Haskins La1xJraUJries Status Report on Speech RtlRarch1992, SR·109!1l0, 205·220

Attention Mechanisms Mediate the Syntactic PrimingEffect in Auditory Word Identification*

Avital Deutscht and Shlomo Bentint

The effect of syntactic priming and the involvement of attention in that process wasinvestigated testing identification of spoken Hebrew words presented in sentences. Targetwords were masked by white noise and were either congruent or incongruent with thesyntactic structure of the sentence. In comparison to a neutral condition, the identificationof congruent targets was facilitated and identification of incongruent targets wasinhibited, equally. When congruent and incongruent sentences were presented in separateblocks the inhibition effect was attenuated whereas the facilitation was not affected. Theintroduction of 350 ms silent lSI between the context and the target increased theinhibition without affecting the facilitation. We suggest that the facilitation as well as theinhibition effects of syntactic priming are based on a veiled controlled process ofgenerating expectations. The inhibition is caused by an additional controlled process of re­evaluation of the auditory input triggered by syntactic incoherence. The later processrequires additional attentional resources.

There is much evidence in the researchliterature that syntactic context influences theprocess of word recognition (Carreno, Lukatela, &Turvey, 1988; Goodman, McClelland, & Gibbs,1981; Gurjanov, Lukatela, Moskovljevic, &Turvey, 1985; Katz, Boyce, Goldstein, & Lukatela,1987; Lukatela, Kostic, Feldman, & Turvey, 1983;Lukatela & Moraco, Stojonov, Savic, Katz, &Turvey, 1982; Marslen-Wilson, 1987; Seidenberg,Waters, Sanders, & Langer, 1984; Tanenhaus,Leiman, & Seidenberg, 1979; Tyler & Wessels,1983; West & Stanovich, 1986; Wright & Garret,1984). The common finding is that performance isfaster and more accurate if the target words arecongruent with the syntactic structure into whichthey are integrated, than when they are

This study was supported by a grant from the IsraeliFoundation Trustees to Shlomo Bentin and by NationalInstitute of Child Health and Human Development Grant HD­01994 to Haskins Laboratories. Avital Deutsch was supportedby a stipend from the Martin and Vivian Levin Center. Wethank Len Katz, and Don Shankweiler for useful comments onan earlier draft. We wish to express special appreciation ofRam Frost's continuous help and constructive criticism.

205

incongruent. This differential performance wasfound mostly in tasks such as lexical decision andnaming (Carello et aI., 1988; Goodman et aI.,1981; Katz et aI., 1987; Gurjanov et aI., 1985; &Lukatela et aI., 1982; 1983; Seidenberg et aI.,1984; Tanenhaus et aI., 1979; West & Stanovich,1986; Wright & Garrett, 1984). In analogy withthe effects of semantic context in similar tasks,the influence of the syntactic context has oftenbeen labeled grammatical or syntactic priming.However, because the term priming has beenborrowed from the semantic domain, the use ofthe term "priming" in the syntactic domain needsspecific consideration. In the semantic domain,priming refers primarily to a process thatinfluences the identification of a particular lexicalentry (Forster, 1981; Seidenberg, 1982). Thesyntactic context, on the other hand, refersprimarily to a particular grammatical form of theword, which mayor may not be independentlyrepresented in the lexicon. Therefore syntacticpriming may affect the identification of aparticular grammatical structure, without directinfluence on accessing a particular lexical entry. Itis in this sense that we will adopt here the termsyntactic priming.

206 Deutsch and Bentin

Like other prImmg phenomena, syntacticpriming might also reflect the combined orindependent contribution of two basic components:One is the facilitation of processing syntacticallycongruent targets due to the agreement betweenthe observed grammatical form and that predictedby the syntactic structure. The other is theinhibition of processing incongruent targets eitherbecause they do not conform with previousexpectation, or because they may requireadditional processing aimed at resolving theamorphic input, or both. Several studies haveinterpreted syntactic priming in terms of·facilitation (Katz et aI., 1987; Lukatela et aI.,1982; 1983; Marslen-Wilson, 1987; Tyler &Wessels, 1983), while others have emphasized theinhibitory aspect (Tanenhaus et aI., 1979; West &Stanovich, 1986; Carello et aI., 1988). However,the question of whether facilitation or inhibition,or both are operative is unsettled because, withthe exception of one study in which only inhibitionwas found (West & Stanovich, 1986), the syntacticpriming effect has not been assessed relative to aneutral condition.

The distinction between facilitation andinhibition is important because each of these twoprocesses might reflect a different cognitivemechanism. In particular, current models ofpriming suggest that facilitation and inhibitiondiffer in their attentional requirements. In normallanguage communication syntactic congruity isexpected. Therefore, it might be expected thatsyntactically congruent targets are automaticallyintegrated into the sentence structure. Incontrast, syntactically incongruent targets cannotbe automatically integrated into the syntacticcontext. Therefore, they may require some re­evaluation of the sensory input as well as of thecontext. In the semantic domain it is assumedthat these activities which inhibit wordidentification are actively controlled and requirethe allocation of attention resources (Neely, 1977;Posner & Snyder, 1975).

The role of attention in syntactic priming hasbeen approached indirectly in earlier studies. Forexample, dealing with inflectional morphology,Katz et a1. (1987), suggested a modular syntacticprocessor whose involvement in word recognitionis mandatory and informational encapsulated(Fodor, 1983). This interpretation implies thatsyntactic priming, particularly as it relates tofacilitatory processes, should not requireattentional resources. Indeed, several authorshave proposed that syntactic priming is automatic(Carello et aI., 1988; Gurjanov et aI., 1985;

Lukatela et al., 1982: See also Seidenberg et al.,1984». Note, however, that in the studies justcited, the automaticity of the syntactic primingeffect was suggested primarily by inflectionalprocessing in pairs of words presented in thehighly-inflected Serbo-Croatian language. TestingEnglish-speaking subjects with word-pairsmaterials, Goodman et a1. (1981) found evidencethat syntactic priming may be strategy-controlledand modulated by attention. A role for attention insyntactic priming can be inferred indirectly fromthe assumption that attention is involvedprimarily during lexical (or post-lexical) processeswhich are involved in lexical decision more than innaming. Indeed, several studies using single-wordcontext in English (Seidenberg et at, 1984) as wellas in Serbo-Croatian (Carello et aI., 1988) reportedthat syntactic priming in naming, wassignificantly smaller than in lexical decision orinexistent. In addition, using sentential contextWest and Stanovich (1986) found significantinhibition for incongruent targets withoutfacilitation of congruent targets.

