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Speech priming: An examination of rate and syntactic persistence in preschoolers
Author(s) -
Hupp Julie M.,
Jungers Melissa K.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
british journal of developmental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.062
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 2044-835X
pISSN - 0261-510X
DOI - 10.1348/026151008x345988
Subject(s) - psychology , priming (agriculture) , syntax , active listening , linguistics , syntactic structure , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , communication , philosophy , botany , germination , biology
Interactional coordination is important for conversational competence. For example, the syntactic form and rate of perceived speech can influence future productions in adults. Previous work has shown that children are similarly primed by syntax. This experiment demonstrates that syntactic priming and rate priming exist simultaneously in children. Participants (4‐ and 5‐years‐old) alternated between listening to priming sentences that described visual scenes and producing their own descriptions of similar scenes. The priming sentences varied in rate (fast and slow) and syntactic structure (active and passive). Children's sentences reflected the timing and syntactic structure of the primes, and there were developmental differences in their rate persistence.