Janet McLean | Abertay University (original) (raw)

Papers by Janet McLean

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014

Recent years have seen an increase in research articles and reviews exploring mathematical diffic... more Recent years have seen an increase in research articles and reviews exploring mathematical difficulties (MD). Many of these articles have set out to explain the etiology of the problems, the possibility of different subtypes, and potential brain regions that underlie many of the observable behaviors. These articles are very valuable in a research field, which many have noted, falls behind that of reading and language disabilities. Here will provide a perspective on the current understanding of MD from a different angle, by outlining the school curriculum of England and the US and connecting these to the skills needed at different stages of mathematical understanding. We will extend this to explore the cognitive skills which most likely underpin these different stages and whose impairment may thus lead to mathematics difficulties at all stages of mathematics development. To conclude we will briefly explore interventions that are currently available, indicating whether these can be used to aid the different children at different stages of their mathematical development and what their current limitations may be. The principal aim of this review is to establish an explicit connection between the academic discourse, with its research base and concepts, and the developmental trajectory of abstract mathematical skills that is expected (and somewhat dictated) in formal education. This will possibly help to highlight and make sense of the gap between the complexity of the MD range in real life and the state of its academic science.

Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, 2011

... Production Clare J. Huxley , Janet F. McLean , Holly P. Branigan , and Martin J. Pickering 2 ... more ... Production Clare J. Huxley , Janet F. McLean , Holly P. Branigan , and Martin J. Pickering 2 ... F.Ferreira ( 1994) demonstrated that verb type affected the choice of syntactic structure. Participants read two nouns and a verb on a screen and then produced transitive sentences. ...

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2015

ABSTRACT This study investigated whether nonconscious priming can affect the communicative qualit... more ABSTRACT This study investigated whether nonconscious priming can affect the communicative quality of narratives. In two experiments, narrators were primed with words associated with helpfulness or unhelpfulness, and then, in an apparently unrelated task, read and retold a short story to addressees. In Experiment 1, the narrator provided a spoken description, and we also manipulated whether the narrator retold the story to the addressee or to a microphone. In Experiment 2, the narrator provided a written description. In both experiments, narrators primed with helpful words took longer to read the story and provided retellings that were rated to be higher quality than narrators primed with unhelpful words. We propose that priming the concept of helpfulness influences the processes involved in message construction.

Memory & Cognition, 2000

Current evidence about the persistence of syntactic priming effects is equivocal: Using spoken pi... more Current evidence about the persistence of syntactic priming effects is equivocal: Using spoken picture description, found that it persisted over as many as 10 trials; using written sentence completion, found that it dissipated if even a single sentence intervened between prime and target. This paper asks what causes it to be long lasting. On one account, the rapid decay evidenced by Branigan et al. occurs because the task emphasizes conceptual planning; on another account, it is due to the written nature of their task. If conceptual planning is the cause, this might relate to planning the prime sentence or planning an intervening sentence. Hence we conducted an experiment with spoken sentence completion, contrasting no delay, an intervening sentence, and a pure temporal delay. The results indicated that strong and similar priming occurred in all three cases, therefore lending support to the claim that spoken priming is long lasting.

Language and Cognitive Processes, 2006

Page 1. The role of local and global syntactic structure in language production: Evidence from sy... more Page 1. The role of local and global syntactic structure in language production: Evidence from syntactic priming Holly P. Branigan, Martin J. Pickering and Janet F. McLean, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland Andrew ...

Journal of Pragmatics, 2010

A conversation is a joint activity between interlocutors, whose contributions are tied in with th... more A conversation is a joint activity between interlocutors, whose contributions are tied in with their partners' contributions . An isolated speaker 1 producing a monologue has to work on her own model of what to say, together with assumptions about the presumed audience. But an interlocutor's contribution in a dialogue is dependent on prior contributions by other interlocutors, for instance in response to a question or a request for more information. Importantly, this dependency relates not only to the content, but also to the form of contributions . In this paper we discuss the mechanisms that might underlie such alignment in interactions between two people, and then consider how these mechanisms might affect the way in which people interact with computers. 2