The involvement of attention may be especiallyconspicuous in the case of incongruent targets,when re-evaluation of the targetisentencerelationship, although possibly unavoidable,necessarily requires attentional resources. Suchan interpretation of the syntactic priming effectwas suggested by Tanenhaus et a1. (1979).Examining the proceBB of selecting thecontextually appropriate readings of noun-verbambiguities in sentences, these authors suggestedthat the syntactic selection process ischaracterized by veiled controlled mechanismwhich makes use of context to suppress theinappropriate meaning (see Shiffrin & Snyder,1977). Applied to syntactic priming, Tanenhaus eta1. (1979), suggest that the inhibition ofincongruent targets is caused by a controlled, yetunavoidable (therefore "veiled") process ofmatching the incongruent sensory input with theexpected syntactic structure.

To summarize, the present evidence for a role ofattention in syntactic processing is not conclusive.Indeed, most authors suggest that the applicationof syntactic rules is mandatory and does notrequire much attention. However, the empiricalbasis for this conclusion is weak. First, attentionwas not directly manipulated in any of thosestudies. Second, the conclusions were basedmostly on studies of syntactic priming by singleword context. Finally, the absence of neutralconditions in most studies prevents anydistinction between the facilitatory and inhibitory

Attention Mechanisms Mediate the Syntactic Priming Effect in Auditory Word Identification 207

components of the syntactic priming effect. Thepresent study is a systematic investigation of thesyntactic priming effect in spoken sentences. Wesought to determine the relative contribution offacilitatory and inhibitory mechanisms tosyntactic priming and to examine the attentionrequirements of each of these mechanisms.

Methodological ConsiderationsIn the present study, we manipulated the

Hebrew agreement rule between subject andpredicate regarding gender and number, and amorpho-syntactic rule that involves thedecomposition of the conjunctive form of pronoun­plus-preposition. These rules were chosen for tworeasons. First, we aimed at isolating the influenceof the syntactic context from the influence of thesemantic context. Both agreement between subjectand predicate, and the morpho-syntactic rule thatwe employed are simple and essential in Hebrewgrammar. The essential role of an agreement rulein Hebrew is to specify the syntactic relationbetween the constituents of a sentence, and has noeffect on the semantic information. For example:The predicate agrees with the subject in person,gender and number but, because the specificationof the gender and number is already available inthe subject, violation of one or more of these typesof agreement does not affect the meaning of thesentence. Moreover, because the agreement rule isat the level of inflectional morphology, violation ofit does not cause changes in word class (changes,that may have semantic implications, Carello,1988).

Second, the particular agreement rule that wechose operates between sentential elements, likethe subject and the predicate, and not at thephrase level as, for example, the agreementbetween subject and attribute. Therefore, we werenot constrained to present the subject and thepredicate in succession, thus emphasizing thesentence rather than the phrase level. Because ofthe minimal involvement of semantic factors, andthe possibility to deal with syntactic rules beyondthe phrase level, we believed the rules that weused, were appropriate for exploring syntacticpriming effect.! In addition it should beemphasized that none of the targets usedrepresented a high cloze of the sentence.Therefore, subjects could not simply predict thetarget and use semantically-induced word­guessing strategy.

Most of the previous studies of the effect ofsyntactic context (with the exception of Katz et aI.,1987; Marslen-Wilson, 1987 and Tyler & Wessels,

1983) used visually presented stimuli. In thepresent study, we have examined syntacticpriming in speech perception rather than readingbecause speech is more basic than reading inhuman language and is perhaps less affected bylearned strategies.

Previous studies of semantic or associativepriming in the visual modality suggested that thedegradation of stimulus intelligibility magnifiesthe effect of contextual influence on wordrecognition (Becker & Killion, 1977; Meyer,Schvaneveldt, & Ruddy, 1975; Neely, 1991;Stanovich & West, 1983). Therefore, in attempt tofocus our investigation on the nature of thesyntactic context effect, our basic task requiredthe identification of target words masked by whitenoise.

EXPERIMENT 1The purpose of the present experiment was to

assess the relative contribution of facilitatory andinhibitory processes to syntactic priming. In aprevious study (Bentin, Deutsch, & Liberman,1990) we observed a large syntactic context effecton the identification of words masked white noise.The identification of target words was four timesas accurate when they were syntacticallycongruent than when they were incongruent withthe context sentence. In the present experimentwe replicated and extended our former study byadding a neutral condition. The addition of theneutral condition enabled us to disentangle thefacilitatory effect of syntactic congruity and theinhibitory effect of syntactic incongruity that wereconfounded in our previous study (see also West &Stanovich, 1986, Neely, 1976).

The neutral context that we used with alltargets was "the next word is... ," as was originallysuggested by McClleland and O'Regan (1981) andapplied to an investigation of syntactic priming inreading by West and Stanovich (1986). We chosethis neutral condition because, it probablyinvolves no syntactic bias toward specific syntacticstructures or word classes (West & Stanovich,1986).

We assumed that the facilitatory and inhibitorycomponents which may contribute to the syntacticpriming effect, should be differentially reflected incomparison to the neutral condition. Facilitationwas measured by the difference between thepercentage of correct target identification in thecongruent and the neutral context, whereas thedifference between the correct identification in theneutral and the incongruent context conditionswas the measure of inhibition.

208 Deutsch and Bentin

Method

Subjects. The subjects were 30 undergraduatestudents who participated in the experiment forcourse credit or for payment. They were all nativespeakers of Hebrew, without any known hearingproblems.

Test Materials. The auditory identification testincluded 44 target words. Targets were the lastword in a three- or four-word sentence. Eachtarget was embedded in three different sentences,which defined three different conditions of thesyntactic context: 1. "Congruent"-the target wordfitted the syntactic structure of the sentence. 2."Incongruent"-the target word did not fit thesyntactic structure of the sentence, that is, causeda violation of a syntactic rule. 3. A "Neutral"condition as explained above.

The syntactic violations were constructed bychanging the congruent sentences in one of thefollowing ways.

Type 1: Violation of the agreement in genderbetween subject and predicate. This categoryincluded 12 target words repeated across the threecontext conditions forming a total of 36 sentences.In the incongruent condition a masculine subjectwas presented with a feminine predicate (in 6 ofthe sentences ) or vice-versa (in the other 6sentences), that is, a feminine subject presentedwith a masculine predicate.

Type 2: Violation of the agreement in numberbetween subject and predicate. Twelve targetwords (other than in Type 1) were repeated acrossthe three conditions forming 36 sentences. In theincongruent condition a singular predicatefollowed a subject in a plural form (in 6 of thesentences), or vice-versa (in the other 6sentences).

