Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Structural priming from simple arithmetic to Chinese ambiguous structures: evidence from eye movement

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Cognitive Processing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This article explores the domain generality of hierarchical representation between linguistic and mathematical cognition by adopting the structural priming paradigm in an eye-tracking reading experiment. The experiment investigated whether simple arithmetic equations with high (e.g., (7 + 2) × 3 + 1)- or low (e.g., 7 + 2 × 3 + 1)- attachment influence language users’ interpretation of Chinese ambiguous structures (NP1 + He + NP2 + De + NP3; Quantifier + NP1 + De + NP2; NP1 + Kan/WangZhe + NP2 + AP). On the one hand, behavioral results showed that high-attachment primes led to more high-attachment interpretation, while low-attachment primes led to more low-attachment interpretation. On the other hand, the eye movement data indicated that structural priming was of great help to reduce dwell time on the ambiguous structure. There were structural priming effects from simple arithmetic to three different structures in Chinese, which provided new evidence on the cross-domain priming from simple arithmetic to language. Besides attachment priming effect at global level, online sentence integration at local level was found to be structure-dependent by some differences in eye movement measures. Our results have provided some evidence for the Representational Account.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12

Similar content being viewed by others

Explore related subjects

Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.

Notes

  1. The scripts used in the present analysis were available for this article via the link: https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/hfjcd8g9xs/draft?a=f5ab96c0-847b-4ccc-ac1d-cbc30f48c1a9.

References

  • Arai M, Gompel RPGV, Scheepers C (2007) Priming ditransitive structures in comprehension. Cogn Psychol 54(3):218–250

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bai XJ, Li X, Yan GL (2015) Eye movement control in Chinese reading: a summary over the past 20 years of research. Psychol Dev Educ 31(1):85–91

    Google Scholar 

  • Bock JK (1986) Syntactic persistence in language production. Cogn Psychol 18:355–387

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bock JK, Loebell H (1990) Framing sentences. Cognition 35:1–39

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Bock JK, Griffin ZM (2000) The persistence of structural priming: transient activation or implicit learning. J Exp Psychol 129(2):177–192

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Branigan HP, Pickering MJ, Cleland AA (2000) Syntactic co-ordination in dialogue. Cognition 75(2):B13–B25

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Chang F, Dell GS, Bock K, Griffin ZM (2000) Structural priming as implicit learning: a comparison of model of sentence production. J Psycholinguist Res 29(2):217–230

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Chen YM (2005) On preference of meanings of ambiguity structure. Appl Linguist 3:76–82

    Google Scholar 

  • Corley M, Scheepers C (2002) Syntactic priming in English sentence production: categorical and latency evidence from an internet-based study. Psychon Bull Rev 9(1):126–131

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dehaene S, Spelke E, Pinel P, Stanescu R, Tsivkin S (1999) Sources of mathematical thinking: behavioural and brain-imaging evidence. Sci Mag 284:970–977

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Dsemet T, Declercp M (2006) Cross-linguistic priming of syntactic hierarchical configuration information. J Mem Lang 54:610–632

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ferreira VS (2003) The persistence of optional complementizer production: why saying ‘that’ is not saying ‘that’ at all. J Mem Lang 48:379–398

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fitch WT, Martins MD (2014) Hierarchical processing in music, language, and action: Lashley revisited. Ann N Y Acad Sci 1316(1):87–104

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hartsuiker RJ, Pickering MJ, Veltkamp E (2004) Is syntax separate or shared between languages? Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in Spanish-English bilinguals. Psychol Sci 15(6):409–414

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koelsch S, Rohrmeier M, Torrecuso R, Jentschke S (2013) Processing of hierarchical syntactic structure in music. Proc Natl Acad Sci 110(38):15443–15448

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Lashley KS (2007) The problem of serial order in behavior. Hum Mov Sci 26(4):525–554

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lelekov T, Dominey PF, Garcia-Larrea L (2000) Dissociable ERP profiles for processing rules vs instances in a cognitive sequencing task. NeuroReport 11(5):1129–1132

