title: Determiner primes as facilitators of lexical retrieval in English.
abstract: Gender priming studies have demonstrated facilitation of noun production following pre-activation of a target noun's grammatical gender. Findings provide support for models in which syntactic information relating to words is stored within the lexicon and activated during lexical retrieval. Priming effects are observed in the context of determiner plus noun phrase production. Few studies demonstrate gender priming effects in bare noun production (i.e., nouns in isolation). We investigated the effects of English determiner primes on bare mass and count noun production. In two experiments, participants named pictures after exposure to primes involving congruent, incongruent and neutral determiners. Facilitation of noun production by congruent and neutral determiner primes was found in both experiments. The results suggest that noun phrase syntax is activated in lexical retrieval, even when not explicitly required for production. Post hoc analysis of the relative frequency of congruent and incongruent prime-target pairs provides support for a frequency-based interpretation of the data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Communication Sciences, The University of Sheffield, 31 Claremont Crescent, Sheffield S10 2TA, UK. emma.gregory@sheffield.ac.uk
authors.forename: Emma
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gregory
authors.forename: Rosemary
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Varley
authors.forename: Ruth
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Herbert
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001244:Association; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014706:Verbal Learning; D055815:Young Adult