Syntactic priming

Abstract

In this short paper, the syntactic priming task is reviewed. This paradigm involves the presentation of a phrasal or clausal context, followed by the presentation of a target item for lexical decision or naming: Response times are typically faster for targets which are syntactically congruent with the preceding context than for incongruent targets. This paper outlines how to administer this task and describes its virtues and limitations. Also briefly reviewed are past findings and the conclusions drawn from them. © 1996 Psychology Press, an imprint of Erlbaum (UK) Taylor & Francis Ltd.