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Within the cognitive sciences, most researchers assume that it is the job of linguists to investigate how language is represented, and that they do so largely by building theories based on explicit judgments about patterns of acceptability – whereas it is the task of psychologists to determine how language is processed, and that in doing so, they do not typically question the linguists' representational assumptions. We challenge this division of labor by arguing that structural priming provides an implicit method of investigating linguistic representations that should end the current reliance on acceptability judgments. Moreover, structural priming has now reached sufficient methodological maturity to provide substantial evidence about such representations. We argue that evidence from speakers' tendency to repeat their own and others' structural choices supports a linguistic architecture involving a single shallow level of syntax connected to a semantic level containing information about quantification, thematic relations, and information structure, as well as to a phonological level. Many of the linguistic distinctions often used to support complex (or multilevel) syntactic structure are instead captured by semantics; however, the syntactic level includes some specification of “missing” elements that are not realized at the phonological level. We also show that structural priming provides evidence about the consistency of representations across languages and about language development. In sum, we propose that structural priming provides a new basis for understanding the nature of language.

When people communicate, they come to see the world in a similar way to each other by aligning their mental representations at such levels as syntax. Syntax is an essential feature of human language that distinguishes humans from other non-human animals. However, whether and how communicators share neural representations of syntax is not well understood. Here we addressed this issue by measuring the brain activity of both communicators in a series of dyadic communication contexts, by using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based hyperscanning. Two communicators alternatively spoke sentences either with the same or with different syntactic structures. Results showed a significantly higher-level increase of interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) at right posterior superior temporal cortex when communicators produced the same syntactic structures as each other compared to when they produced different syntactic structures. These increases of INS correlated significantly with communication quality. Our findings provide initial evidence for shared neural representations of syntax between communicators. •Shared neural representations of syntax were found during dyadic communication.•Neural synchronization underlay the shared representations of syntax.•Neural synchronization occurred bilaterally rather than on left hemisphere only.•Neural synchronization reflected effect of the prior syntactic context.•Neural synchronization significantly correlated with communication quality.

The ability to selectively access two languages characterises the bilingual everyday experience. Previous studies showed the role of second language (L2) proficiency, as a proxy for dominance, on language control. However, the role of other aspects of the bilingual experience – such as age of acquisition and daily exposure – are relatively unexplored. In this study, we used a cued language switching task to examine language switching and mixing in two groups of highly proficient bilinguals with different linguistic backgrounds, to understand how the ability to control languages is shaped by linguistic experience. Our analysis shows that the ability to switch between languages is not only modulated by L2 proficiency, but also by daily L2 exposure. Daily L2 exposure also affects language mixing. Finally, L2 age of acquisition predicts naming latencies in the L2. Together, these findings show that language dominance is characterised by multiple aspects of the bilingual experience, which modulate language control.

A structural priming experiment investigated whether bilingual speakers’ processing of their non-native language (L2) depends entirely on their experience of L2, or whether it is also affected by their experience of the native language (L1). German-L1 and Spanish-L1 proficient speakers of English (and English-L1 controls) described pictures of dative events after reading unrelated sentences that had a Prepositional Object (PO) or Double Object (DO) structure. Participants in all three groups were more likely to produce DO descriptions after reading DO sentences than PO sentences. Crucially, Spanish-L1 speakers, whose L1 allows PO but not DO structures, showed the same pattern of priming as German-L1 speakers, whose L1 allows both structures. Additionally, the groups showed no difference in their baseline preference for DO structures. We suggest that in proficient bilinguals, processing in L2 is not affected by L1 experience and L1 preferences, and propose a model to account for our findings.

