Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in [Language Learning and Development on 04/01/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/15475441.2016.1235500
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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Priming the comprehension of German object relative clauses
AU - Brandt, Silke
AU - Nitschke, Sanjo
AU - Kidd, Evan
N1 - This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in [Language Learning and Development on 04/01/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/15475441.2016.1235500
PY - 2017/1/4
Y1 - 2017/1/4
N2 - Structural priming is a useful laboratory-based technique for investigating how children respond to temporary changes in the distribution of structures in their input. In the current study we investigated whether increasing the number of object relative clauses (RCs) in German-speaking children’s input changes their processing preferences for ambiguous RCs. Fifty-one 6-year-olds and 54 9-year-olds participated in a priming task that (i) gauged their baseline interpretations for ambiguous RC structures, (ii) primed an object-RC interpretation of ambiguous RCs, and (iii) determined whether priming persevered beyond immediate prime-target pairs. The 6-year old children showed no priming effect, whereas the 9-year-old group showed robust priming that was long lasting. Unlike in studies of priming in production, priming did not increase in magnitude when there was lexical overlap between prime and target. Overall, the results suggest that increased exposure to object RCs facilitates children’s interpretation of this otherwise infrequent structure, but only in older children. The implications for acquisition theory are discussed.
AB - Structural priming is a useful laboratory-based technique for investigating how children respond to temporary changes in the distribution of structures in their input. In the current study we investigated whether increasing the number of object relative clauses (RCs) in German-speaking children’s input changes their processing preferences for ambiguous RCs. Fifty-one 6-year-olds and 54 9-year-olds participated in a priming task that (i) gauged their baseline interpretations for ambiguous RC structures, (ii) primed an object-RC interpretation of ambiguous RCs, and (iii) determined whether priming persevered beyond immediate prime-target pairs. The 6-year old children showed no priming effect, whereas the 9-year-old group showed robust priming that was long lasting. Unlike in studies of priming in production, priming did not increase in magnitude when there was lexical overlap between prime and target. Overall, the results suggest that increased exposure to object RCs facilitates children’s interpretation of this otherwise infrequent structure, but only in older children. The implications for acquisition theory are discussed.
KW - Sentence processing
KW - priming
KW - object relative clauses
U2 - 10.1080/15475441.2016.1235500
DO - 10.1080/15475441.2016.1235500
M3 - Journal article
VL - 13
SP - 241
EP - 261
JO - Language Learning and Development
JF - Language Learning and Development
SN - 1547-5441
IS - 3
ER -