Structural priming as implicit learning: cumulative priming effects and individual differences.

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Psychology
• Language Production

Background:

• Structural priming is a phenomenon where exposure to a particular sentence structure increases the likelihood of producing that same structure.
• Theorists propose structural priming reflects implicit learning within the language production system.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether structural priming is a manifestation of implicit learning in language production.
• To compare the cumulative priming effects of biasing participants toward double object versus prepositional object constructions.

Main Methods:

• Assessed baseline production rates for double object and prepositional object constructions.
• Biased participants toward producing either the double object or prepositional object construction.
• Re-assessed production rates to measure cumulative priming effects.

Main Results:

• Biasing toward prepositional object constructions yielded stronger cumulative priming effects than biasing toward double object constructions.
• Individual differences in implicit learning correlated marginally with double object construction production rates.
• Higher scores on implicit learning tasks were associated with fewer productions of double object constructions.

Conclusions:

• Findings support the claim that structural priming is a form of implicit learning in language production.
• Implicit learning mechanisms appear to influence syntactic structure selection during speech.
• Individual learning capacities may modulate the frequency of specific grammatical constructions.