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Ledoux K, Traxler MJ, Swaab T (2007) Syntactic priming in comprehension: evidence from event-related Potentials. Psychol Sci 18:135–143

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Loebell H, Bock K (2003) Structural priming across languages. Linguistics 41(5):791–824

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ma QZ (2004) Chinese verb and verb constructions. Peking University Press, Beijing

    Google Scholar 

  • Patel AD (2003) Language, music, syntax and the brain. Nat Neurosci 6(7):674–681

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Pickering MJ, Branigan HP (1998) The representation of verbs: evidence from syntactic priming in language production. J Mem Lang 39(4):633–651

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pickering MJ, Ferreira VS (2008) Structural priming: a critical review. Psychol Bull 134(3):427–459

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pozniak C, Hemforth B, Scheepers C (2018) Cross-domain priming from mathematics to relative-clause attachment: a visual-world study in French. Front Psychol 9:2056

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scheepers C (2003) Syntactic priming of relative clause attachments: persistence of structural configuration in sentence production. Cognition 89:179–205

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scheepers C, Sturt P, Martin CJ, Myachykov A, Teevan K, Viskupova I (2011) Structural priming across cognitive domains. Psychol Sci 22:1319–1326

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scheepers C, Sturt P (2014) Bidirectional syntactic priming across cognitive domains: from arithmetic to language and back. Q J Exp Psychol 67:1643–1654

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scheepers C, Galkina A, Shtyrov Y, Myachykov A (2019) Hierarchical structure priming from mathematics to two- and three-site relative clause attachment. Cognition 189:155–166

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Segaert K, Wheeldon L, Hagoort P (2016) Unifying structural priming effects on syntactic choices and timing of sentence generation. J Mem Lang 91:59–80

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Traxler MJ, Tooley KM (2007) Lexical mediation and context effects in sentence processing. Brain Res 1146(3):59–74

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Traxler MJ, Tooley KM (2008) Priming in sentence comprehension: strategic or syntactic. Lang Cognit Process 23:609–645

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yang J, Zhang YX (2007) Syntactic priming in sentence production. Adv Psychol Sci 2:288–294

    Google Scholar 

  • Yu J, Yan GL, Jiang Q, Xia QS, Shi F (2011) On the orientation inspection of ambiguity like “Sange Gongchang de Gongren.” Chin Lang Learn 2:52–59

    Google Scholar 

  • Zeng T, Liu RF, Mao W, Zhang M (2015) Structural priming from simple arithmetic to specific Chinese structure. J Psychol Sci 38(5):1026–1031

    Google Scholar 

  • Zeng T, Mao W, Liu RF (2018) Structural priming from arithmetic to language in Chinese: evidence from adults and children. Q J Exp Psychol 7(7):1552–1560

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang M (1998) Cognitive linguistics and Chinese noun phrases. China Social Sciences Press, Beijing

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang YX, Zhang H, Shu H (2002) A study on the processing of ambiguous phrases in Chinese. Chin J Psychol 32:13–19

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research is supported by a Humanities and Social Sciences Projects of MOE of PRC (18YJA740004), a National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 19BYY079) and a Hunan Provincial Social Science Foundation (16YBA083).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Foreign Languages, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, China

    Tao Zeng, Yating Mu & Taoyan Zhu

  2. Hunan Provincial Research Center for Language and Cognition, Changsha, 410082, China

    Tao Zeng

Authors
  1. Tao Zeng
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  2. Yating Mu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  3. Taoyan Zhu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tao Zeng.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

Author Tao Zeng declares that she has no conflict of interest. Author Yating Mu declares that she has no conflict of interest. Author Taoyan Zhu declares that she has no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Handling editor: Pia Knoeferle (Humboldt University of Berlin); Reviewers: Céline Pozniak (CNRS, Paris) and two researchers who prefer to remain anonymous.

Appendix: Examples of stimulus materials

Appendix: Examples of stimulus materials

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Zeng, T., Mu, Y. & Zhu, T. Structural priming from simple arithmetic to Chinese ambiguous structures: evidence from eye movement. Cogn Process 22, 185–207 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-020-01003-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-020-01003-4

Keywords