Speaker: Dr Yngwie Asbjørn Nielsen, Aarhus University

Title: Theory-driven investigations of structural priming in conversations

Abstract

Structural priming—a change in processing observed upon repeated exposure to a linguistic structure—is one of the most studied phenomena in psycholinguistics. Prior research has discovered multiple determinants of structural priming which implicate several features of memory, ranging from the lexical to the semantic and the explicit to the implicit. Five such determinants are the lexical boost, the semantic boost, the inverse preference effect, the persistence of structural priming, and the fast decay of the lexical boost. Although structural priming is known to occur in conversation, there is as yet no thorough understanding of how the five determinants affect priming between interlocutors. In this talk, I present a novel operationalization of the five determinants and test their generalizability to actual conversation. Since the project is in its initial stages (i.e., prior to preregistration), I look forward to critical feedback on the choice and operationalization of the five determinants.

Speaker’s Bio

Yngwie Asbjørn Nielsen is a PhD student at Aarhus University working on structural priming and conversational alignment.

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