Reaction times in 3 auditory priming adult experiments published in the Journal of Memory and Language 2014

<p>Abstract copyright data collection owner.</p>3 experiments published in the Journal of Memory and Language (2014; vol 72, 1-15). Exp 1 and 3 in French, Exp2 in English. N=44 in Exp1 and 2, and 40 in Exp3. Each file is the raw data file of each participant; data have been collected with Eprime. On each trial, the participant heard two words in quick succession: a prime and a target. The prime was a non-word and the target was a related or unrelated word. We manipulated the consonant and vowel overlap between the prime and the target. <p>Project description:</p>It has been proposed that vowels and consonants play distinct roles in language, with vowels tending to carry intonation and grammar and consonants conveying the meaning of words (Nespor et al., 2003). Whilst this distinction appears relatively clearcut in experimental behaviour with adults its developmental origin is a matter of considerable conjecture, with far reaching implications to our understanding of language acquisition. Three main hypotheses have been suggested to account for this asymmetry. The first hypothesis posits that it is a property of the linguistic system, whilst the second indicates that the relative roles of consonants and vowels is driven by the disparities in their acoustic properties. In the final hypothesis the asymmetry arises from differences in the stochastic distribution of vowels and consonants for a particular language. In this project we will directly compare the processing of vowels and consonants between adult, toddler, and infant listeners of English and French. As there are considerable differences in the distribution and acoustic properties of vowel and consonants between these languages we will be able to judge the relative merits of the competing hypotheses by tracking the asymmetry at different stages of language acquisition