Journal of Memory and Language, 2002

In four syntactic priming experiments, participants completed target fragments as "prepositional ... more In four syntactic priming experiments, participants completed target fragments as "prepositional object" sentences (e.g., "The patient showed his leg to the doctor") or "double object" sentences (e.g., "The patient showed the doctor his leg") or used another non-ditransitive form. The syntactic form of a prime sentence affected the form of participants' target completions. Experiments 1 to 3 used written sentence completion. Experiment 1 demonstrated that priming is a two-way process by comparing "prepositional object" and "double object" priming conditions with a baseline condition containing an intransitive verb. Experiments 2 and 3 found that "shifted" primes (e.g., "The racing driver showed to the helpful mechanic the problem with the car") did not prime the production of "prepositional object" sentences but instead behaved like baseline primes. Experiment 4 found similar results to those of Experiment 3 in spoken sentence production, where participants repeated the prime and then completed it. We interpret the results in terms of accounts that assume that constituent structure is formulated in one stage. © 2002 Elsevier Science (USA)

Journal of Memory and Language, 2010

We investigated whether phonological relationships at the lexical level affect syntactic encoding... more We investigated whether phonological relationships at the lexical level affect syntactic encoding during sentence production. showed that syntactic priming effects are enhanced by semantic, but not phonological relations between lexical items, suggesting that there are no effects of phonology on syntactic encoding. Here we report four experiments investigating the influence of homophones on syntactic priming. When describing the picture of a flying bat, Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that people tended to produce relative-clauses such as the bat that's red (instead of the red bat) more often after hearing the bat that's red (referring to a cricket bat), than after the pool that's red. Experiments 3 and 4 revealed that mediated homophone-semantic relations between lexical items (e.g., flying bat-racket) do not enhance syntactic priming. We interpret these results in terms of theories of syntactic encoding.

Journal of Memory and Language, 2012

Previous research suggests that English-speaking children comprehend agent-patient verb passives ... more Previous research suggests that English-speaking children comprehend agent-patient verb passives earlier than experiencer-theme verb passives . We report three experiments examining whether such effects reflect delayed acquisition of the passive syntax or instead are an artifact of the experimental task, relating to children's poor picture recognition for such verbs. In two syntactic priming experiments, 3-and 4-year-olds produced more agent-patient passives after hearing passive primes involving agent-patient and theme-experiencer verbs (Experiment 1), and theme-experiencer and experiencer-theme verbs (Experiment 2), than after corresponding active primes; moreover, the magnitude of priming was unaffected by verb type. However, a picture-sentence matching task (Experiment 3) replicated previous findings: Children performed more poorly on experiencer-theme sentences than agent-patient sentences. Our results suggest that children's acquisition of passive syntax is not delayed, and that semantic effects found in previous studies may instead be task-related.

Journal of Memory and Language, 2012

We investigate whether people might come to produce utterances that they regard as ungrammatical ... more We investigate whether people might come to produce utterances that they regard as ungrammatical by examining the production of ungrammatical verb-construction combinations (e.g., The dancer donates the soldier the apple) after exposure to both grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. We contrast two accounts of how such production might take place: an abstract structural persistence account, according to which it is caused by increased activation of an abstract structural rule; and a lexically-driven persistence account, according to which it requires previous exposure to the same (ungrammatical) verb-construction combination. In four structural priming experiments, we found that sentences with ungrammatical verb-construction combinations were produced only after exposure to similar ungrammatical exemplars containing the same verb, but not after such sentences with a different verb, or grammatical sentences with the same construction. These results indicate that people can produce sentences with ungrammatical verb-construction combinations after brief exposure to related sentences, and provide support for the lexically-driven persistence account of such production.

Journal of Memory and Language, 2011

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Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2005

Strong evidence suggests that prior syntactic context affects language production (e.g., J. K. . ... more Strong evidence suggests that prior syntactic context affects language production (e.g., J. K. . The authors report 4 experiments that used an expression-picture matching task to investigate whether it also affects ambiguity resolution in comprehension. All experiments examined the interpretation of prepositional phrases that were ambiguous between high and low attachment. After reading a prime expression with a high-attached interpretation, participants tended to interpret an ambiguous prepositional phrase in a target expression as highly attached if it contained the same verb as the prime (Experiment 1), but not if it contained a different verb (Experiment 2). They also tended to adopt the high-attached interpretation after producing a prime with the high-attached interpretation that included the same verb (Experiment 3). Finally, they were faster to adopt a high-attached interpretation after reading an expression containing the same verb that was disambiguated to the high-attached versus the low-attached interpretation (Experiment 4).