Type 3: Violation of the agreement in bothgender and number between subject andpredicate. This category also included 12 targetwords (different than in type 1 and 2) andrepeated across conditions to form 36 sentences.In the incongruent condition the compatibility ofgender and number between the subject andpredicate was altered in each sentence. Forexample: A masculine singular subject wasfollowed by a feminine plural predicate. (Weconstructed all the 4 possible combinations, 3sentences for each).

Type 4: Decomposition of the conjunctive form ofpronoun and preposition. This category included 8target pronouns, each of which was combined witha different preposition, forming 24 sentences. InHebrew, the pronoun and the preposition are

always in a conjunctive form. Thus, in theincongruent condition, the conjunctive form wasdecomposed into its two elements. For example:The conjunctive form "alecha" ("on you") waspresented as two separate words: "al" (thepreposition "on") and "ata" (the pronoun "you"). Inthe neutral condition the targets were presentedas normal conjunctions.

The sentences of types 1 to 3 were formed ofthree words in the following order: Subject,attribute and predicate. The masked target wasalways the predicate. The predicate was either averb or an adjective (participle form in nominalclauses). Type 4 sentences were formed of asubject, a predicate and a verbal completion (theconjunctive pronoun). The masked targets werethe verbal completions in their normal conjunctiveform (congruent and neutral conditions) ordecomposed (the incongruent condition).

The sentences were organized in 3 lists of 60sentences, 20 in each congruity condition. Eachgroup of 20 included 12 manipulations of theagreement rule (Types 1 to 3) and 8 manipulationsof the morpho-syntactic rule (Type 4). The targetsin sentences of Types 1 to 3 were rotated so thateach subject saw each target only once but, acrosssubjects, each target appeared in each congruitycondition. Because the number of the pronouns islimited, the rotation of pronouns betweencongruity conditions was within subjects, so thateach appeared 3 times in a list (once in thedecomposed form). In order to avoid the repetitionof priming as much as possible a different contextwas used in each condition. Moreover, the contextswere counterbalanced across the three lists.

All the sentences were recorded on tape by afemale who was a professional speaker of Hebrew.The tapes were digitized at 20 kHz and edited asfollows. The duration of the mask was equal in allsentences, determined by the duration of longesttarget. The white noise was digitally added to thetarget, starting slightly before onset with a signal­to-noise ratio of 1:3.4. This ratio was determinedon the basis of pilot tests, so that correct targetidentification level was about 50%.

The sentences in each list were randomized andoutput to tape at a 2 second inter-sentenceinterval at a comfortable loudness.

Procedure. Subjects were randomly assigned toone of the three stimuli lists. Each subject wastested individually. The experimenter and thesubject listened to the stimuli simultaneously,both using earphones (HD-420).

The subject was instructed to listen to thesentence and to repeat the last (masked) word

Attention Mechanisms Meditlte the SyntDctic Priming Effrct in Auditory Word Identification 209

during the silence interval at the end of eachsentence. No time constraints were imposed; in afew instances when the subject's response wasdelayed relative to the inter-sentence interval, theexperimenter stopped the tape-recorder. Theresponses were recorded manually by theexperimenter.

The experimental session began with 12 practicetrials (4 sentences in each condition), followed bythe test list.

ResultsSubjects' responses were initially coded as

correct (accurate identification of the inflectedword) or error. The errors made in theincongruent condition were further categorizedinto four types: 1) "Self correction" (a correction ofthe syntactic violation using the same root); 2)"Random completion" (a totally different rootforming a semantically and syntacticallycongruent sentence); 3) "Nonsense" (anycompletion which was semantically meaninglessor syntactically incongruent, including nonwords);

4) "No response" ("I don't know"). In the neutraland congruent conditions only the last threecategories were possible.

Because in our previous study (Bentin et aI.,1990) the congruity effect on the four types ofsyntactic rules was similar, we collapsed ouranalysis over the sentence types.

Across subjects or stimuli, the percentages ofcorrect identification were 74.8%, 50.2%, and27.3% for the congruent, neutral, and incongruentsyntactic conditions, respectively (Figure 1).

The statistical significance of the congruityeffect was examined by one-factor analyses forsubjects (F1) and stimuli (F2). The main effect ofsyntactic context was significant [F1(2,58)=110.5,MSe=153, p<.OOO1 and F2(2,118)=49.8, MSe=661,p<.OOOl].

The distribution of errors is presented in Table1. Stati,stical evaluation of the distributions(ANOVA followed by Tukey-A post-hoccomparison) showed that within each congruitycondition, all differences were reliable at the p<.05level.

z 1000 M~ co«u .,.

1mu.. 80,... Congruent

f= II NeutralZw

El IncongruentCl ,...,...

fo- 60uwa:a:0 MU Mu.. 400UJe"«fo- 20zUJUa:UJc-

O

Figure 1. The percentage of correctly identified congruent, neutral and incongruent targets.

210 Deutsch and Bentin

Table 1. Mean ~rcelllage oferrors (SEm) ofeach type in each congruity condition.

ERRQRmE

CONGRUITYCONDmON

CONGRUENTNEUTRALINCONGRUENT

SELFCORRECTION

12.1% (1.2)

RANDOMCOMPLETION

62.0% (4.1)54.6% (4.0)19.3% (2.1)

NONSENSE

2.9% (1.9)0.5% 0.5)3.5% (1.2)

NORESPONSE

33.4% (4.3)42.8% (3.9)62.2% (3.2)

Discussion

The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated thatthe syntactic priming effect, as it is revealed inour auditory word identification paradigm,consists of two components, facilitation andinhibition. The relative contribution of eachcomponent to the global context effect isapproximately equal: Congruent context improvedidentification of white-noise masked words byabout 23% while incongruous context reducedidentification by the same amount, from a neutralbaseline of about 50% correct.

Before discussing these results any further, atrivial interpretation should be considered.Because only verbatim accurate responses wereconsidered correct, it could have been the casethat the pattern of facilitation and inhibition sim­ply reflected that, facing uncertainty, subjectsidentified the word-root and completed the inflec­tion using an intelligent-guessing strategy. Alongwith this interpretation, the difference in the per­centage of correct identification of inflected tar­gets in the congruent and incongruent conditions,would reflect the correspondence or disagreementbetween the subject's intuition about how theidentified root should have been inflected andwhat was actually presented. Such a strategy,however, implies that a) targets' roots were identi­fied better than their inflected forms and b) thatin the incongruent condition there would havebeen be a high percentage of Type 1 errors (i.e., er­rors reflecting the inadequate use of the correctsyntactic form). The first implication could nothold in the present experiment because, as men­tioned in the methodological considerations, therewas no strong semantic constrain which couldhave facilitated an independent identification ofroots on semantic basis. The second was rejectedby the analysis of errors.

