title: Priming prepositional phrase attachment: evidence from eye-tracking and event-related potentials.
abstract: Three syntactic-priming experiments investigated the effect of structurally similar or dissimilar prime sentences on the processing of target sentences, using eye tracking (Experiment 1) and event-related potentials (ERPs) (Experiments 2 and 3) All three experiments tested readers' response to sentences containing a temporary syntactic ambiguity. The ambiguity occurred because a prepositional phrase modifier (PP-modifier) could attach either to a preceding verb or to a preceding noun. Previous experiments have established that (a) noun-modifying expressions are harder to process than verb-modifying expressions (when test sentences are presented in isolation); and (b) for other kinds of sentences, processing a structurally similar prime sentence can facilitate processing a target sentence. The experiments reported here were designed to determine whether a structurally similar prime could facilitate processing of noun-attached modifiers and whether such facilitation reflected syntactic-structure-building or semantic processes. These findings have implications for accounts of structural priming during online comprehension and for accounts of syntactic representation and processing in comprehension.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , University of California , Davis , CA , USA.
authors.forename: Megan A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Boudewyn
authors.forename: Megan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zirnstein
authors.forename: Tamara Y
authors.initials: TY
authors.lastname: Swaab
authors.forename: Matthew J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Traxler
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D053483:Eye Movement Measurements; D005133:Eye Movements; D006801:Humans; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D055815:Young Adult