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2013

We report 2 experiments using a sentence-picture matching task concerned with the interpretation ... more We report 2 experiments using a sentence-picture matching task concerned with the interpretation of prepositional phrases that were ambiguous between high and low attachment (Branigan, Pickering, & McLean, 2005). After reading a prime sentence with a particular interpretation, participants tended to interpret an ambiguous prepositional phrase in a target sentence in the same way, whether the prime and target sentences used the same verb (Experiment 1) or used different verbs (Experiment 2). Both experiments also found that these effects were unaffected by whether prime and target sentences were adjacent or separated by 1 or 2 "fillers" consisting of sentences and pictures unrelated to the prime and target. We argue that both lexically independent and lexically specific structural priming effects occur in comprehension, and may persist, and suggest that a common mechanism may underlie structural priming effects and at least some lexically specific and lexically independent frequency effects in comprehension.

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1999

Working memory impairments in children with difficulties in arithmetic have previously been inves... more Working memory impairments in children with difficulties in arithmetic have previously been investigated using questionable selection techniques and control groups, leading to problems concluding where deficits may occur. The present study attempted to overcome these criticisms by assessing 9-year-old children with difficulties specific to arithmetic, as indicated by normal reading, and comparing them with both age-matched and ability-matched controls. A battery of 10 tasks was used to assess different aspects of working memory, including subtypes of executive function. Relative to age-matched controls, children with poor arithmetic had normal phonological working memory but were impaired on spatial working memory and some aspects of executive processing. Compared to ability-matched controls, they were impaired only on one task designed to assess executive processes for holding and manipulating information in long-term memory. These deficits in executive and spatial aspects of working memory seem likely to be important factors in poor arithmetical attainment.

Journal of Child Language, 2012

We report a syntactic priming experiment that examined whether children&a... more We report a syntactic priming experiment that examined whether children's acquisition of the passive is a staged process, with acquisition of constituent structure preceding acquisition of thematic role mappings. Six-year-olds and nine-year-olds described transitive actions after hearing active and passive prime descriptions involving the same or different thematic roles. Both groups showed a strong tendency to reuse in their own description the syntactic structure they had just heard, including well-formed passives after passive primes, irrespective of whether thematic roles were repeated between prime and target. However, following passive primes, six-year-olds but not nine-year-olds also produced reversed passives, with well-formed constituent structure but incorrect thematic role mappings. These results suggest that by six, children have mastered the constituent structure of the passive; however, they have not yet mastered the non-canonical thematic role mapping. By nine, children have mastered both the syntactic and thematic dimensions of this structure.

Cognition, 2012

We report three experiments investigating how people process anomalous sentences, in particular t... more We report three experiments investigating how people process anomalous sentences, in particular those in which the anomaly is associated with the verb. We contrast two accounts for the processing of such anomalous sentences: a syntactic account, in which the representations constructed for anomalous sentences are similar in nature to the ones constructed for well-formed sentences; and a semantic account, in which the representations constructed for anomalous sentences are erroneous, or altogether missing, and interpretation is achieved on the basis of semantic representations instead. To distinguish between these accounts, we used structural priming. First, we ruled out the possibility that anomaly per se influences the magnitude of the priming effect: Prime sentences with morphologically incorrect verbs produced similarly enhanced priming (lexical boost) to sentences with the same correct verbs (Exp. 1). Second, we found that prime sentences with a novel verb (Exp. 2) or a semantically and syntactically incongruent verb (Exp. 3) produced a priming effect, which was the same as that produced by well-formed sentences. In accord with the syntactic account, we conclude that the syntactic representations of anomalous sentences are similar to those constructed for well-formed sentences. Our results furthermore suggest that lexically-independent syntactic information is robust enough to produce well-formed syntactic representations during processing without requiring aid from lexically-based syntactic information.

