The Influence Of Lag Manipulations And Working Memory Capacity On L2 Syntactic Priming Effects

The phenomenon that when choosing two alternative structures,people tend to use the syntactic structure recently heard or produced is called syntactic priming.Well-established as the syntactic priming phenomenon is,the working mechanisms behind it are still controversial.Whether syntactic priming is caused by explicit memory or implicit learning of the structure is unsure.Therefore,the persistence of syntactic priming and the existence of lexical boost are hot topics of syntactic priming studies,but the results are inconsistent.As to this point,the current study employs lag manipulations to further investigate the mechanisms under it.In addition,as important cognitive resource,working memory capacity is assumed to be closely related to the explicit and implicit nature of syntactic priming? working mechanisms.Hence,working memory is selected as a learner variable to further explore the working mechanism of syntactic priming.Research questions:1.What?s the influence of lag manipulations on L2 syntactic priming effects? Does the influence vary in same/different verb condition?2.What?s the influence of WMC on L2 syntactic priming effects under different lag manipulations? Does the influence vary in same/different verb condition?113 first-year students from a vocational college in Wuxi participated in the experiment.8 students were randomly selected to perform pilot study and the rest of 105 students participated in the main study.Students participating in the main study took WMC test.According to their test scores,they were divided into three levels: high,middle and low WMC.After removing the subjects of middle WMC,there were 70 students left,with 35 students in both LWMC and HWMC group.The baseline group consisted of 22 students,with 11 in both LWMC and HWMC group while the experimental group was composed of 48 students,with 24 in each group.As to the formal syntactic priming test,subjects were required to read a priming sentence;match the priming sentence with a verification picture;produce description for a description picture.The prime sentence followed its corresponding target picture immediately at lag 0 while the prime and its corresponding target picture were separated by 2 and 6 intervening filler sentences at lag 2 and lag 6 respectively.The experiment continued to repeat the matching-describing procedure.Subjects were required to read 28 prime sentences,match prime sentences with 28 verification picture and describe 28 description pictures.The experiment results indicate that:1.1)Syntactic priming effect decays sharply with the increase of lag manipulations.Since explicit knowledge declines promptly,this indicates that part of the syntactic priming is elicited by explicit processing.However,syntactic priming still exists at lag 6,reflecting the long-lasting nature of syntactic priming.This demonstrates that part of the syntactic priming is caused by implicit learning.Therefore,it can be drawn that learners acquire syntactic structures from dual paths.2)Lexical boost effect is observed in syntactic priming.Namely,syntactic priming effect in same-verb condition is larger than that in different-verb condition.The lexical boost effect,however,is short-lived,which only occurs at lag 0 and lag 2.The strength of repeated cues decays with the increase of lag manipulations resulting in the decline of lexical boost effect.This reflects that syntactic priming in same-verb condition mainly originates from explicit processing while syntactic priming in different-verb condition mainly originates from implicit processing.2.1)WMC exerts certain effect on L2 syntactic priming under different lag manipulations.In contrast to LWMC group,the advantage of HWMC group nearly approaches significance,but this kind of advantage disappears at lag 6.One probable explanation is that HWMC group employs explicit processing with their abundant cognitive resources.2)In same-verb condition,the syntactic priming effect of HWMC group is larger than that of LWMC group across all 3 lags.The syntactic priming effect of LWMC group demonstrates no significant difference across 3 lags while that of HWMC group shows significant difference across 3 lags.In different-verb condition,although the syntactic priming effect of HWMC group is larger than that of LWMC group,the syntactic priming effect shows no significant difference between subjects and within lag manipulations.This reflects that HWMC group cannot make full use of attention resources to control processing and conduct additional explicit learning without the external force of lexical overlap.To conclude,the current study reveals L2 syntactic priming effect under lag manipulations and the influence of WMC on L2 syntactic priming effect under different lag manipulations.When teaching syntactic structures,besides explaining the syntactic structures explicitly,L2 teachers can keep presenting the same syntactic structure to elicit priming effect.In addition,L2 teachers should expose students to examples in same-verb and different-verb conditions to keep them practicing so as to reinforce the explicit and implicit knowledge.Moreover,L2 teachers should take the difference in learner?s WMC into consideration and individualize their teaching methods to maximize their L2 syntactic priming effect.