As revealed in Table 1, the percentage of selfcorrection in the incongruent condition was verysmall, by far smaller than the percentage of no

responses. Note also that the percentage ofrandom completions (i.e., substituting the targetwith an incorrect but semantically andsyntactically congruent word) was also relativelylow in this condition. This pattern does notsupport the "intelligent-guessing strategy" whilesuggesting that the low percentage of correctidentification in this condition reflected a generalprocess of inhibition caused by syntacticincongruence.

Additional support to our interpretation isprovided by comparing the pattern of randomcompletions and no responses in the, incongruentcondition with those observed in the neutral andcongruent conditions. It is evident that thetendency to substitute a different but logical wordfor the misidentified target (random completions)is higher in the neutral than in the incongruentcondition and even higher in the congruentcondition. On the other hand, the tendency to say"I don't know" (no response) is lower in thecongruent and neutral conditions than in theincongruent condition. This tendency can beexplained assuming that syntactic incongruenceinhibited identification and enhanced uncertainty.The absence of syntactic incongruence in thecongruent condition eliminated inhibition, andreduced uncertainty even when targets weremisidentified. As a result, the percentage ofrandom completions in the congruent conditionwas twice as large as the percentage of noresponses.

The present results diverge from those reportedby West and Stanovich (1986) who, using a similarneutral condition, found only inhibition. However,in addition to differences in task (West andStanovich used a visual lexical decision task), thetwo studies differ in several other meaningfulways and, therefore, cannot be straightforwardlycompared. First, we presented auditory masked­words whereas West and Stanovich (1986) usedvisually presented unobstructed stimuli. Althoughwe have no evidence for a differential effect of

Attention Mechanisms Mediate the Syntactic Priming Effect in Auditory Word Identification 211

context in speech perception and reading, wecannot ignore this possibility. Moreover empiricalfindings on associative and semantic priming inreading, suggest that context effects are larger fordegraded than for undegraded words (Stanovich &West, 1983). It is also possible that the divergencebetween the two studies is partly accounted for bydifferences between the material used in the twostudies. In contrast to the semantically anomaloussentences used by West & Stanovich (1986), oursentences were always semantically sound.

Since we have no direct evidence about the in­fluence of the above- mentioned factors on contexteffects and how they interact with syntactic prim­ing, our ability to draw general conclusions islimited. Therefore inferences regarding the exis­tence of facilitatory and inhibitory components tosyntactic priming, and especially the finding of theequal contribution of the two components, may berestricted to the specific condition of the presentdemonstration. Despite this limitation, we cancontinue our general course and investigate theinvolvement of attention mechanisms with each ofthese two components.

EXPERIMENT 2In the present experiment we examined the

influence of presenting congruent and incongruentsentences in separate or mixed blocks on theinhibitory and facilitatory components of thesyntactic priming effect.

Studies of semantic priming in visual wordperception generally showed that lowering theproportion of related targets in the list reducedthe amount of inhibition (Fischler & Bloom, 1979;Stanovich & West, 1981; but see Stanovich &West, 1983, Experiment 4). Within the frameworkof the two-process theory of Posner & Snyder(1975), most authors have assumed that theinfluence of the ratio between related andunrelated targets is mediated by attentionmechanisms (e.g., Fischler & Bloom, 1985;Stanovich & West, 1983; Tweedy, Lapinski, &Schvaneveldt, 1977). Specifically it has beenassumed that lowering the proportion of relatedtargets discourages word perception strategiesbased on context-related expectations.

A similar manipulation was used to comparesemantic vs. syntactic priming effects in visualword perception (Goodman et aI., 1981 andSeidenberg et aI., 1984). These studies suggestedthat the syntactic priming effect is mediatedprimarily by post-lexical, strategic mechanisms.In these studies, however, no attempt was made to

examine the effect of separately manipulatingstrategies design to operate selectively on thefacilitatory and inhibitory components of thesyntactic priming effect. We applied the blockedvs. mixed presentation technique to disentanglethe effect of attention mechanisms on each ofthese two components.

The blocked condition is an extreme case ofmanipulating the ratio between incongruent andcongruent sentences, where the proportion ofincongruent stimuli is either 1:0 or 0:1. Thisproportion was contrasted with a 1:1 ratio ofincongruent and congruent stimuli used in themixed condition. Therefore, the comparisonbetween the blocked and mixed modes ofpresentation should maximize the effect ofattentional processes that may mediate syntacticpriming. A differential effect of the presentationmode on the percentage of correctly identifiedwords in congruent and incongruent sentencesshould suggest that attention mechanisms aredifferentially involved in the mediation of thefacilitatory and inhibitory components of thesyntactic priming effect. Particularly, theinvolvement of attention mechanisms shouldreduce interference in the blocked presentation,leading to a higher percentage of identification ofincongruent targets. On the other hand, theabsence of an interaction between the modes ofpresentation and the congruity of the sentenceshould indicate that attention mediates the twocomponents to a similar extent.

MethodSubjects. The subjects were 60 undergraduate

students who did not take part in the firstexperiment. They participated in this experimentfor course credit or for payment. They were allnative speakers of Hebrew, without any knownhearing problems.

Test Materials. The sentences were those usedin Experiment 1, with the exception of the neutralstimuli. Thus each stimuli list included 40sentences, 20 congruent and 20 incongruent. Inthe "mixed" presentation the 40 sentences wererandomized and presented in one block. In the"blocked" presentation congruent and incongruentsentences were clustered separately in two blocksof 20 sentences each. The sentences in each of thetwo blocks were randomized.

A target appeared only once in each list (withthe exception of sentences of Type 4, see above).Across lists, each target appeared equally in thecongruent and incongruent conditions.

212 Deutsch and BenHn

Procedure. Different 30 subjects were testedwith each presentation mode. Subjects wererandomly assigned to one of the lists, so that eachsubject was exposed equally to syntacticallycongruous and incongruous sentences.

The mixed presentation followed the sameexperimental procedures as in Experiment 1. Theexperimental list was preceded by a mixed list of12 practice sentences (6 congruent and 6incongruent).

In the blocked presentation, 15 subjects beganwith the congruent block, and 15 with theincongruent block. Each block was preceded by 8practice sentences in the respective congruitycondition. No special instruction were given beforethe incongruous block, but the "peculiar" structureof the sentences was not denied in reply to queriesraised by the subjects following practice withincongruous sentences (as was true for the mixedcondition as well).

ResultsThe percentage of correct identification of

targets was averaged for each subject and targetin each congruity condition. Separate means werecomputed for each presentation group. The

percentages of correct identification ofsyntactically congruent targets was almostidentical in the blocked and the mixedpresentation groups. In contrast, moreincongruent targets were identified in blockedthan in mixed presentation (Figure 2).

