An Eye-Tracking Study of Structural Priming from Abstract Arithmetic to Chinese Structure NP1 + You + NP2 + Hen + AP

The present study attempted to explore the abstract priming effects from mathematical equations to Mandarin Chinese structure NP₁ + You + NP₂ + Hen + AP in an on-line comprehension task with the aim to figure out the mechanism that underlying these effects. The results revealed that compared with baseline priming conditions, participants tended to choose more high-attachment options in high-attachment priming conditions and more low-attachment priming options in low-attachment priming conditions. Such difference had reached a significant level, which provided evidence for the shared structural representation across mathematical and linguistic domains. Additionally, the fixations sequences during arithmetic calculations reflected those equations were processed hierarchically and could be extracted in parallel instead of being scanned in a sequentially left-to-right order. Our results have provided some evidence for the Representational Account.