Cognition, 2011

Five experiments examined the extent to which speakers' alignment (i.e., convergence) on words in... more Five experiments examined the extent to which speakers' alignment (i.e., convergence) on words in dialog is mediated by beliefs about their interlocutor. To do this, we told participants that they were interacting with another person or a computer in a task in which they alternated between selecting pictures that matched their 'partner's' descriptions and naming pictures themselves (though in reality all responses were scripted). In both text-and speech-based dialog, participants tended to repeat their partner's choice of referring expression. However, they showed a stronger tendency to align with 'computer' than with 'human' partners, and with computers that were presented as less capable than with computers that were presented as more capable. The tendency to align therefore appears to be mediated by beliefs, with the relevant beliefs relating to an interlocutor's perceived communicative capacity.

Cognition, 2007

We report three experiments that investigated whether the linguistic behavior of participants in ... more We report three experiments that investigated whether the linguistic behavior of participants in a dialogue is affected by their role within that interaction. All experiments were concerned with the way in which speakers choose between syntactic forms with very similar meanings. Theories of dialogue assume that speakers address their contributions directly to their addressees, but also indirectly to side participants. In Experiments 1 and 2, speakers produced picture descriptions that had the same syntactic structure as a previous speaker's descriptions which had been addressed to a third person. This indicated that syntactic alignment is not limited to speaker-addressee dyads. However, the prior participant role of the current speaker affected alignment: prior addressees aligned more than prior side-participants. In contrast, Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that alignment was unaffected by the prior participant role of the current addressee. We interpret these findings in terms of depth of processing during encoding.

Cognition, 2011

In a syntactic priming paradigm, three-and four-year-old children and adults described transitive... more In a syntactic priming paradigm, three-and four-year-old children and adults described transitive events after hearing thematically and lexically unrelated active and short passive prime descriptions. Both groups were more likely to produce full passive descriptions (the king is being scratched by the tiger) following short passive primes (the girls are being shocked) than active primes (the sheep is shocking the girl). These results suggest that by four, children have (shared) abstract syntactic representations for both short and full passives, contrary to previous proposals (e.g., .

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014

Recent years have seen an increase in research articles and reviews exploring mathematical diffic... more Recent years have seen an increase in research articles and reviews exploring mathematical difficulties (MD). Many of these articles have set out to explain the etiology of the problems, the possibility of different subtypes, and potential brain regions that underlie many of the observable behaviors. These articles are very valuable in a research field, which many have noted, falls behind that of reading and language disabilities. Here will provide a perspective on the current understanding of MD from a different angle, by outlining the school curriculum of England and the US and connecting these to the skills needed at different stages of mathematical understanding. We will extend this to explore the cognitive skills which most likely underpin these different stages and whose impairment may thus lead to mathematics difficulties at all stages of mathematics development. To conclude we will briefly explore interventions that are currently available, indicating whether these can be used to aid the different children at different stages of their mathematical development and what their current limitations may be. The principal aim of this review is to establish an explicit connection between the academic discourse, with its research base and concepts, and the developmental trajectory of abstract mathematical skills that is expected (and somewhat dictated) in formal education. This will possibly help to highlight and make sense of the gap between the complexity of the MD range in real life and the state of its academic science.

Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, 2011

... Production Clare J. Huxley , Janet F. McLean , Holly P. Branigan , and Martin J. Pickering 2 ... more ... Production Clare J. Huxley , Janet F. McLean , Holly P. Branigan , and Martin J. Pickering 2 ... F.Ferreira ( 1994) demonstrated that verb type affected the choice of syntactic structure. Participants read two nouns and a verb on a screen and then produced transitive sentences. ...

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2015

ABSTRACT This study investigated whether nonconscious priming can affect the communicative qualit... more ABSTRACT This study investigated whether nonconscious priming can affect the communicative quality of narratives. In two experiments, narrators were primed with words associated with helpfulness or unhelpfulness, and then, in an apparently unrelated task, read and retold a short story to addressees. In Experiment 1, the narrator provided a spoken description, and we also manipulated whether the narrator retold the story to the addressee or to a microphone. In Experiment 2, the narrator provided a written description. In both experiments, narrators primed with helpful words took longer to read the story and provided retellings that were rated to be higher quality than narrators primed with unhelpful words. We propose that priming the concept of helpfulness influences the processes involved in message construction.

