Syntactic priming in spoken production: Linguistic and temporal interference

Current evidence about the persistence of syntactic priming effects (Bock, 1986) is equivocal: Using spoken picture description, Dock and Griffin (200 0) found that it persisted over as many as 10 trials; using written sentenc e completion, Branigan, Pickering, and Cleland (1999) found that it dissipa ted if even a single sentence intervened between prime and target. This pap er asks what causes it to be long lasting. On one account, the rapid decay evidenced by Branigan et al. occurs because the task emphasizes conceptual planning; on another account, it is due to the written nature of their task . If conceptual planning is the cause, this might relate to planning the pr ime sentence or planning an intervening sentence. Hence we conducted an exp eriment with spoken sentence completion, contrasting no delay, an interveni ng sentence, and a pure temporal delay. The results indicated that strong a nd similar priming occurred in all three cases, therefore lending support t o the claim that spoken priming is long lasting.