Syntactic priming in young children

This paper presents three experiments which show syntactic priming effects in four- and five-year-old children. The experiments are modeled after priming studies with adults involving transitive and dative constructions. In Study 1 children were presented with a picture that was described by an experimenter. They repeated the experimenter’s sentence and then were presented with a new picture to describe. Children were more likely to use a particular syntactic form if it had been used by the experimenter. In Study 2 the procedure was identical except that children did not repeat the experimenter’s sentence. Priming effects were comparable to those in Study 1. In Study 3, after hearing the experimenter’s sentences, children were presented with a block of pictures to describe. Across the entire block, children were more likely to use a particular form if it had been used by the experimenter. Together these results indicate that children represent syntactic form independently of particular lexical items.