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Abstract
<p class="first" id="P1">Why do comprehenders process repeated stimuli more rapidly
than novel stimuli? We
consider an
<i>adaptive</i> explanation for why such facilitation may be beneficial: priming is
a consequence
of
<i>expectation for repetition</i> due to rational adaptation to the environment. If
occurrences of a stimulus cluster
in time, given one occurrence it is rational to expect a second occurrence closely
following. Leveraging such knowledge may be particularly useful in online processing
of language, where pervasive clustering may help comprehenders negotiate the considerable
challenge of continual expectation update at multiple levels of linguistic structure
and environmental variability. We test this account in the domain of structural priming
in syntax, making use of the sentential complement-direct object (SC-DO) ambiguity.
We first show that sentences containing SC continuations cluster in natural language,
motivating an expectation for repetition of this structure. Second, we show that comprehenders
are indeed sensitive to the syntactic clustering properties of their current environment.
In a series of between-groups self-paced reading studies, we find that participants
who are exposed to clusters of SC sentences subsequently process repetitions of SC
structure more rapidly than participants who are exposed to the same number of SCs
spaced in time, and attribute the difference to the learned degree of expectation
for repetition. We model this behavior through Bayesian belief update, showing that
(the optimal degree of) sensitivity to clustering properties of syntactic structures
is indeed learnable through experience. Comprehension priming effects are thus consistent
with rational expectation for repetition based on adaptation to the linguistic environment.
</p>