Fast structural priming of grammatical decisions during reading.

In two grammatical decision experiments, we used fast-priming as a novel method for uncovering the syntactic processes involved in written sentence comprehension while limiting the influence of strategic processes. Targets were sequences of four words that could be grammatically correct or not. Targets (e.g. they see the moon) were preceded by the brief (170 ms) presentation of four types of prime: (1) same syntactic structure / same verb (you see a friend); (2) same structure / different verb (she writes a book); (3) different structure / same verb (he sees him now); or (4) different structure / different verb (stay in our hotel). Same structure primes facilitated decisions to grammatical targets in error rates, and this effect did not significantly interact with the facilitatory effect of a shared verb. These results provide evidence for structural priming of sentence reading in conditions that greatly limit any role for strategic processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]