The statistical significance of the observed dif­ferences was tested by two-factor analyses for sub­jects (Fl) and for stimuli (F2). The factors wereCongruity condition (congruent, incongruent) andMode of presentation (mixed, blocked). Both maineffects were significant [Fl(1,58}::486.7, MSe=123,p<.OOOl, F2(1,59}::128.7, MSe=937.3, p<.OOOl, andFl(l,58)= 18.1, Mse=192, p<.OOOl, F2(1,59)=21.6,Mse=296, p<.OOOl, for the Congruity and Mode ofpresentation effects, respectively]. The most inter­esting result, however, was the significant inter­action between the two factors, revealing that thepresenting incongruent and incongruent sentencesin separate blocks improved the identification ofincongruent targets, but had no effect on congru­ent targets [Fl(1,58)=25.6, MSe=123 p<.OOOl,F2(1,59)=21.9, MSe=256, p<.OOOlJ.

Errors in Experiment 2 were categorized andanalyzed using the same types as elaborated inExperiment 1 (Table 2).

zo1=~e..>u..1=zlJ.Jol­e..>lJ.Ja:a:oe..>u..olJ.Je"~I­ZlJ.Je..>a:lJ.Ja..

100

80

60

40

20

0-+---

MIXED

!mJ Congruent

D IncongruentMco

O'lto

BLOCKED

MM

Il)

M

Figure 2. The percentage of correctly identified congruent and incongruent targets in the mixed and blockedpresentation conditions.

Attention Mechanisms Mediate the Syntactic Priming Effect in Auditory Word Identification _ 213

Table 2. Mean percentage of errors (SEm) of each type in each congruity condition in the mixed and blockedpresentation modes.

ERROR mE

CONGRUITY SELF RANOOM NOCONDmON CORRECIlON COMPLETION NONSENSE RESPONSE

CONGRUENT MIXED 63.7% (5.7) 0.4% (0.4) 33.9%BLOCKED 56.6% (4.5) 2.9% (1.4) (5.2)

37.1%(4.4)

MIXED 17.5% (1.8) 22.2% (2.5) 4.0% (1.2) 56.4%(3.3)

INCONGRUENT BLOCKED 13.9% (l.8) 30.2% (3.6) 11.8%(2.1) 43.4%

(4.1)

In the congruent condition the distribution oferrors was similar for mixed and blockedpresentation modes (the interaction was notsignificant F(2,116)<1.0). Errors were unevenlydistributed among types [F(2,116)=70.9 MSe=729,p<.OOOl]. The pattern of this distribution wassimilar to Experiment 1: There were significantlymore random completion than no response errors(p<.0l). In the incongruent condition, on the otherhand, there was a significant interaction betweenthe distribution of errors among the types and themode of presentation [F(3,174)=5.2, MSe=1532,p<.Ol]. Post hoc analysis (Tukey-A) revealed that,although significantly less correction than noresponse errors were made in both presentationmodes (p<.01), the difference was larger in themixed than in the blocked presentation.

DiscussionThe present results revealed that manipulating

the proportion of congruent and incongruentsentences in the experimental list affects only theinhibitory component of the syntactic primingeffect. In comparison to a mixed presentation (1:1proportion), the presentation of incongruent andcongruent sentences in separate blocks reducedthe amount of inhibition without altering theamount of facilitation. Assuming that thismanipulation influences primarily strategiccomponents, the present results suggest thatsyntactic priming includes attention-mediatedmechanisms that are reflected more in itsinhibitory than its facilitatory effects.

An attention mechanism that might have beenaffected by our manipulation is the strategicprocess of generating context-based expectationsabout the target's syntactic form. The applicationof this strategy should probably be encouraged bya high proportion of congruent sentences in amixed list and discouraged by frequent syntacticincongruence. Hence, the tendency to generateexpectations (leading to less identification ofincongruent targets) should decrease in parallel tothe reduction of the percentage of congruentsentences in the list. Informal study of thepercentage of correctly identified incongruenttargets across Experiments 1 and 2, conformed tothis prediction: Incongruent targets wereidentified least (14.3%) in the mixed condition ofExperiment 2 where 50% of the sentences werecongruent, more in Experiment 1 (27.3%), where,due to the neutral condition only 33% of thesentences were congruent, and most in theblocked condition of Experiment 2 (35.3), wherethere were no congruent sentences. In contrast,the proportion of congruent sentences did notaffect the percentage of correctly identifiedcongruous words significantly (69.3%, 74.8%,69.8% in the mixed presentation of Experiment 2,Experiment 1, and the congruent block ofExperiment 2, respectively) This suggests that thefacilitatory component of the syntactic primingeffect is less sensitive to strategic mediatedprocesses.

Additional support to our interpretation isprovided by the distribution of errors among the

214 Deutsch and Bentin

different types. A comparison between the mixedand blocked presentation modes revealed that thepercentage of random and nonsense errors (thosethat reflected less concern about the primingsentence) was higher in the blocked than in themixed presentation modes, whereas the oppositetrend was observed for no response and selfcorrection errors (that reflect the influence of thepriming effect induced by the syntactic structureof the sentence). Hene." it appears the syntacticcontext influence on word identification wasreduced in the blocked relatively to the mixedpresentation mode. The singularity of thisinteraction to the incongruent condition is inagreement to our hypothesis that the generationof expectations is one of the factors involved inproducing the syntactic priming effect on wordidentification.

It is worth noting that the present resultsdiverge from the results of Stanovich & West(1983), who found that the pattern of contextual(semantic) effects was not altered by increasingthe proportion of congruent targets. Thisdivergence may either suggest a fundamentaldifference between the involvement of attention insemantic and syntactic context effects, or that ourmanipulation of blocking congruity condition wasmore powerful than changing proportion ofcongruent and incongruent targets within a mixedblock.

In Experiment 3 we used a different method tomanipulate the subjects' tendency to generateexpectations as a strategy of word identification,in an attempt to corroborate the differentialinvolvement of attention with the facilitatory andinhibitory components of the syntactic primingeffect.

EXPERIMENT 3In contrast to Experiment 2, where our

manipulation was meant to discourage thegeneration of expectations for specific syntacticforms; in the present experiment we sought toencourage this strategy.

Studies of semantic priming revealed that thelength of the inter-stimulus interval (lSI) [or thestimulus onset asynchrony (SOA)] between thecontext and the target, influences the relativeweight of the attention-based component of thepriming effect with single-word (Antos, 1979;Neely, 1977) and sentence contexts (Stanovich &West, 1979). Different ISis were used in differentstudies and the general consensus among authorsis that, within a limited range of times, thetendency to use context-based expectations

increases with longer ISis. Possibly, at longer ISisthe subject has more time to process the contextand generate such expectations.

