Effect of Memory Task on Structural Priming, 2017-2022

Participants read aloud either a prepositional object (PO) or double object (DO) prime sentence, followed by a target fragment that they could complete using either a PO or DO structure using pictures that were presented simultaneously with the target fragment. We also manipulated whether the verb in the prime and target was the same or different. In Experiment 1, 25% of all reading trials (i.e. without picture) re-appeared two to six sentences later, either as an identical sentence or with a slight change in the wording. Participants were asked to read them aloud and had to indicate whether the sentence was identical to a previous sentence or not. In Experiment 2, the same sentences re-appeared, but participants did not have a memory task and simply read them aloud.<p>In two structural priming experiments, we investigated to what extent a secondary task affected structural priming. In Experiment 1, participants carried out a structural priming task under the guise of a memory task (e.g., Bock, 1986; Bock, Loebell & Morey, 1992): on some trials, participants saw a sentence and had to indicate whether they had seen it previously. In Experiment 2, there was no such memory task. In both experiments, we observed structural priming and a lexical boost (stronger priming when the verb in prime and target was the same), but there was no evidence that either lexically independent structural priming or the lexical boost was affected by the task.</p>