Holly P Branigan

Biographic Data

ID930632
NAMEHolly P Branigan
GIVEN NAMESHolly P
FAMILY NAMEBranigan
SIGNATUREBRANIGAN H P
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Edinburgh
ORCID0000-0002-7845-8850
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS30
TOTAL CITATIONS98
AUTHOR COUNT30
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1995
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX5

  • Cognitive factors in code-switching: In response to Bentahila and Davies (1992)

    Open AccessNora Kennis, Holly P BraniganARTICLEJournal of Neurolinguistics2026

    Bilinguals' tendency to switch between their languages (also known as code-switching ) and the cognitive processes driving it are now known to be predicted by a variety of cognitive factors specific to the individual. In this review paper, we reflect on 30 years of progress in the study of the cognitive factors that determine how and when bilinguals switch between languages since Bentahila and Davies’ (1992) chapter on the relationship between co…

  • Culture and Language Nativeness Affect Spatial Perspective Taking in Language Production

    Open AccessMax S Dunn, Zhenguang G Cai et al.ARTICLEJournal of Cross-Cultural…2026

    Speakers typically describe scenes from their own spatial perspective, but have the ability to use allocentric perspectives as well. In two experiments, we examined how cultural, language, and situational factors affect which perspective speakers choose when describing the spatial locations of objects. Experiment 1 found that native Chinese speakers were more likely to use an allocentric perspective when describing scenes that included a person w…

  • Now You See Me, Now You don’t: Children Learn Grammatical Choices During Online Socially Contingent Video and Audio Interactions

    Open AccessLeone Buckle, Holly P Branigan et al.ARTICLELanguage Learning and Development2025

    Previous research has established that children’s experiences of language during in-person interactions (e.g. individual and cumulative experiences of structural choices) implicitly shape language learning. We investigated whether children also implicitly learn structural choices during online interactions, and whether this is affected by the visual co-presence of a partner. During an online conference call, three- and five-year-olds alternated d…

  • Hedgehog Pillows and Squirrel Plates: Priming Semantic Structure in Children's Comprehension

    Open AccessJudit Fazekas, Leone Buckle et al.ARTICLELanguage Learning2025

    We report three expression–picture‐matching experiments targeting preschoolers’ semantic processing. We assessed whether 3‐ and 4‐year‐olds’ interpretations of ambiguous novel noun–noun combinations (e.g., hedgehog pillow ) were affected by immediate language experience and what role lexical items played in this process. Experiment 1 demonstrated robust relational priming when prime and target combinations shared the same thematic relation with e…

  • Saving lives, saving face: Mitigated directives during out-of-hospital cardiac arrest resuscitation

    Open AccessErnisa Marzuki, Chris Cummins et al.ARTICLEJournal of Politeness Research2025References: 4

    This paper investigates the occurrence and structures of mitigation of directives issued during the early minutes of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest resuscitation attempts, drawing on a dialogue analysis approach based on Searle’s Speech Act Theory. We transcribed the first 5 min of 40 pre-recorded, real-life resuscitation attempts. Line-by-line dialogue annotations, based on a bespoke dialogue annotation scheme, were applied to the dialogue trans…

  • BA and object state changes: Unspecific morphosyntactic cues shape Mandarin discourse comprehension

    Open AccessFang Yang, Martin J Pickering et al.ARTICLEDiscourse Processes2025References: 52

    Understanding object state changes as consequences of transitive events is an important part of event cognition. How do people do this? Previous research shows that comprehenders use verb-based morphosyntactic cues that have specific meanings to generate expectations about the state of the upcoming objects in discourse processing. Can they also do so using non–verb-based and unspecific morphosyntactic cues, such as the preposition “BA” in the Man…

  • The Mechanistic Framework of Alignment: A Unified Model

    Open AccessCamille J Wynn, Holly P Branigan et al.ARTICLECognitive Science2025References: 133

    Conversational alignment, also known as accommodation, entrainment, interpersonal synchrony, and convergence, is defined as the tendency for interlocutors to exhibit similarity in their communicative behaviors. There have been many theories and explanations set forth as to why alignment occurs and, accordingly, the mechanisms that underlie it. To date, however, alignment research has been largely siloed, with different research teams often examin…

  • Lexically-specific syntactic restrictions in second-language speakers

    Open AccessMariana Vega‐mendoza, Iva Ivanova et al.ARTICLEJournal of Memory and Language2024

    In two structural priming experiments, we investigated the representations of lexically-specific syntactic restrictions of English verbs for highly proficient and immersed second language (L2) speakers of English. We considered the interplay of two possible mechanisms: generalization from the first language (L1) and statistical learning within the L2 (both of abstract structure and of lexically-specific information). In both experiments, L2 speak…

  • Cognitive causes of 'like me' race and gender biases in human language production

    Open AccessJ Brough, Lasana T Harris et al.ARTICLENature Human Behaviour2024References: 64

    Natural language contains and communicates social biases, often reflecting attitudes, prejudices and stereotypes. Here we provide evidence for a novel psychological pathway for the expression of such biases, in which they arise as a consequence of the automatized mechanisms by which humans retrieve words to produce sentences. Four experiments show that, when describing events, speakers tend to mention people who are more like them first and, thus…

