Abstract
We report on an functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) syntactic priming experiment in which we measure brain activity for participants who communicate with another participant outside the scanner. We investigated whether syntactic processing during overt language production and comprehension is influenced by having a (shared) goal to communicate. Although theory suggests this is true, the nature of this influence remains unclear. Two hypotheses are tested: (i) syntactic priming effects (fMRI and behavioral) are stronger for participants in the communicative context than for participants doing the same experiment in a non-communicative context, and (ii) syntactic priming magnitude (behavioral) is correlated with the syntactic priming magnitude of the speaker’s communicative partner. Results showed that across conditions, participants were faster to produce sentences with repeated syntax, relative to novel syntax. This behavioral result converged with the fMRI data: we found repetition suppression effects in the left insula extending into left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 47/45), left middle temporal gyrus (BA 21), left inferior parietal cortex (BA 40), left precentral gyrus (BA 6), bilateral precuneus (BA 7), bilateral supplementary motor cortex (BA 32/8), and right insula (BA 47). We did not find support for the first hypothesis: having a communicative intention does not increase the magnitude of syntactic priming effects (either in the brain or in behavior) per se. We did find support for the second hypothesis: if speaker A is strongly/weakly primed by speaker B, then speaker B is primed by speaker A to a similar extent. We conclude that syntactic processing is influenced by being in a communicative context, and that the nature of this influence is bi-directional: speakers are influenced by each other.
Highlights
In everyday life, the purpose of using language is to communicate, participants in most psycholinguistic experiments use language devoid of any communicative goal: they speak without addressing someone or listen without being addressed directly
COMMUNICATIVE CONTEXT) IN BEHAVIOR AND BRAIN we report the results of the analyses that we did to test the hypothesis that syntactic priming effects are stronger in a communicative context
HYPOTHESIS 2 – IS SYNTACTIC PRIMING IN COMMUNICATION INFLUENCED BY THE INTERLOCUTOR’S BEHAVIOR? WITHIN-CONTEXT (COMMUNICATIVE CONTEXT ONLY) ANALYSIS IN BEHAVIOR we report the results of the analysis that we did to test the second hypothesis that the syntactic priming effects of one speaker in a communicative pair are influenced by the syntactic priming effects of the other speaker in that pair
Summary
The purpose of using language is to communicate, participants in most psycholinguistic experiments use language devoid of any communicative goal: they speak without addressing someone or listen without being addressed directly. The implicit assumption here is that core language processing in the brain is not influenced by whether or not the speaker or listener is in a communicative context and that noncommunicative language experiments can be used to infer what happens in real-life communicative situations. Previous studies have reported that certain social factors, which are inherent to any communicative context, can influence core language processing. What has not been investigated yet is whether having a (shared) goal to communicate influences how core linguistic information, such as syntax, is processed in the brain. This is the focus of the present study
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