Memory for surface form of a sentence
Megumu Ishida · Japanese Psychological Research · 1989
A priming method was employed to investigate how the surface form of a sentence was represented in memory. The priming effect is said to be affected by the relative distance between prime and target words in the propositional structure of a sentence in memory. In the present experiment, the distance between prime and target was manipulated in the surface form and/or in the semantic content. The results showed that the priming effect depends upon the surface distance between two words in a sentence as well as on the semantic distance. This finding was taken to support such propositional hypothesis that the surface form of a sentence was represented in propositional format as was the semantic content.