The power of priming

This blog post is an extract from our book Memory: What Every language Teacher Should Know. We learn and remember in different ways, but in language learning the concept of priming comes into play in a major fashion. Priming plays a major role in building long-term memory, which is one of our main goals as language teachers. This is what we wrote:

Speaking our first language at normal speed seems pretty effortless. We’re able to do this because every time we utter a word or phrase we are sub-consciously associating it with previous and possible future words or phrases. Our vast experience with the language gives us a huge range of possibilities since we’ve heard or read a myriad of possible combinations. So when we’re about to utter the next word or phrase, in a fraction of a second (around 50 milliseconds to be precise), we subconsciously choose the right one from the range of possibilities. 

This subconscious process of words affecting the following ones is called priming. One word or phrase primes the next. In general terms, priming is about unconscious triggers which get you to remember or act in a particular way. For instance, you might happen to see a commercial for a product, then the following day end up buying the same product without even remembering that you had seen the advert. You were primed to carry out an action. 

There are two main types of priming which have powerful learning effects: 

• Perceptual priming. When you see or hear something for a second time you process it more quickly. 

• Conceptual priming. Where you hear or see a second item related in meaning to the first you also process it more easily. 

Psychology describes other types of priming; an interesting one is emotional priming. We often have emotional experiences: moments of pleasure when reading a good book or being frightened when seeing a spider. In these cases, we're consciously aware of the emotion and, usually, its cause. But emotions can also be implicit and subconscious – we may not consciously feel or be aware of what triggered the emotion. In everyday dealings with colleagues and students we can prime their reaction to what we say by couching it in positive or negative terms, or even by a facial expression such as a smile. 

So, as students enter the classroom, we might say, “Good to see you! Did you have a good last lesson?” instead of “Don’t talk when you come in!” So we can prime positive language and attitudes by projecting them ourselves. This is a powerful teacher tool as we try to build a positive learning environment which will encourage learning and memory.

In second language learning priming takes the form of semantic (lexical) priming, phonological priming and syntactic priming. 

1. Semantic or lexical priming. This is when a listener, hearing the word bread will recognise words like baker, butter, knife more quickly than unrelated words like chair, cement or lightbulb. For example, if you present the word transport a second time, a student processes it faster (perceptual priming). Subsequently, if you present the word train it is processed more quickly because it is related to the topic of transport (conceptual priming). Priming is known to activate the brain areas in the cortex associated with the thing being primed. So priming the word transport causes all the areas of the brain associated with transport to become active for a brief moment. This extra bit of activity makes it easier for additional information to be activated fully. This is known as perceptual fluency. Michael Hoey’s (2005) Lexical Priming Theory maintains that each time we encounter a word we make a subconscious note of the words which could occur alongside it (collocations) and of any associated grammatical pattern (colligations). 

Through multiple encounters with that word we become primed to associate it with the most commonly recurring elements. Think of how, when you enter a word in Google other words immediately appear after it, based on frequency of search or your own previous searches. As mentioned elsewhere, this suggests we should consider teaching vocabulary in chunks and sentences to encourage the lexical priming effect. In this way, retrieving chunks from memory becomes more fluent and effortless. 

2. Phonological priming. When one word primes another which sounds similar, such as rhyming words. Light primes night and bite. Any teaching which encourages students to notice phonological similarities will help students remember words and phrases. Rhymes are a good example. 

3. Syntactic priming (also known as structural priming). This is when speakers have a tendency to use the same grammatical structures as ones they have recently heard or read (Bock, 1986). Short term syntactic priming is thought to involve explicit memory (re-using an expression just heard), whereas long-term syntactic priming is thought to be the result of implicit learning (Bock and Griffin, 2000). 

The evidence that the learning is implicit is that it occurs in brain-damaged speakers who have no explicit memory of the prime sentence (Ferreira, Bock, Wilson and Cohen, 2008). Manipulating the language input is likely to lead students to use and remember structures more successfully. That’s why it’s a good idea to repeatedly use high frequency grammatical patterns in the expectation that students will pick them up both in the short and long term. This can be done, for example, by means of sentence builders, question-answer sequences or audio-lingual style drills, as well as flooding input language with the patterns you want students to pick up. 

Sets of short paragraphs, each one containing examples of the same grammatical structure, when worked on intensively with a range of exercises, can supply the input and interaction needed to encourage syntactic priming. This is known as narrow reading or narrow listening (for example, Smith and Conti, 2016), based loosely on an idea by Stephen Krashen. 

Interestingly, there is also a phenomenon called cross-linguistic priming. This is when, say, the French word chat (‘cat’) primes both the English words cat and chat (conversation). Bilinguals are constantly priming both first and second language words. Think of your own experience when speaking your second language. In the classroom you need not shy away from encouraging comparisons between the first and second language. This can give you a reason to highlight so-called false friends (words which look the same across two languages but have different meanings). 

The power of priming in marketing

Sales people are well aware of the power of priming. In 1999, Adrian North and colleagues carried out a fascinating experiment in a grocery store. For two weeks, French and German music were played on alternating days and the amount of French wine versus German wine sold was measured. Purchasers of the wine were asked to fill out a survey, the results of which revealed that they were unaware of the effects of music on their choice. More French wine was sold on days when French music was played and more German wine was sold on the German music days. A simple, auditory prime had a significant effect on buying behaviour (North et al, 1999). 

Staying on the wine theme, in another study by North (2012) it was found that participants described the taste of wines differently, depending on what type of music was being played. Participants drank the same wine while one of a number of pieces of music with different emotional characteristics were played in the background. Those who heard Carmina Burana were more likely to describe the wine as powerful and heavy, those who heard Waltz of the Flowers were more likely to describe it as subtle and refined, and so on. 

Memory: What Every Language Teacher Should Know is available from Amazon.