Research into the interaction between attention and language has mainly focused on how language
influences attention. But how does attention influence language
?
Considering we are constantly
bombarded with attention grabbing stimuli unrelated to the conversation we are conducting, this is
certainly an interesting topic of investigation. In this study we aim to uncover how limiting attentional
resources influences
language behaviour. We focus on syntactic priming: a task which captures how
participants adapt their syntactic choices to their partner. Participants simultaneously conducted a
motion
-
object tracking (MOT) task, a task commonly used to tax attentional re
sources. We thus
measured participants
’
ability to process syntax while their attention is not
-
, slightly
-
, or overly
-
taxed.
We observed an inverted U
-
shaped curve on priming magnitude when conducting the MOT task
concurrently with prime sentences, but no
effect when conducted with target sentences. Our results
illustrate how, during the prime phase of the syntactic priming task, attention differentially affects
syntactic processing whereas during the target phase there is no effect of attention on language
behaviour. We explain these results in terms of the implicit learning necessary to prime and how
different levels of attention taxation can either impair or enhance the way language is encoded