Memory & Cognition, 2000

Current evidence about the persistence of syntactic priming effects is equivocal: Using spoken pi... more Current evidence about the persistence of syntactic priming effects is equivocal: Using spoken picture description, found that it persisted over as many as 10 trials; using written sentence completion, found that it dissipated if even a single sentence intervened between prime and target. This paper asks what causes it to be long lasting. On one account, the rapid decay evidenced by Branigan et al. occurs because the task emphasizes conceptual planning; on another account, it is due to the written nature of their task. If conceptual planning is the cause, this might relate to planning the prime sentence or planning an intervening sentence. Hence we conducted an experiment with spoken sentence completion, contrasting no delay, an intervening sentence, and a pure temporal delay. The results indicated that strong and similar priming occurred in all three cases, therefore lending support to the claim that spoken priming is long lasting.

Language and Cognitive Processes, 2006

Page 1. The role of local and global syntactic structure in language production: Evidence from sy... more Page 1. The role of local and global syntactic structure in language production: Evidence from syntactic priming Holly P. Branigan, Martin J. Pickering and Janet F. McLean, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland Andrew ...

Journal of Pragmatics, 2010

A conversation is a joint activity between interlocutors, whose contributions are tied in with th... more A conversation is a joint activity between interlocutors, whose contributions are tied in with their partners' contributions . An isolated speaker 1 producing a monologue has to work on her own model of what to say, together with assumptions about the presumed audience. But an interlocutor's contribution in a dialogue is dependent on prior contributions by other interlocutors, for instance in response to a question or a request for more information. Importantly, this dependency relates not only to the content, but also to the form of contributions . In this paper we discuss the mechanisms that might underlie such alignment in interactions between two people, and then consider how these mechanisms might affect the way in which people interact with computers. 2

Journal of Memory and Language, 2002

In four syntactic priming experiments, participants completed target fragments as "prepositional ... more In four syntactic priming experiments, participants completed target fragments as "prepositional object" sentences (e.g., "The patient showed his leg to the doctor") or "double object" sentences (e.g., "The patient showed the doctor his leg") or used another non-ditransitive form. The syntactic form of a prime sentence affected the form of participants' target completions. Experiments 1 to 3 used written sentence completion. Experiment 1 demonstrated that priming is a two-way process by comparing "prepositional object" and "double object" priming conditions with a baseline condition containing an intransitive verb. Experiments 2 and 3 found that "shifted" primes (e.g., "The racing driver showed to the helpful mechanic the problem with the car") did not prime the production of "prepositional object" sentences but instead behaved like baseline primes. Experiment 4 found similar results to those of Experiment 3 in spoken sentence production, where participants repeated the prime and then completed it. We interpret the results in terms of accounts that assume that constituent structure is formulated in one stage. © 2002 Elsevier Science (USA)

Journal of Memory and Language, 2010

We investigated whether phonological relationships at the lexical level affect syntactic encoding... more We investigated whether phonological relationships at the lexical level affect syntactic encoding during sentence production. showed that syntactic priming effects are enhanced by semantic, but not phonological relations between lexical items, suggesting that there are no effects of phonology on syntactic encoding. Here we report four experiments investigating the influence of homophones on syntactic priming. When describing the picture of a flying bat, Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that people tended to produce relative-clauses such as the bat that's red (instead of the red bat) more often after hearing the bat that's red (referring to a cricket bat), than after the pool that's red. Experiments 3 and 4 revealed that mediated homophone-semantic relations between lexical items (e.g., flying bat-racket) do not enhance syntactic priming. We interpret these results in terms of theories of syntactic encoding.

