{"pk":26485,"title":"Linguistic Priming and Learning Adjacent and Non-Adjacent Dependencies in\nSerial Reaction Time Tasks","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Although syntactic priming is well studied and\ncommonly assumed to involve implicit learning, the\nmechanisms behind this phenomenon are still under\ndebate. We tested whether implicit learning of adjacent\nand non-adjacent sequences occurs in a non-linguistic,\nfinger sequence task (Serial Reaction Time task), and if\nso, whether these implicitly-learned dependencies can\ncause syntactic priming in the linguistic domain. We\nfollowed the logic that exposure to statistical patterns in\nthe SRT task may influence language users’ relative\nclause (RC) attachment biases, and trained participants\non SRT sequences with adjacent or non-adjacent\ndependencies. Participants then wrote completions to\nrelative clause fragments in a situation where they\ncould opt for adjacent or non-adjacent linguistic\nstructures. Participants successfully learned the adjacent\nand non-adjacent dependency implicitly during the SRT\ntask, but, strikingly, their RC continuations did not\nexhibit priming effects. Implications for theories of\nsyntactic priming and its relations to implicit learning\nare discussed.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"implicit learning; syntactic priming;\nrelative clause attachment bias; non-adjacent\ndependencies"}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sn268bj","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Felix","middle_name":"Hao","last_name":"Wang","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Southern California, Los Angeles","department":""},{"first_name":"Elsi","middle_name":"","last_name":"Kaiser","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Southern California, Los Angeles","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2016-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/26485/galley/16121/download/"}]}