The Priming Effect Of Hierarchical Graphics On Chinese Ambiguous Structures

Structural priming refers to the fact that participants tend to repeat or intimate the previously processed sentence when they produce or comprehend a structure?Bock,1986?.Unlike syntactic priming,structural priming is not necessarily related to sentences.It can be abstract structure,as long as the prime and target share some aspects of structural representation?Scheepers et al.,2011;Scheepers&Sturt,2014?.Since both abstract graphics and specific structures share similar hierarchical structures,based on the research conducted by Scheepers et al.?2011?and Zeng Tao et al.?2015?,this study intended to extend in this field and investigated the priming effects from hierarchical graphics to Chinese structures.To verify structural priming effects from hierarchical graphics to Chinese ambiguous structures,this research has conducted priming experiment between them by way of online eye tracking.This study covered two variant ambiguous structures,including Quantifier+NP₁+De+NP₂ and NP₁+Kan/WangZhe+NP₂+AP and adopted the sentence comprehension task.All of the experimental materials were presented by Eyelink to collect online data.There were 30 sets of materials and every set contains 3priming hierarchical graphics and a target sentence.The priming conditions were respectively high-attachment prime condition,low-attachment prime condition and baseline prime condition.The target sentences were ambiguous.The comprehension task aimed to verify whether the structure of hierarchical graphics affected the tendency of comprehending target sentences.The results showed that there are priming effects from abstract graphics to Chinese ambiguous structures from behavioral data and eye movement pattern.When the prime condition was consistent with comprehension tendency,participants spent less time reading and paid less fixation.Then,when participants processed the modified part,they spent less time reading and paid more fixation.In sum,hierarchical graphics and language shared similar structural representation.