Background and aims Implicit learning mechanisms associated with detecting structural regularities have been proposed to underlie both the long-term acquisition of linguistic structure and a short-term tendency to repeat linguistic structure across sentences (structural priming) in typically developing children. Recent research has suggested that a deficit in such mechanisms may explain the inconsistent trajectory of language learning displayed by children with Developmental Learning Disorder. We used a structural priming paradigm to investigate whether a group of children with Developmental Learning Disorder showed impaired implicit learning of syntax (syntactic priming) following individual syntactic experiences, and the time course of any such effects. Methods Five- to six-year-old Italian-speaking children with Developmental Learning Disorder and typically developing age-matched and language-matched controls played a picture-description-matching game with an experimenter. The experimenter’s descriptions were systematically manipulated so that children were exposed to both active and passive structures, in a randomized order. We investigated whether children’s descriptions used the same abstract syntax (active or passive) as the experimenter had used on an immediately preceding turn (no-delay) or three turns earlier (delay). We further examined whether children’s syntactic production changed with increasing experience of passives within the experiment. Results Children with Developmental Learning Disorder’s syntactic production was influenced by the syntax of the experimenter’s descriptions in the same way as typically developing language-matched children, but showed a different pattern from typically developing age-matched children. Children with Developmental Learning Disorder were more likely to produce passive syntax immediately after hearing a passive sentence than an active sentence, but this tendency was smaller than in typically developing age-matched children. After two intervening sentences, children with Developmental Learning Disorder no longer showed a significant syntactic priming effect, whereas typically developing age-matched children did. None of the groups showed a significant effect of cumulative syntactic experience. Conclusions Children with Developmental Learning Disorder show a pattern of syntactic priming effects that is consistent with an impairment in implicit learning mechanisms that are associated with the detection and extraction of abstract structural regularities in linguistic input. Results suggest that this impairment involves reduced initial learning from each syntactic experience, rather than atypically rapid decay following intact initial learning. Implications Children with Developmental Learning Disorder may learn less from each linguistic experience than typically developing children, and so require more input to achieve the same learning outcome with respect to syntax. Structural priming is an effective technique for manipulating both input quality and quantity to determine precisely how Developmental Learning Disorder is related to language input, and to investigate how input tailored to take into account the cognitive profile of this population can be optimised in designing interventions.

Interlocutors tend to refer to objects using the same names as each other. We investigated whether native and non-native interlocutors’ tendency to do so is influenced by speakers’ nativeness and by their beliefs about an interlocutor's nativeness. A native or non-native participant and a native or non-native confederate directed each other around a map to deliver objects to locations. We manipulated whether confederates referred to objects using a favored or disfavored name, while controlling for confederates’ language behavior. We found evidence of audience design for native and non-native addressees: participants were more likely to use a disfavored name after a non-native confederate used that name than after a native confederate used that name; this tendency did not differ between native and non-native participants. Results suggest that both native and non-native speakers can adapt to the language of non-native partners through non-automatic, goal-directed mechanisms of alignment during cognitively demanding communicative tasks.

In dialogue, speakers tend to imitate, or align with, a partner’s language choices. Higher levels of alignment facilitate communication and can be elicited by affiliation goals. Since autistic children have interaction and communication impairments, we investigated whether a failure to display affiliative language imitation contributes to their conversational difficulties. We measured autistic children’s lexical alignment with a partner, following an ostracism manipulation which induces affiliative motivation in typical adults and children. While autistic children demonstrated lexical alignment, we observed no affiliative influence on ostracised children’s tendency to align, relative to controls. Our results suggest that increased language imitation—a potentially valuable form of social adaptation—is unavailable to autistic children, which may reflect their impaired affective understanding.

Structural priming offers a powerful method for experimentally investigating the mental representation of linguistic structure. We clarify the nature of our proposal, justify the versatility of priming, consider alternative approaches, and discuss how our specific account can be extended to new questions as part of an interdisciplinary programme integrating linguistics and psychology as part of the cognitive sciences of language.

We report a study that investigated executive functions in four groups of participants that varied in bilingual language experience, using a task that measured two theoretically motivated mechanisms of cognitive control (proactive and reactive control). Analyses of accuracy based on aggregated measures suggested an advantage in early highly proficient bilinguals over late passive bilinguals. However, when we factored in individual variability using mixed-model regression with a full random effect structure, we only found a marginal effect of language experience. Our results emphasise the importance of including individual variability when studying bilingualism, and highlight a fundamental consideration in research on the relation between language and attention – namely, the need for a theory-driven approach to measuring cognitive control through laboratory tasks.