John L. Jones

Structural priming as implicit learning: Cumulative priming effects and individual differences

We explored the claim that structural priming is a case of implicit learning within the language production system. The experiment began with a baseline phase, in which we assessed participants’ rates of production for double object and prepositional object constructions. Then participants were biased toward the production of either the double object or prepositional object construction. Finally, we again assessed participants’ rates of production for the target constructions. Consistent with claims that structural priming is a case of implicit learning, we found that biasing participants toward the prepositional object construction produced stronger cumulative priming effects than did biasing participants toward the double object construction. We also found that individual differences in implicit learning were marginally correlated with overall rates of production for the double object construction. Participants who scored better on the learning task tended to produce fewer double object constructions.

Global statistical learning in a visual search task.

Locating a target in a visual search task is facilitated when the target location is repeated on successive trials. Global statistical properties also influence visual search, but have often been confounded with local regularities (i.e., target location repetition). In two experiments, target locations were not repeated for four successive trials, but with a target location bias (i.e., the target appeared on one half of the display twice as often as the other). Participants quickly learned to make more first saccades to the side more likely to contain the target. With item-by-item search first saccades to the target were at chance. With a distributed search strategy first saccades to a target located on the biased side increased above chance. The results confirm that visual search behavior is sensitive to simple global statistics in the absence of trial-to-trial target location repetitions.