Structural priming from arithmetic to language in Chinese: Evidence from adults and children

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics

Background:

• The relationship between numerical cognition and language processing is an area of ongoing research.
• Understanding how abstract structures in one domain influence another is key to cognitive theories.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate cross-domain priming effects between arithmetic equation structures and Chinese sentence interpretation.
• To explore whether the syntactic structure of arithmetic problems influences sentence attachment preferences in adults and children.

Main Methods:

• Participants (children and adults) solved arithmetic problems with high or low attachment structures.
• Following arithmetic tasks, participants completed or interpreted ambiguous Chinese sentences of the form NP1 + VP1 + NP2 + VP2.
• Sentence completions and interpretations were analyzed for attachment preferences.

Main Results:

• Arithmetic problem structure significantly primed sentence interpretation, with high-attachment primes leading to more high-attachment sentence completions.
• This cross-domain priming effect was observed in both children and adults.
• Children demonstrated a stronger susceptibility to the priming effect compared to adults.

Conclusions:

• The findings provide empirical support for the shared syntactic integration resource hypothesis and syntactic working memory theory.
• Cross-domain priming from arithmetic to language suggests shared cognitive mechanisms for processing structure.
• Children's heightened sensitivity to priming offers tentative support for the Incremental Procedural Account.