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Covariance Matrix of predictors. Note that Years in Education and Education Level were not included in final models due to insignificant predictive power in every model.
Source publication
The extent to which syntactic priming in comprehension is affected by ageing has not yet been extensively explored. It is further unclear whether syntactic comprehension priming persists across fillers in older adults. This study used a self-paced reading task and controlled for syntactic and lexical overlap, to (1) discover whether syntactic compr...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... = .562), and age was not significantly associated with WM span, either when considering all participants together (see the covariance matrix in Figure 1), or in the younger group (r = .092, p = .503) ...
Citations
... These structures involve a temporary ambiguity before the word "by", as the first verb may be interpreted as a matrix verb (where, in the above example, the parents caused someone to worry) or as a past participle. Disambiguation effects, observable as an increase in P600 amplitude at the disambiguating word "by", show readers commit to interpreting the sentence in favor of a relative clause interpretation (Mecklinger et al. 1995), and syntactic priming may cause attenuations of this disambiguation effect (Tooley, Traxler, and Swaab 2009;van Boxtel and Lawyer 2023). Ledoux, Traxler, and Swaab 2007 found reduced P600 amplitudes in primed compared to unprimed reduced relatives, and suggested facilitated processing of primed structures reduced unexpected ambiguity effects. ...
... Behaviorally, both age groups experienced abstract syntactic priming (in the absence of lexical overlap) and lexical boost effects (where both syntactic and verbal overlap were included): in both groups, Boosted Targets were read faster than Primed Targets, which were in turn read faster than Unprimed Targets. This reinforces recent evidence suggesting older adults are as susceptible to syntactic priming as younger adults in behavioral responses (Hardy, Messenger, and Maylor 2017;van Boxtel and Lawyer 2023), and contradicts past literature suggesting syntax processing declines with age (e.g., Norman, Kemper, and Kynette 1992 2019; Zhu, Hou, and Yang 2018). We suggest this dichotomy is due to previous investigations' focus on declarative, explicit measures, while syntactic priming relies on implicit, non-declarative cognitive skills (see further Heyselaar, Wheeldon, and Segaert 2021;van Boxtel and Lawyer 2023). ...
... This reinforces recent evidence suggesting older adults are as susceptible to syntactic priming as younger adults in behavioral responses (Hardy, Messenger, and Maylor 2017;van Boxtel and Lawyer 2023), and contradicts past literature suggesting syntax processing declines with age (e.g., Norman, Kemper, and Kynette 1992 2019; Zhu, Hou, and Yang 2018). We suggest this dichotomy is due to previous investigations' focus on declarative, explicit measures, while syntactic priming relies on implicit, non-declarative cognitive skills (see further Heyselaar, Wheeldon, and Segaert 2021;van Boxtel and Lawyer 2023). This study therefore makes the case for further investigations into older adults' sentence processing using implicit tasks. ...
Background: Recent studies suggest older adults’ implicit learning of syntactic patterns remains largely intact. Syntactic priming has proven to be a sensitive tool to examine this implicit sensitivity. However, most priming studies with older adults have focused on production, and none have included an electrophysiological component. This study explores the neural correlates of syntactic priming in older adults’ comprehension. Method: We used a self-paced reading and event-related potential paradigm with groups of older and younger adults. Reduced Relative targets were primed, unprimed, or lexically boosted, while reading times and EEG recordings were obtained. Pre-tests of Working Memory and Processing Speed were also recorded. Results: Older adults showed intact priming and lexical boost on reading times, while lexical facilitation was dependent on syntactic overlap in the older but not the younger group. Syntactic priming was evident on N400 and P600 modulations on verbs and nouns in Reduced Relatives, and generally did not differ by age group. This suggests older and younger adults are equally susceptible to syntactic facilitation, and makes the case for more non-declarative, electrophysiological measurements of older adults’ sentence processing ability in future studies.
... Effects are amplified when lexical information is shared between primes and targets, an effect known as the lexical boost (Hartsuiker et al., 2008;Traxler et al., 2014). In comprehension, facilitation effects by structural priming can be observed through more efficient eye fixations while listening or reading (e.g., Thothathiri and Snedeker, 2008;Traxler et al., 2014), reading speeds on self-paced reading measures (Van Boxtel and Lawyer, 2022), or decisions on sentence-picture matching or attachment ambiguity tasks (Pickering et al., 2013). Structural priming effects are, however, not mere repetition, but reflective of experience-based tuning in the central syntactic system. ...