Journal of Memory and Language, 2012

Previous research suggests that English-speaking children comprehend agent-patient verb passives ... more Previous research suggests that English-speaking children comprehend agent-patient verb passives earlier than experiencer-theme verb passives . We report three experiments examining whether such effects reflect delayed acquisition of the passive syntax or instead are an artifact of the experimental task, relating to children's poor picture recognition for such verbs. In two syntactic priming experiments, 3-and 4-year-olds produced more agent-patient passives after hearing passive primes involving agent-patient and theme-experiencer verbs (Experiment 1), and theme-experiencer and experiencer-theme verbs (Experiment 2), than after corresponding active primes; moreover, the magnitude of priming was unaffected by verb type. However, a picture-sentence matching task (Experiment 3) replicated previous findings: Children performed more poorly on experiencer-theme sentences than agent-patient sentences. Our results suggest that children's acquisition of passive syntax is not delayed, and that semantic effects found in previous studies may instead be task-related.

Journal of Memory and Language, 2012

We investigate whether people might come to produce utterances that they regard as ungrammatical ... more We investigate whether people might come to produce utterances that they regard as ungrammatical by examining the production of ungrammatical verb-construction combinations (e.g., The dancer donates the soldier the apple) after exposure to both grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. We contrast two accounts of how such production might take place: an abstract structural persistence account, according to which it is caused by increased activation of an abstract structural rule; and a lexically-driven persistence account, according to which it requires previous exposure to the same (ungrammatical) verb-construction combination. In four structural priming experiments, we found that sentences with ungrammatical verb-construction combinations were produced only after exposure to similar ungrammatical exemplars containing the same verb, but not after such sentences with a different verb, or grammatical sentences with the same construction. These results indicate that people can produce sentences with ungrammatical verb-construction combinations after brief exposure to related sentences, and provide support for the lexically-driven persistence account of such production.

Journal of Memory and Language, 2011

RefDoc Refdoc est un service / is powered by. ...

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2005

Strong evidence suggests that prior syntactic context affects language production (e.g., J. K. . ... more Strong evidence suggests that prior syntactic context affects language production (e.g., J. K. . The authors report 4 experiments that used an expression-picture matching task to investigate whether it also affects ambiguity resolution in comprehension. All experiments examined the interpretation of prepositional phrases that were ambiguous between high and low attachment. After reading a prime expression with a high-attached interpretation, participants tended to interpret an ambiguous prepositional phrase in a target expression as highly attached if it contained the same verb as the prime (Experiment 1), but not if it contained a different verb (Experiment 2). They also tended to adopt the high-attached interpretation after producing a prime with the high-attached interpretation that included the same verb (Experiment 3). Finally, they were faster to adopt a high-attached interpretation after reading an expression containing the same verb that was disambiguated to the high-attached versus the low-attached interpretation (Experiment 4).

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2013

We report 2 experiments using a sentence-picture matching task concerned with the interpretation ... more We report 2 experiments using a sentence-picture matching task concerned with the interpretation of prepositional phrases that were ambiguous between high and low attachment (Branigan, Pickering, & McLean, 2005). After reading a prime sentence with a particular interpretation, participants tended to interpret an ambiguous prepositional phrase in a target sentence in the same way, whether the prime and target sentences used the same verb (Experiment 1) or used different verbs (Experiment 2). Both experiments also found that these effects were unaffected by whether prime and target sentences were adjacent or separated by 1 or 2 "fillers" consisting of sentences and pictures unrelated to the prime and target. We argue that both lexically independent and lexically specific structural priming effects occur in comprehension, and may persist, and suggest that a common mechanism may underlie structural priming effects and at least some lexically specific and lexically independent frequency effects in comprehension.

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1999

Working memory impairments in children with difficulties in arithmetic have previously been inves... more Working memory impairments in children with difficulties in arithmetic have previously been investigated using questionable selection techniques and control groups, leading to problems concluding where deficits may occur. The present study attempted to overcome these criticisms by assessing 9-year-old children with difficulties specific to arithmetic, as indicated by normal reading, and comparing them with both age-matched and ability-matched controls. A battery of 10 tasks was used to assess different aspects of working memory, including subtypes of executive function. Relative to age-matched controls, children with poor arithmetic had normal phonological working memory but were impaired on spatial working memory and some aspects of executive processing. Compared to ability-matched controls, they were impaired only on one task designed to assess executive processes for holding and manipulating information in long-term memory. These deficits in executive and spatial aspects of working memory seem likely to be important factors in poor arithmetical attainment.