The influence of the lSI between context andtarget on syntactic context effects is not as clear.For example, using a lexical decision task withprinted Serbo-Croatian stimulus-pairs, Lukatelaet aI., (1982) found significantly larger syntacticpriming effects when the SOA was 800 ms thanwhen it was 300 ms. However, with auditorypresented stimuli (in Serbo-Croatian), Katz et al.(1987) did not find a reliable interaction betweenthe length of the lSI (0 vs. 800 ms) and themagnitude of the syntactic priming on lexicaldecision. Despite the apparent divergent results,both groups of authors suggested that thesyntactic context effect reflects the operation of anautonomous automatic module rather than anattention mediated mechanism. However, as Katzet al. (1987) pointed out, it is possible that thisconclusion holds only for the particular case ofinflectional morphology characteristic to Serbo­Croatian. Indeed, indirect evidence for non­automatic aspects of syntactic priming has beenfound in English (Tanenhaus, et aI., 1979). Usinga naming task, these authors reported that at 0ms SOA, subjects were insensitive to the specificsyntactic (and semantic) form of the prime,whereas at 200 ms, the targets were facilitatedonly by appropriate forms. Concluding theseresults Tanenhaus et a1. (1979) suggested that atlonger SOAs, syntactically inappropriate formsare inhibited by veiled controlled process (i.e.,Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977). The time course ofthe controlled process, however, was obscured bythe finding that at 600 ms SOA, it's effect was notas evident as at 200 ms SOA. Together, theprevious studies cannot unequivocally support orreject the existence of attention-mediatedcomponents of the syntactic priming effect. Anadditional step towards the clarification of the roleof attention in syntactic priming can be made bydistinguishing between effect of lSI manipulationon the inhibitory and facilitatory components ofsyntactic priming.

In the present experiment we used two ISIs.One was set at the normal speech rate, and theother was 350 ms.2 On the basis of the results ofExperiment 2, we anticipated that the lSI ma­nipulation should affect primarily the inhibitorycomponent. More specifically we predicted thatthe at the longer lSI, syntactic incongruity shouldhave a more deleterious effect on the identificationof targets than at normal speech rate whereas thefacilitatory effect will not change.

Attention Mechanisms MediJIte the Syntactic Priming Effect in Auditory Word ldentifiCDtion 215

MethodSubjects. Sixty subjects participated in this

experiment. Thirty were the mixed presentationgroup from Experiment 2. The other 30 were naiveundergraduates who did not take part in theprevious experiments, and participated in thisexperiment for course credit or for payment. Allthe subjects were native speakers of Hebrew,without any known hearing problems.

Stimuli and Design. The stimuli lists were thoseused in the mixed presentation condition ofExperiment 2. The only alteration was theintroduction of a silence period of 350 ms betweenthe offset of the last unmasked word in thecontext and the onset of the masked target. The30 naive subjects were tested with these lists.Their performance was compared to theperformance of the mixed presentation group inExperiment 2, who heard the same lists at anormal speech rate. Each subject was exposedequally to syntactically congruous andincongruous sentences. Thus, the subject analysiswas a mixed model ANOVA. The lSI effect wastested between groups and the syntactic congruityeffect within subjects.

Across subjects, each target appeared equally inthe congruent or incongruent conditions, and ateach lSI. Thus the stimulus analysis wascompletely within stimulus.

Procedure. The experimental procedure of thepresent experiment in which we tested only thelonger lSI condition was the same as that followedin the mixed presentation condition of Experiment2. The test list was preceded by 12 practicesentences that included the silence interval.

Except of being informed about the brief silenceperiod preceding the masked target word, thesubjects were instructed identically as in themixed presentation condition of Experiment 2.

ResultsThe percentage of correct identification of

targets was averaged for each subject and eachtarget in each congruity condition. These resultswere compared to the percentage of correctidentification of congruent and incongruenttargets at normal speech rate in the mixedpresentation condition of Experiment 2 (Figure 3).Congruent targets were identified almostidentically in the two lSI conditions. In contrast,the percentage of incongruent targetsidentification was smaller in the 350 ms lSIcondition than at normal speech rate.

The statistical significance of the observeddifferences was tested by two-factor analyses(mixed model for subjects (F1) and repeatedmeasures for stimuli (F2». Both the congruity andlSI main effects were reliable [F1(1,58)=848.1,Mse=123, p<.0001, F2(1,59)=232.7, Mse=880,p<.OOO1, for the congruity effect and F1(1,58)= 5.2,Mse=159. P<.0264, F2(1,59)=7.412, Mse=268,p<.0085 for the lSI effect]. The most importantresult, however, was the reliable interactionbetween the two factors, revealing that the 350 mssilence interval reduced the identification ofincongruent targets, but had no effect oncongruent targets [F1(1,58)=4.1, Mse=123p<.0488, F2(1,59)=4.4, Mse=211, p<.0411].

The distribution of errors in the different lSIconditions is presented in Table 3.

100 ml CongruentZ

00 Incongruenl~ l") CD<U

l")

u: 80 0> 0>

~ U) U)

Zwef- 60uwc:c:0u

40u.0wC)

<f- 20zwU It)

c:wCl.

0NORMAL SPEECH RATE 350 Ms 151

Figure 3. The percentage of correctly identified congruent and incongruent targets at nonnal speech rate and with 350ms lSI between context and target

216 Deu tsch and Bentin

Table 3. Mean percentage oferrors (SEm) ofeach type in each congruity condition with normal speech rate and with350 ms lSI between context and target.

350ms

INCONGRUENT NORMAL

CONGRUfIYCONDmON

CONGRUENT NORMAL350ms

SELFCORREcnON

17.5% (1.8)

15.2% (1.5)

ERROR mE

RANDOM NOCOMPLETION NONSENSE RESPONSE

63.7% (5.7) 0.4% (0.4) 33.9% (5.2)53.1% (5.2) 1.8% (1.2) 45.1% (4.8)

22.2% (2.5) 4.0% (1.2) 56.4% (3.3)

17.9% (2.5) 1.9% (0.9) 65.4% (3.2)

The lSI manipulation influenced the distribu­tion of errors in the incongruent condition[F(3,174)=2.72, MSe=209, p<.051, but not in thecongruent condition [F(2,1l6)=2.15 MSe=833,p>.121. Across conditions the distribution of errorswas similar to that observed in the former two ex­periments and significant [F(3,174)=179.3,MSe=209, p<0.OOO1 and F(2,1l6)=61.2, MSe=833,p<.OOO1, in the incongruent and congruent condi­tions, respectively1. Post hoc analysis (Tukey-A) ofthe interaction revealed that, while no responsetype errors were more abundant in the 350 ms lSIcondition than with normal speech rate, the per­centage of all other three error types was reducedin the latter than in the former condition.