... Another question that deserves further investigation involves lexical boost effects on structural priming. When prime and target share lexical material, e.g., a verb, studies with healthy speakers have shown greatly increased magnitudes of priming than without such overlap (Hartsuiker et al., 2008;Van Boxtel and Lawyer, 2022). This suggests representations of syntactic structure may be linked to, or reinforced by, lexical information. ...
Background
Grammatical encoding is impaired in many persons with aphasia (PWA), resulting in deficits in sentence production accuracies and underlying planning processes. However, relatively little is known on how these grammatical encoding deficits can be mediated in PWA. This study aimed to facilitate off-line (accuracy) and real-time (eye fixations) encoding of passive sentences through implicit structural priming, a tendency to better process a current sentence because of its grammatical similarity to a previously experienced (prime) sentence.
Method
Sixteen PWA and Sixteen age-matched controls completed an eyetracking-while-speaking task, where they described a target transitive picture preceded by a comprehension prime involving either an active or passive form. We measured immediate and cumulative priming effects on proportions of passives produced for the target pictures and proportions of eye fixations made to the theme actor in the target scene before speech onset of the sentence production.
Results and conclusion
Both PWA and controls produced cumulatively more passives as the experiment progressed despite an absence of immediate priming effects in PWA. Both groups also showed cumulative changes in the pre-speech eye fixations associated with passive productions, with this cumulative priming effect greater for the PWA group. These findings suggest that structural priming results in gradual adaptation of the grammatical encoding processes of PWA and that structural priming may be used as a treatment component for improving grammatical deficits in aphasia.
... Only a few studies so far examined syntactic priming in older adults, yielding mixed findings. Some studies have reported intact structural priming in older adults (Hardy, Messenger, & Maylor, 2017;Hardy, Wheeldon, & Segaert, 2020;van Boxtel & Lawyer, 2022). Hardy et al. (2017) found that older adults showed comparable lexical boost and abstract structural priming as young adults in a scripted dialogue-like priming task, wherein participants heard a syntactic (either active or passive) structure from a confederate partner and then immediately (0-lag) described their own transitive action card. ...
... Thus, their findings need to be replicated in different structures and at a longer-term priming context. In a recent study, van Boxtel and Lawyer (2022) found that older adults show significant abstract priming and lexical boost effects over 2 intervening fillers during comprehension of reduced relative clauses, using a self-paced reading task. The authors, therefore suggested that both abstract and lexically-mediated syntactic priming may involve implicit memory processes. ...
... If lexically boosted priming relies on explicit memory, as proposed by the dual-path model of language learning (Chang et al., 2006; and the declarative memory-based model of structural priming (Reitter et al., 2011), older adults are predicted to show reduced lexical boost effects compared to young adults. However, if non-declarative memory processes support priming effects in general (Heyselaar et al., 2021; see also van Boxtel & Lawyer, 2022), older adults may show comparable lexical boost effects as young adults. Lastly, we conducted an exploratory analysis to compare the performance between the older participants who are in their 60s versus older than 70. ...
Purpose
Structural priming- speakers’ unconscious tendency to echo previously encountered message-structure mappings - is thought to reflect the processes of implicit language learning that occur throughout the lifespan. Recently, structural priming has also been used as a means to facilitate language re-learning in age-related language disorders such as aphasia. However, little evidence is available on whether structural priming remains effective in healthy aging, limiting clinical translation of the structural priming paradigm. This study examined the impact of aging on the strength and longevity of abstract structural priming and lexical boost effects.
Method
Twenty-four young and 24 older adults participated in a collaborative picture-matching task where the participant and experimenter took turns describing picture cards using transitive and dative sentences. In Experiment 1, a target was elicited immediately following a prime (0-lag), whereas two filler items were embedded between a prime and a target sentence in Experiment 2 (2-lag) to examine longer-term priming effects. In both experiments, the verb was repeated for half of the prime-target pairs to examine lexical boost on structural priming.
Results
At immediate priming, older adults showed both abstract structural priming and lexical boost in transitives and datives, similar to young adults. At longer-term priming, only abstract priming effects were significant in both groups of participants, with no evidence of age-related reduction in priming.
Conclusions
Both lexically-specific and independent mechanisms of structural priming remain resilient in older adults, supporting the view that structural priming reflects life-long language learning. Further, the findings provide empirical basis for applying structural priming to elderly clinical populations.
