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ERIC Number: EJ825118
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Jan
Pages: 27
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-7393
EISSN: N/A
Electrophysiological and Behavioral Evidence of Syntactic Priming in Sentence Comprehension
Tooley, Kristen M.; Traxler, Matthew J.; Swaab, Tamara Y.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v35 n1 p19-45 Jan 2009
Event-related potentials and eye tracking were used to investigate the nature of priming effects in sentence comprehension. Participants read 2 sentences (a prime sentence and a target sentence), both of which had a difficult and ambiguous sentence structure. The prime and target sentences contained either the same verb or verbs that were very close in meaning. Priming effects were robust when the verb was repeated. In the event-related potential experiment, the amplitude of the P600 was reduced in target sentences that followed prime sentences with the same verb but not in prime sentences with a synonymous verb. In the eye-tracking experiment, total reading times on the disambiguating region were reduced when the targets followed prime sentences with the same verb but not when targets followed prime sentences with a synonymous verb. The fact that verb overlap greatly boosted priming effects in reduced relative sentences may indicate that verb argument structures play an important role in online parsing.
American Psychological Association. Journals Department, 750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002-4242. Tel: 800-374-2721; Tel: 202-336-5510; Fax: 202-336-5502; e-mail: order@apa.org; Web site: http://www.apa.org/publications
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A