Structural Priming Is Supported By Different Components Of Non-Declarative Memory: Evidence From Priming Across The Lifespan

Abstract

This study investigates how non-declarative memory supports both the transient, short-term and the persistent, long-term structural priming effects commonly seen in the literature. Specifically, we propose that these characteristics are supported by different subcomponents of non-declarative memory: perceptual and conceptual non-declarative memory respectively. To test this proposal, we investigated how the magnitude of short-and long-term structural priming effects change throughout the lifespan. Previous studies have suggested that perceptual and conceptual memory age differently, with only conceptual memory showing age-related decline. Therefore, by investigating how decreased performance in perceptual and conceptual non-declarative memory tasks relate to decreased structural priming magnitude across the lifespan, we aim to elucidate how non-declarative memory supports two seemingly different components of structural priming. We find no change in short-term priming magnitude and performance on perceptual tasks, whereas both long-term priming and conceptual memory declined with age. We conclude that the two seemingly different components of structural priming are supported by different components of non-declarative memory. These findings have important implications for theoretical accounts of structural priming.

How the healthy ageing brain supports semantic binding during language comprehension

“…Surprisingly, older adults also outperformed young adults in the working memory tasks (i.e. the average combined score of the backward digit span and subtract 2 span tests) (Waters & Caplan, 2003), which could be attributed to young adults being less motivated when they were participating in the tasks (in line with similar findings reported previously: Heyselaar et al, (2020)…”

Structural priming is determined by global syntax rather than internal phrasal structure: Evidence from young and older adults.

“…Nevertheless, it is important to consider that we found evidence of preserved structural priming effects in older adults in a task in which the demands may not have been great enough to elicit a measurable behavioural difference between age groups. Our task was more difficult than previous ageing priming studies that have included one agent and one patient (Hardy et al, 2017;Heyselaar et al, 2017Heyselaar et al, , 2018Sung, 2015), since all of our primes and targets consisted of three entities. Nonetheless, active and passive sentences are generally not considered to be the most complex syntactic structures to produce (i.e., they do not contain an embedded clause or a large syntactic operation of movement).…”

“…To date, only a few studies have investigated the effect of old age on choice structural priming; however, this has produced mixed results with two studies finding evidence of preserved priming of passives in older adults (Hardy, Messenger, & Maylor, 2017; Heyselaar, Wheeldon, & Segaert, 2018), while others have not (Heyselaar, Segaert, Walvoort, Kessels, & Hagoort, 2017, Footnote 2; Sung, 2015). 1 Moreover, all of these studies have only focused on the effect of global syntactic structure (active vs. passive) on the production of passive targets, and have not considered the role of internal phrasal structure on the magnitude of structural priming.…”

Healthy Ageing and Sentence Production: Disrupted Lexical Access in the Context of Intact Syntactic Planning

“…It therefore remains unclear whether linguistic priming effects would continue to be observed in older adults in a task in which demands are increased (e.g., by manipulating the codability of the nouns). Moreover, the consideration of task demands vs. cognitive supply may also be necessary for clarifying the mixed findings within the existing choice syntactic priming and aging literature (Hardy et al, 2017;Heyselaar et al, 2017Heyselaar et al, , 2018Sung, 2015). There are minimal methodological differences between the various studies (e.g., all used a picture description production task); however, it remains possible that differences in the characteristics of the samples, such as education level and native language use, may have resulted in differences in processing efficiency of the older adult groups, leading to different behavioral findings between studies (Peelle, 2019).…”

“…While no studies to date have examined agerelated effects on onset latency priming, a few studies have investigated age effects on choice syntactic priming. However, this has produced mixed results with two studies finding preserved priming of passives in older adults (Hardy, Messenger, & Maylor, 2017;Heyselaar, Wheeldon, & Segaert, 2018), while others have not (Heyselaar, Segaert, Walvoort, Kessels, & Hagoort, 2017, footnote 2;Sung, 2015). 2 It is therefore difficult to make direct hypotheses about age-related effects on onset latency syntactic priming based on previous evidence.…”