However, when participants' pre-existing preference for actives was altered in Experiment 2, syntactic priming occurred for both actives and passives in response tendencies as well as in response latencies. This is the first investigation of the effects of structure frequency on both response tendencies and latencies in syntactic priming. We discuss the implications of these data for current theories of syntactic processing.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Menenti, Dr Laura
• Authors: Corley, M., Segaert, K., Menenti, L., Weber, K., and Hagoort, P.
• College/School: College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Psychology & Neuroscience
• Journal Name: PLoS ONE
• ISSN: 1932-6203
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2011 Segaert et al.
• First Published: First published in PLoS ONE 6(10): e24209
• Publisher Policy: Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License