Darmasetiyawan, I Made Sena, Messenger, Katherine and Ambridge, Ben (2022) Is passive priming really impervious to verb semantics? a high-powered replication of Messenger Et al. (2012). Collabra: Psychology, 8 (1). 31055. doi:10.1525/collabra.31055
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Abstract
The aim of the present study was to conduct a particularly stringent pre-registered in-vestigation of the claim that there exists a level of linguistic representation that “includes syntactic category information but not semantic information” (Branigan & Pickering, 2017: 8). As a test case, we focussed on the English passive; a construction for which previous findings have been somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, several studies using different methodologies have found an advantage for theme-experiencer passives (e.g., The girl was shocked by the tiger; and also agent-patient passives; e.g., The girl was hit by the tiger) over experiencer-theme passives (e.g., The girl was ignored by the tiger). On the other hand, Messenger et al. (2012) found no evidence that theme-experiencer and experiencer-theme passives vary in their propensity to prime production of agent-patient passives. We therefore conducted an online replication of Messen-ger et al (2012) with a pre-registered appropriately powered sample (N=240). Although a large and significant priming effect (i.e., an effect of prime sentence type) was ob-served, a Bayesian analysis yielded only weak/anecdotal evidence (BF=2.11) for the crucial interaction of verb type by prime type; a finding that was robust to different coding and exclusion decisions, operationalizations of verb semantics (dichoto-mous/continuous), analysis frameworks (Bayesian/frequentist) and – as per a mixed-effects-multiverse analyses – random effects structures. Nevertheless, these findings do no not provide evidence for the absence of semantic effects (as has been argued for the findings of Messenger et al, 2012). We conclude that these and related findings are best explained by a model that includes both lexical, exemplar-level representations and rep-resentations at multiple higher levels of abstraction.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Psychology |
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Semantics , Grammar, Comparative and general -- Syntax , Cognition , Cognitive psychology, Grammar, Comparative and general -- Verb, Phrase structure grammar |
| Journal or Publication Title: | Collabra: Psychology |
| Publisher: | University of California Press * Journals Division |
| Official Date: | 10 January 2022 |
| Dates: | Date Event 10 January 2022 Published 20 December 2021 Accepted |
| Volume: | 8 |
| Number: | 1 |
| Article Number: | 31055 |
| DOI: | 10.1525/collabra.31055 |
| Status: | Peer Reviewed |
| Publication Status: | Published |
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons open licence) |
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 11 January 2022 |
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 11 January 2022 |
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: | Project/Grant ID RIOXX Funder Name Funder ID S-349/LPDP.3/2019 Kementerian Riset Teknologi Dan Pendidikan Tinggi Republik Indonesia |
| Open Access Version: | |
| URI: | https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/161762/ |
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