Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

While events can be identified based on both perceptual and higher-level information, the contribution of language-related factors remains unclear. Here, we examine whether recent linguistic experience modulates event role identification scenes by asking whether verbs with different argument and thematic structures cue abstract event representations that guide subsequent event cognition. Participants briefly viewed agent–patient events (for 300ms) preceded by a transitive verb, an intransitive verb, or a nonsense word control, and then completed a probe-based role identification task. Transitive verb primes facilitated recognition of event roles, yielding faster responses in role-matching trials relative to intransitive and control conditions. These findings show that linguistic cues influence event role identification, especially when their argument and thematic structure aligns with event structures.