Stronger Syntactic Alignment in the Presence of an Interlocutor

Abstract

Speakers are influenced by the linguistic context: hearing one syntactic alternative leads to an increased chance that the speaker will repeat this structure in the subsequent utterance (i.e., syntactic priming, or structural persistence). Top-down influences, such as whether a conversation partner (or, interlocutor) is present, may modulate the degree to which syntactic priming occurs. In the current study, we indeed show that the magnitude of syntactic alignment increases when speakers are interacting with an interlocutor as opposed to doing the experiment alone. The structural persistence effect for passive sentences is stronger in the presence of an interlocutor than when no interlocutor is present (i.e., when the participant is primed by a recording). We did not find evidence, however, that a speaker’s syntactic priming magnitude is influenced by the degree of their conversation partner’s priming magnitude. Together, these results support a mediated account of syntactic priming, in which syntactic choices are not only affected by preceding linguistic input, but also by top-down influences, such as the speakers’ communicative intent.

What has social neuroscience learned from hyperscanning studies of spoken communication? A systematic review

“…Interestingly, asymmetric connections in neural synchrony found in cooperative and naturalistic discussion settings were similar to those shown in turn-taking studies, particularly between frontal and parietal regions (Ahn et al, 2018;Mayseless et al, 2019;Pérez et al, 2019). This suggests consistency in the complex dynamics of both cognition and coordination present during real-world social interaction and experimental conditions, with both requiring communication of additional linguistic information in the presence of interlocutors (Schoot et al, 2019). Moreover, these highlighted cortical regions have been associated with the theory of mind, a precursor of which is joint attention, and which is considered essential to understanding others' mental states and intentions as we adapt during communicative social interaction with others (Dumas et al, 2011).…”

“…Research shows alignment of speech rhythm, rate and syntax assist the transmission of information; however, for situational alignment to occur during communication, interlocutors are required to have successfully constructed analogous conceptual models of the matter under discussion (Menenti et al, 2012;Schoot et al, 2019). Accordingly, as people communicate, not only do they constantly modify their behavior and speech in response to their continuously changing conversation, they also repeatedly update their expectations and predictions of their conversation companions (Friston and Frith, 2015b).…”

Between- and within-group variation in first and second language syntactic priming

“…Yet surprisingly, they did not always relate to priming in the expected direction and they mostly affected long-term but not immediate priming (cf. Bock et al, 1992;Branigan et al, 2007;Ivanova et al, 2020;Schoot et al, 2019;Shin & Christianson, 2012). Motivation only showed a relationship with participants' production of fronted sentences in relation to the side of the picture on which the temporal phrase was depicted.…”

“…Participants who are instructed to specifically pay attention to the syntactic form of the stimuli show larger priming effects than participants asked to focus on their semantic content (Bock, Loebell & Morey, 1992) while being involved in a task with a goal explicitly shared with an interlocutor leads to larger priming effects (Reitter & Moore, 2014). Participants who hear primes in a dialogue or being directly addressed to them are more likely to prime than those hearing them in a monologue or as side participants (Branigan, Pickering, McLean & Cleland, 2007;Schoot, Hagoort & Segaert, 2019; but see Ivanova, Horton, Swets, Kleinman & Ferreira, 2020). In these cases, participants may show greater priming because their level of attention to the stimuli and the task may be higher in order for them to be able to achieve understanding and respond to the interlocutor.…”

“…[Insert Table 1 about here] Attention and awareness questionnaire Each participant received three attention scores. We averaged participants' scores on question 1 and 2 of the questionnaire to create a measure of participants' attention to the stimuli and the task (Branigan et al, 2007;Ivanova et al, 2020;Schoot et al, 2019). L2…”