TY - JOUR
T1 - Priming of abstract logical representations in 4-year-olds
AU - Viau, Joshua
AU - Lidz, Jeffrey
AU - Musolino, Julien
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by NSF Grants BCS-0604526 and DGE-0801465 to Jeffrey Lidz. For their insightful comments on various aspects of the project we would like to thank audiences at Hiroshima University, the University of Connecticut, Ohio State University, the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Georgetown University, the CUNY Graduate Center, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University, the University of Southern California, University College London, the University of Chicago, the Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS, Bron, France, the CUNY Conference on Sentence Processing, and the Boston University Conference on Language Development. In particular, discussions with Stacey Conroy, Chris Kennedy, Ira Noveck, Colin Phillips, Paul Pietroski, Kristen Syrett, and Michael Walsh Dickey have helped to clarify the ideas in this paper, though all errors remain our own.
PY - 2010/1
Y1 - 2010/1
N2 - Though preschoolers in certain experimental contexts strongly prefer to interpret ambiguous sentences containing quantified NPs and negation on the basis of surface syntax (e.g., Musolino's 1998 "observation of isomorphism"), contextual manipulations can lead to more adult-like behavior. But is isomorphism a purely pragmatic phenomenon, as recently proposed? In Experiment 1, we begin by isolating the contextual factor responsible for children's improvement in Musolino and Lidz (2006). We then demonstrate in Experiment 2 that this factor can be used to prime inverse scope interpretations. To remove pragmatics from the equation to the extent possible, we show in Experiment 3 that the same effect can be achieved via semantic priming. Our results represent the first clear evidence for priming of the abstract logico-syntactic structures underlying these interpretations and, thus, highlight the importance of language processing alongside pragmatic reasoning during children's linguistic development.
AB - Though preschoolers in certain experimental contexts strongly prefer to interpret ambiguous sentences containing quantified NPs and negation on the basis of surface syntax (e.g., Musolino's 1998 "observation of isomorphism"), contextual manipulations can lead to more adult-like behavior. But is isomorphism a purely pragmatic phenomenon, as recently proposed? In Experiment 1, we begin by isolating the contextual factor responsible for children's improvement in Musolino and Lidz (2006). We then demonstrate in Experiment 2 that this factor can be used to prime inverse scope interpretations. To remove pragmatics from the equation to the extent possible, we show in Experiment 3 that the same effect can be achieved via semantic priming. Our results represent the first clear evidence for priming of the abstract logico-syntactic structures underlying these interpretations and, thus, highlight the importance of language processing alongside pragmatic reasoning during children's linguistic development.
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U2 - 10.1080/10489221003620946
DO - 10.1080/10489221003620946
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:77951270316
SN - 1048-9223
VL - 17
SP - 26
EP - 50
JO - Language Acquisition
JF - Language Acquisition
IS - 1-2
ER -