DiscussionIncreasing the lSI from a normal speech rate to

350 ms between the context phrases and thetargets, reduced the percentage of correctidentification of incongruent targets but had noinfluence on the identification of congruenttargets. These results confirmed our previousobservations that the facilitatory and inhibitorycomponents of the syntactic priming effect aredifferentially sensitive to the manipulation ofattention-based strategies of word identification.

In Experiments 3, as well as in Experiment 2,our manipulation affected only the inhibitorypriming component albeit, in each experiment inan opposite direction. Therefore, these resultssuggest that in both experiments we manipulatedthe same attention-mediated priming process.Assuming that this process involves thegeneration of context-based expectations, theresults of both experiments support ourdistinction between an inhibitory component ofsyntactic priming, which reflects an attentionalprocess of generating expectations, and a

facilitatory component, that is less reliant onattentional mediation.

The distribution of errors is in completeagreement with the above interpretation. Again,the lSI manipulation influenced the distributionof errors only in the incongruent condition.However, the trend of this interaction wasopposite to that found in Experiment 2. Whereasdiscouraging the generation of context-basedexpectations in the blocked, relatively to themixed presentation mode increased thepercentage of random and nonsense error-types,encouraging such a strategy by introducing alonger lSI lead to a decrease of such errors whileincreasing the percentage ofno response errors.

Despite the correspondence between the resultsof the two experiments and the coherence of theemerging picture, the lSI manipulation should beconsidered with caution. Previous studies of thetime course of sentence-context effects on wordperception are not conclusive. For example,Fischler and Bloom (1979; 1980) presentedwritten sentences word by word, manipulating thepresentation rate. Contrary to our results, theyfound almost no facilitation of lexical decision forexpected target words while the inhibition ofincongruous targets was evident at allpresentation rates. Their conclusion was that theeffect of the sentence semantic context on wordrecognition is limited to an inhibitory postlexicalprocess. This inhibition is probably related to thesentences' semantic incongruity and is notsensitive to the manipulation of lSI. A closer lookat their data, however, reveals that, in agreementto our results, the magnitude of the inhibitioneffect on lexical decision (speed and accuracy), wastwice as large at the slower rates (4 and 12 wordsper second), than at the higher presentation rates(20 and 28 words per second).

Attention Mechanisms Mediate the Syntactic Priming Effect in Auditory Word Identification 217

One problem in analyzing the lSI effect is thatdifferent studies manipulated different timeintervals. It is possible that the lSI influence isnot monotonic, and that it differs with factorssuch as task, presentation modality, and thelinguistic context that it is investigated. It is,therefore, possible that relatively smalldifferences in the particular ISIs compared indifferent studies, account for the variation of theresults. The results of two pilot experiments thatpreceded the present study support thispossibility. In these pilot experiments we exploredthe effect of 500 and 1000 ms lSI compared tonormal speech rate. The effect of syntacticpriming at these ISIs were not reliably differentthan at normal speech rate. An interesting trendemerged however across the ISIs. At 1000 ms, theincrease in the inhibition was accompanied by adecrease in the facilitation. Relative to 1000 ms,500 ms lSI caused a smaller decrease on themagnitude of the facilitation and an even biggerincrease in the inhibition effect. Finally asreported in the present experiment, 350 ms lSIhad no effect on the magnitude of the facilitatorycomponent while significantly increasing themagnitude of the inhibition. Thus, it appears thatthe interaction between the lSI and the syntacticcontext effect is limited to a specific range. Thislimit might also account for the absence of adifference between the syntactic congruity effectat 0 and at 800 ms lSI in Katz et aI., (1987) study.Despite the caution, however, the present resultssuggest that lSI manipulation, when carefullyapplied, may reveal interesting aspects of thecontext effects.

The inherent problems of lSI manipulation arenot essential, however, to our conclusionsregarding the involvement of attention inmediating syntactic priming effects. Therefore, wemay resume our discussion of the relation betweenattention mechanisms and the syntactic contexteffects as revealed in the present study.

GENERAL DISCUSSIONIn the present study we examined the inhibitory

and the facilitatory aspects of syntactic priming asit is reflected in the identification of auditorymasked targets that were presented as last wordsin clearly displayed sentences. In Experiment 1,we found evidence for both components. Inaddition, the data indicated that, at least for thepresent experimental conditions, facilitation andinhibition contribute equally to the syntacticpriming effect. In Experiments 2 and 3 we foundthat manipulation of attention-related factors

affected the magnitude of the inhibition but hadno effect on facilitation. The presentation ofcongruent and incongruent sentences in separateblocks attenuated inhibition relative to a mixedcondition. On the other hand, Experiment 3suggests that the insertion of 350 ms of silencebetween the target and the context amplified theinhibition relative to normal speech rate.

Across experiments, the scarcity of self­corrections and the abundance of no-responseerrors relatively to random completions in theincongruent condition, on one hand, and theincreased percentage of random completion errorsat the expense of no-response errors in thecongruent condition on the other hand, discardedthe possibility that the variation in the percentageof correct identification between the differentcongruency conditions simply reflected a strategyof intelligent guessing on the basis of partiallyidentified information. Taken together our resultsindicate that the syntactic context effects observedin the present study were probably related to apost-lexical syntactic analysis of the input, whosepossible nature is discussed bellow.

In accord with the commonly-held account forattention-mediated factors in semantic priming(Fischler, 1977; Fischler & Bloom, 1979; Neely,1977; Stanovich & West, 1981, 1983), we suggestthat our manipulations influenced an attention­based mechanism that mediates the generation ofexpectations. However, the concept of generatingexpectations in the syntactic domain can notsimply be an extension of the models suggested toaccount for attention mediation in semanticpriming.

When analyzing discourse the subject naturallyexpects that the input will be coherent withhislher existent linguistic knowledge (deGroot,Thomassen & Hudson, 1982; Fischler & Bloom,1980). We assume that this strategy is applied inthe syntactic as well as in the semantic domain.Specifically, we assume that when a particularsyntactic structure is alluded by the context, theperceiver expects grammatical forms that can beintegrated into that structure. The observedinhibition of incongruent targets in the presentstudy might have been caused by the violation ofthose expectations. Possibly, incompatible inputinduces a second pass analysis of the target and/orcontext. This additional process may delay or,when the target is degraded, may suppress itsidentification.

