Griffin, Z. M. & Weinstein-Tull, J. (2003). Conceptual structure modulates structural priming in the production of complex sentences. Journal of Memory and Language, 49, 537-555. [preprint pdf]

Speakers tend to reproduce syntactic structures that they have recently comprehended or produced. This structural or syntactic priming occurs despite differences in the particular conceptual or event roles expressed in prime and target sentences (Bock & Loebell, 1990). In two sentence recall studies, we used the tendency of speakers to paraphrase the finite complements of object-raising verbs as infinitive complements (e.g., “John believed that Mary was nice” as “John believed Mary to be nice”) to test whether an additional conceptual role would affect priming. Prime constructions with identical constituent orders as object-raising infinitives but an additional conceptual role (“John persuaded Mary to be nice”) resulted in fewer paraphrases. Contrasts with other constructions suggest that the critical difference between primes was this extra conceptual role. Thus, subtle differences in conceptual structures can affect how speakers grammatically encode message elements.

Griffin, Z. M., & Garton, K. L. (2003, March). Procrastination in speaking: Ordering arguments during speech. Poster presented at the 16th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Boston, MA. [pdf] [gif]

Within the yet-to-be-determined constraints of language production, speakers have flexibility in planning their speech. Traditionally, fluency has been associated with selecting all the words of a clause before saying a word [1]. However, speakers can speak fluently when selecting post-verbal nouns after speech begins [2, 3]. A clause-sized syntactic plan may underlie such fluent incremental word selection. Alternatively, syntactic structure may be created incrementally as some theories suggest [4]. Despite evidence that speakers prefer and benefit from flexibility in syntactic structure [5, 6], there is little evidence of when speakers may make syntactic decisions.

When describing visual scenes, speakers gaze at referents while they prepare words to refer to them [7]. Whether speakers prepare words while speaking or further in advance, long gazes to referents occur in order of mention and reflect the difficulty of preparing the corresponding words [8-10]. Casual comparison of eye movements across experiments suggested that speakers shifted their gaze between objects less frequently when order of mention was pre-specified than when it was not, and thus, gaze transitions might reflect decisions about what to mention when.

We asked 34 participants to perform a picture-matching task. A confederate pretended to describe a scene [11]. Participants repeated the description if it matched the one they viewed, described their scene if there was overlap, or said “No match.” Critical pictures depicted transfer events (e.g., a woman throwing a bone to a dog) that are usually described with prepositional or double object datives, varying the order of arguments after the verb. To minimize gaze shifts due to comprehending scenes, each experimental trial was immediately preceded by a “no match” trial with the same scene. The confederate then described the participant’s scene or one with the same agent to elicit a description. We hypothesized that when participants generated descriptions they would make more gaze transitions between patient and recipient as they decided which argument order to use than when they repeated the sentence.

When any such difference occurred relative to speech onset would suggest when argument order was decided for a clause. As usual, speakers gazed at referents before mentioning them. Supporting the view that argument order (and therefore, some syntactic structure) may be decided during speech, more transitions (and transitions/second) occurred during generated than repeated sentences, but not before speech onset.  We also plan to present an extension in which gaze transitions are manipulated via structural priming without overlap in content.


References
1.    F. Goldman-Eisler, Psycholinguistics:  Experiments in spontaneous speech (Academic Press, London, 1968).
2.    G. Kempen, P. Huijbers, Cognition 14, 185-209 (1983).
3.    M. Smith, L. Wheeldon, Cognition 73, 205-246 (1999).
4.    G. Kempen, E. Hoenkamp, Cognitive Science 11, 201-258 (1987).
5.    V. S. Ferreira, Journal of Memory and Language 35, 724-755 (1996).
6.    T. Wasow, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 20, 347-361 (1997).
7.    Z. M. Griffin, K. Bock, Psychological Science 11, 274-279 (2000).
8.    Z. M. Griffin, Cognition 82, B1-B14 (2001).
9.    Z. M. Griffin, paper presented at the Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, Tenerife, Spain (2002, Sept).
10.    A. S. Meyer, A. Sleiderink, W. J. M. Levelt, Cognition 66, B25-B33 (1998).
11.    H. P. Branigan, M. J. Pickering, A. A. Cleland, Cognition 75, B13-25 (2000).

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. BCS-0318456.

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Griffin, Z. M. (2001, September). Verbs remember their complements. Poster presented at Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processes conference, Saarbrücken, Germany.

Bock, K., & Griffin, Z. M. (2000). The persistence of structural priming: Transient activation or implicit learning? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129(2), 177-192.

Structural priming in language production is a tendency to recreate a recently uttered syntactic  structure in different words. This tendency can be seen independent of specific lexical items,  thematic roles, or word sequences. Two alternative proposals about the mechanism behind structural priming include (a) short-term activation from a memory representation of a priming structure and (b) longer term adaptation within the cognitive mechanisms for creating sentences,  as a form of procedural learning. Two experiments evaluated these hypotheses, focusing on the persistence of structural priming. Both experiments yielded priming that endured beyond  adjacent sentences, persisting over 2 intervening sentences in Experiment 1 and over 10 in  Experiment 2. Although memory may have short-term consequences for some components of  this kind of priming, the persisting effects are more compatible with a learning account than a transient memory account.