  • Audience design and egocentrism in reference production during human-computer dialogue

    Open AccessPaola R Peña, Philip R Doyle et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal of…2023

  • The head constituent plays a key role in the lexical boost in syntactic priming

    Open AccessJian Huang, Xiqin Liu et al.ARTICLEJournal of Memory and Language2023

    Accounts of language production make different predictions about the conditions under which structural priming should be enhanced by lexical repetition (the lexical boost). Repetition of the head verb strongly enhances structural priming of a sentence, but studies of English have found contradictory results regarding the effects of noun repetition. In two experiments, Mandarin participants read a prime sentence aloud and then produced a target pi…

  • Lexical alignment is affected by addressee but not speaker nativeness

    Open AccessEllise Suffill, Timea Kutasi et al.ARTICLEBilingualism Language and Cognition2021

    Interlocutors tend to refer to objects using the same names as each other. We investigated whether native and non-native interlocutors’ tendency to do so is influenced by speakers’ nativeness and by their beliefs about an interlocutor's nativeness. A native or non-native participant and a native or non-native confederate directed each other around a map to deliver objects to locations. We manipulated whether confederates referred to objects using…

  • Spoken and written production of inflectional morphology among L1 Mandarin speakers of English

    Open AccessQingyuan Gardner, Holly P Branigan et al.ARTICLEJournal of Memory and Language2021

  • Speakers extrapolate community-level knowledge from individual linguistic encounters

    Open AccessAnita Tobar-Henríquez, Hugh Rabagliati et al.ARTICLECognition2021

  • Speakers' use of agency and visual context in spatial descriptions

    Open AccessAlessia Tosi, Martin J Pickering et al.ARTICLECognition2020

  • Children show selectively increased language imitation after experiencing ostracism

    Zoe L Hopkins, Holly P BraniganARTICLEDevelopmental Psychology2020Cited by: 4References: 14

    When threatened with ostracism, children attempt to strengthen social relationships by engaging in affiliative behaviors such as imitation. We investigated whether an experience of ostracism influenced the extent to which children imitated a partner's language use. In two experiments, 7- to 12-year-old children either experienced ostracism or did not experience ostracism in a virtual ball-throwing game before playing a picture-matching game with …

  • Special issue on Structural Priming in Less-Studied Languages and Dialects: Introduction

    Open AccessMartin J Pickering, Holly P BraniganARTICLEJournal of Cultural Cognitive…2019References: 18

  • When eye fixation might not reflect online ambiguity resolution in the visual-world paradigm: Structural priming following multiple primes in Portuguese

    Open AccessEunice G Fernandes, Moreno I Coco et al.ARTICLEJournal of Cultural Cognitive…2019Cited by: 1References: 42

  • Shared representation of passives across Scottish Gaelic and English: Evidence From Structural Priming

    Open AccessTimea Kutasi, Ellise Suffill et al.ARTICLEJournal of Cultural Cognitive…2018Cited by: 3References: 19

    Evidence from cross-linguistic priming suggests that bilinguals can share their representations of constructions that occur in both languages. Some studies suggest that such sharing occurs only when the constructions involve identical syntactic categories and word order, thereby supporting a restricted shared-structure account of bilingual linguistic representation. But other studies suggest that such exact repetition is not necessary for priming…

  • An experimental approach to linguistic representation

    Open AccessHolly P Branigan, Martin J PickeringARTICLEBehavioral and Brain Sciences2017

    Within the cognitive sciences, most researchers assume that it is the job of linguists to investigate how language is represented, and that they do so largely by building theories based on explicit judgments about patterns of acceptability – whereas it is the task of psychologists to determine how language is processed, and that in doing so, they do not typically question the linguists' representational assumptions. We challenge this division of …

  • Is children's acquisition of the passive a staged process? Evidence from six- and nine-year-olds' production of passives

    Open AccessKatherine Messenger, Holly P Branigan et al.ARTICLEJournal of Child Language2012

    We report a syntactic priming experiment that examined whether children's acquisition of the passive is a staged process, with acquisition of constituent structure preceding acquisition of thematic role mappings. Six-year-olds and nine-year-olds described transitive actions after hearing active and passive prime descriptions involving the same or different thematic roles. Both groups showed a strong tendency to reuse in their own description the …

  • The role of beliefs in lexical alignment: Evidence from dialogs with humans and computers

    Open AccessHolly P Branigan, Martin J Pickering et al.ARTICLECognition2011

  • Linguistic alignment between people and computers

    Open AccessHolly P Branigan, Martin J Pickering et al.ARTICLEJournal of Pragmatics2010Cited by: 33References: 53

  • Contributions of animacy to grammatical function assignment and word order during production

    Open AccessHolly P Branigan, Martin J Pickering et al.ARTICLELingua2008Cited by: 30References: 35

  • Syntactic Priming

    Open AccessHolly P Branigan, Holly BraniganARTICLELanguage and Linguistics Compass2007Cited by: 8References: 58

    Syntactic priming effects, or the tendency to repeat syntactic structure across otherwise unrelated utterances, have been extensively investigated over the last two decades. Because such effects rely upon the language processor recognising a syntactic relationship between two utterances, they offer a versatile behavioural tool for investigating how syntactic structure is represented by the human cognitive system. In this paper, we review existing…