Tooley Kristen M
Department of Psychology, Texas State University, 601 University Drive, San Marcos, TX, 78666, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2020 Jul;48(5):815-838. doi: 10.3758/s13421-020-01019-3.
While many recent studies focused on abstract syntactic priming effects have implicated an error-based learning mechanism, there is little consensus on the most likely mechanism underlying the lexical boost. The current study aimed at refining understanding of the mechanism that leads to this priming effect. In two eye-tracking during reading experiments, the nature of the lexical boost was investigated by comparing predictions from competing accounts in terms of decay and the requirement of structural overlap between primes and targets. Experiment 1 revealed facilitation of target structure processing for shorter relative to longer primes, when there were fewer intervening words between prime and target verbs. In Experiment 2, significant lexically boosted priming effects were observed, but only when the target structure also appeared in the prime, and not when the prime had a different structure but a high degree of lexical overlap with the target. Overall, these results are most consistent with a short-lived mechanistic account rather than an error-based learning account of the lexical boost. Furthermore, these results align with dual-mechanism accounts of syntactic priming whereby different mechanisms are claimed to produce abstract syntactic priming effects and the lexical boost.
虽然最近许多关注抽象句法启动效应的研究都涉及基于错误的学习机制，但对于词汇促进作用背后最可能的机制，几乎没有达成共识。当前的研究旨在深化对导致这种启动效应的机制的理解。在两项阅读实验中的眼动追踪研究中，通过比较竞争理论在衰退以及启动词与目标词之间结构重叠要求方面的预测，对词汇促进作用的本质进行了探究。实验1发现，当启动词与目标动词之间的干预词较少时，相对于较长的启动词，较短的启动词对目标结构处理有促进作用。在实验2中，观察到了显著的词汇促进启动效应，但只有当目标结构也出现在启动词中时才会出现，而当启动词具有不同结构但与目标词有高度词汇重叠时则不会出现。总体而言，这些结果最符合关于词汇促进作用的短暂机制理论，而非基于错误的学习理论。此外，这些结果与句法启动的双重机制理论一致，即不同的机制被认为会产生抽象句法启动效应和词汇促进作用。