In contrast to previous studies of syntacticpriming (e.g., West & Stanovich, 1986), we foundthat the identification of congruent targets was

218 Deutsch and Bentin

facilitated relative to a neutral condition.Regardless of the particular reasons for thisdiscrepancy (that have been discussed inExperiment 1), we may speculate on possiblesources of this facilitation. In the semanticpriming domain facilitation is assumed to reflecttwo different processes: One is an automaticspreading of activation among nodes related in thesemantic network (Collins & Loftus, 1975). Thesecond is the confirmation of an explicit predictionregarding target identity (Becker, 1980). Becausethe existence of a syntactical organized network issupported neither by empirical evidence nor bytheoretical considerations, the mechanism ofspreading activation is an improbable source offacilitation in syntactic priming. Therefore thefacilitation of syntactically congruent targets isbetter explained by a process that relates on adhoc generated syntactic structures. Themechanism of explicit prediction suggested byBecker (1980) cannot be directly applied tosyntactic priming because, in our study, theidentity of the target could not be predicted by thecontext (for similar claims see also Oden & Spira,1983; Tanenhaus et al., 1979; Tyler & Wessels,1983). Therefore, we are lead to believe that themechanism of facilitation by syntactic priming isbased on the same form of expectations aspostulated to account for the inhibition ofincongruent targets. Thus, we propose that thesame expectations may be used by differentmechanisms to exert both facilitation andinhibition on the identification of the target. Thefirst, which was postulated above, causes theinhibition of incongruent targets. The second, mayfacilitate the identification of congruent targetseither because expected structures may assist theintegration of the sentence, or because they reducethe amount of sensory input needed for theidentification of a word. 3

The above proposal that, in syntactic priming,both the facilitation and the inhibition are basedon a similar process of generating expectations,apparently contradicts with the results ofExperiments 2 and 3 that showed thatmanipulating the tendency to generateexpectations affects only the inhibition. Thiscontradiction can be resolved assuming that thegeneration of expectations at the sentence level ismotivated by the natural assumption of syntacticcoherence (similar claims related to the processingof sentences at the semantic level were madedeGroot (1982) and by Fischler & Bloom, 1980). Itis conceivable that the tendency to generateexpectations is not under strategic control. This

view is compatible with the residual inhibitionobserved in the incongruent block, which suggeststhat despite the clear incongruent structure of allsentences, the initial expectations could not becompletely avoided. Hence, at the sentence level,the expectations are probably generated by aveiled controlled process which uses only minimalattention resources (Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977).Such a process probably stands at the basis of thefacilitatory mechanism of syntactic priming. Onthe other hand, as discussed above, when thesame expectations are violated by incoherentinput, attention is mobilized to trigger and controlthe additional, post-lexical process of re­evaluation, which we suggest that it is the mainmechanism of the inhibition. Consequently,strategic changes should influence the magnitudeof the inhibition, but have only minimal effect onthe facilitation. Indeed, the interaction betweenthe distribution of errors and the presentationprocedure found in Experiments 2 and 3 only inthe incongruent condition supports this view.Attenuating the tendency for re-evaluation ofcontext-based expectations (in Experiment 2)reduced no-response and self-correction errors andincreased the percentage of random and nonsenseresponses. On the other hand, facilitating thegeneration of context-based expectations (inExperiment 3) increased subjects' uncertainty asmanifested by the increase in the no-response typeerrol'S. Should this process influence lexical accessrather than post-lexical re-evaluation, theopposite manipulations on subjects' strategies inExperiments 2 and 3 should have had an effect onthe overall percentage of correct identification inthe incongruent condition but not on thedistribution of errors. Our hypothesis that asimilar attention mechanism is the basis of boththe facilitation and the inhibition of performancein the syntactic priming task, also implies that theallocation of attention, at least in languageprocessing is not an all-or-none phenomenon.Rather, based on data-driven or pre-determinedstrategies different amounts of attentionalresources are directed to the different aspects oflanguage perception processes.

A caveat of the above discussion is that the taskused in the present study required theidentification of degraded stimuli. Therefore ispossible that the magnitude of the syntacticpriming was largely dependent upon theseconditions. In particular, the inhibition mighthave been much smaller if the auditory input wasclear. The need for the re-evaluation could havebeen less conspicuous in the absence of auditory

Attention Mechanisms Mediate the Syntactic Priming Effect in Auditory Word IdentifiCAtion 219

uncertainty. However, we believe that usingdegraded stimuli we were able to tap mechanismsof top-down processing of syntax that areavailable to the language speaker.

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Becker, C. A., &: Killion, T. H. (1977). Interaction of visual andcognitive effects in word recognition. Journal of ExperimentalPsychology: Humtln PeraptiO/land Perji:mnIlnce, 3,389-401.

Bentin, 5., Deutsch, A., &: Uberman, I. Y. (1990). Syntacticcompetence and reading ability in children. Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology, 48, 147-172.

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Collins, A. M., &: Loftus, E. F. (1975). A spreading-activationtheory of semantic processing. Psychological Review, 82, 407-428.

deGroot, A. M. B., Thomassen, A. J. W. M., &: Hudson, P. T. W.(1982). Associative facilitation of word recognition as measuredfrom a neutral prime. Memory & Cognition, 10 (4), 358-370.

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FOOTNOTES"Cognition, in press.tDepartment of Psychology and School of Education, The Hebrew

University, Jerusalem.1Take, for example the sentence' "A nice boy eats" which

translated into Hebrew would sound "Yeled yafeh ochelH• The

morphological unit "ye1edH (boy) contains information aboutgender (masculine) and number (singular). The same root withdifferent affixes is used to form the word "YaldahH (girl) orchange the number. The agreement rule requires that theattributes and predicate will agree with the subject in genderand number: "yafeh" (nice) is a singular masculine form as is"ochel" (eats). The sentence "Yaldah yafah ochel" is a possiblesyntactic violation of that sentence because the predicate is in

220 Deutsch and Bentin

masculine form while both the subject and attribute are infeminine form.

2This particular lSI was chc8en on the besis of pilot studies. In thepresent study we were concerned to demonstrate the lSI effecton the two components of the syntactic priming effect and not toexamine its precise time course of the putative controlledcomponent. Therefore we examined different ISIs (1000 ms,

500 ms, and 350 ms), but completely analyzed only the later thathad the most conspicuous effect.

3A similar model was proposed within the frame of the cohorttheory (Marslen-Wilson, 1980). According to this model thesyntactic context may facilitate word identification by limitingthe size of an initial cohort to those members which belong to asingle fOl'DXlass category (Tyler &r Wessels, 1983).