The lexical boost in structural priming: The syntactic head matters but adjacency does not

TY - JOUR

T1 - The lexical boost in structural priming

T2 - The syntactic head matters but adjacency does not

AU - van Gompel, Roger P G

AU - Hartsuiker, Robert J

AU - Kantola, Leila

PY - 2026/4/6

Y1 - 2026/4/6

N2 - Evidence for head-centered models of structural priming (e.g., Pickering & Branigan, 1998) comes from studies showing that structural priming is stronger when the head of the primed structure is repeated between prime and target than when it is not (the lexical boost effect), whereas the repetition of nonhead words does not affect structural priming (e.g., Carminati et al., 2019). However, the different effects of head and nonhead words might have been due to their different position in the sentence. For example, the head verb immediately preceded the primed structure in ditransitive sentences (the lawyer handed the celebrity the present/the present to the celebrity), whereas the nonhead subject did not. In the present study, we used prime and target sentences where the order of the head (verb) and nonhead (subject) was reversed compared with previous studies. Despite this, repetition of the head verb resulted in a lexical boost, but repetition of the nonhead subject did not. This supports head-centered structural priming models. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

AB - Evidence for head-centered models of structural priming (e.g., Pickering & Branigan, 1998) comes from studies showing that structural priming is stronger when the head of the primed structure is repeated between prime and target than when it is not (the lexical boost effect), whereas the repetition of nonhead words does not affect structural priming (e.g., Carminati et al., 2019). However, the different effects of head and nonhead words might have been due to their different position in the sentence. For example, the head verb immediately preceded the primed structure in ditransitive sentences (the lawyer handed the celebrity the present/the present to the celebrity), whereas the nonhead subject did not. In the present study, we used prime and target sentences where the order of the head (verb) and nonhead (subject) was reversed compared with previous studies. Despite this, repetition of the head verb resulted in a lexical boost, but repetition of the nonhead subject did not. This supports head-centered structural priming models. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

U2 - 10.1037/xlm0001599

DO - 10.1037/xlm0001599

M3 - Article

C2 - 41941123

SN - 0278-7393

JO - Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition

JF - Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition

ER -