[PS-3.13] Experience-dependent changes in structural selection and pre-verbal message planning: implicit learning or transient change?

Stefan, Z. & Konopka, A.

University of Aberdeen

When preparing to speak, we create a pre-verbal message and then select an appropriate sentence structure to convey it. Speakers often reuse a previously encountered syntactic structure (structural priming). Structural priming persists over long intervals, which points to an implicit learning mechanism: experience with a sentence structure can cause longer-term, cumulative changes in the language processor, increasing the probability of reusing that structure. We used eye-tracking to investigate if structural priming also causes persistent adaptations in the way speakers plan their pre-verbal messages. Native English speakers described pictures of two-character events with active or passive syntax (?The cat is chasing the mouse?/"The mouse is chased by the cat?) immediately after hearing a structural prime (No-Lag) or two sentences later (Lag condition). Speakers repeated the primed structure in both lag conditions. When primed, speakers also engaged in more extensive pre-verbal planning (attending to both event characters instead of quickly fixating only the sentence-initial character), suggesting priority encoding of ?event gist? shortly after picture onset. This effect did not persist into the Lag condition. Thus, the implicit learning of structure may occur independently of changes in planning strategies, which may reflect only transient changes in the ease of assembling a sentence structure.