Journal of Child Language, 2012

We report a syntactic priming experiment that examined whether children&a... more We report a syntactic priming experiment that examined whether children's acquisition of the passive is a staged process, with acquisition of constituent structure preceding acquisition of thematic role mappings. Six-year-olds and nine-year-olds described transitive actions after hearing active and passive prime descriptions involving the same or different thematic roles. Both groups showed a strong tendency to reuse in their own description the syntactic structure they had just heard, including well-formed passives after passive primes, irrespective of whether thematic roles were repeated between prime and target. However, following passive primes, six-year-olds but not nine-year-olds also produced reversed passives, with well-formed constituent structure but incorrect thematic role mappings. These results suggest that by six, children have mastered the constituent structure of the passive; however, they have not yet mastered the non-canonical thematic role mapping. By nine, children have mastered both the syntactic and thematic dimensions of this structure.

Cognition, 2012

We report three experiments investigating how people process anomalous sentences, in particular t... more We report three experiments investigating how people process anomalous sentences, in particular those in which the anomaly is associated with the verb. We contrast two accounts for the processing of such anomalous sentences: a syntactic account, in which the representations constructed for anomalous sentences are similar in nature to the ones constructed for well-formed sentences; and a semantic account, in which the representations constructed for anomalous sentences are erroneous, or altogether missing, and interpretation is achieved on the basis of semantic representations instead. To distinguish between these accounts, we used structural priming. First, we ruled out the possibility that anomaly per se influences the magnitude of the priming effect: Prime sentences with morphologically incorrect verbs produced similarly enhanced priming (lexical boost) to sentences with the same correct verbs (Exp. 1). Second, we found that prime sentences with a novel verb (Exp. 2) or a semantically and syntactically incongruent verb (Exp. 3) produced a priming effect, which was the same as that produced by well-formed sentences. In accord with the syntactic account, we conclude that the syntactic representations of anomalous sentences are similar to those constructed for well-formed sentences. Our results furthermore suggest that lexically-independent syntactic information is robust enough to produce well-formed syntactic representations during processing without requiring aid from lexically-based syntactic information.

Cognition, 2011

Five experiments examined the extent to which speakers' alignment (i.e., convergence) on words in... more Five experiments examined the extent to which speakers' alignment (i.e., convergence) on words in dialog is mediated by beliefs about their interlocutor. To do this, we told participants that they were interacting with another person or a computer in a task in which they alternated between selecting pictures that matched their 'partner's' descriptions and naming pictures themselves (though in reality all responses were scripted). In both text-and speech-based dialog, participants tended to repeat their partner's choice of referring expression. However, they showed a stronger tendency to align with 'computer' than with 'human' partners, and with computers that were presented as less capable than with computers that were presented as more capable. The tendency to align therefore appears to be mediated by beliefs, with the relevant beliefs relating to an interlocutor's perceived communicative capacity.

Cognition, 2007

We report three experiments that investigated whether the linguistic behavior of participants in ... more We report three experiments that investigated whether the linguistic behavior of participants in a dialogue is affected by their role within that interaction. All experiments were concerned with the way in which speakers choose between syntactic forms with very similar meanings. Theories of dialogue assume that speakers address their contributions directly to their addressees, but also indirectly to side participants. In Experiments 1 and 2, speakers produced picture descriptions that had the same syntactic structure as a previous speaker's descriptions which had been addressed to a third person. This indicated that syntactic alignment is not limited to speaker-addressee dyads. However, the prior participant role of the current speaker affected alignment: prior addressees aligned more than prior side-participants. In contrast, Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that alignment was unaffected by the prior participant role of the current addressee. We interpret these findings in terms of depth of processing during encoding.

Cognition, 2011

In a syntactic priming paradigm, three-and four-year-old children and adults described transitive... more In a syntactic priming paradigm, three-and four-year-old children and adults described transitive events after hearing thematically and lexically unrelated active and short passive prime descriptions. Both groups were more likely to produce full passive descriptions (the king is being scratched by the tiger) following short passive primes (the girls are being shocked) than active primes (the sheep is shocking the girl). These results suggest that by four, children have (shared) abstract syntactic representations for both short and full passives, contrary to previous proposals (e.g., .