Abstract
Implicit learning generally refers to the acquisition of structures that, like knowledge of natural language grammar, are not available to awareness. In contrast, statistical learning has frequently been related to learning language structures that are explicitly available, such as vocabulary. In this paper, we report an experimental paradigm that enables testing of both classic implicit and statistical learning in language. The paradigm employs an artificial language comprising sentences that accompany visual scenes that they represent, thus combining artificial grammar learning with cross‐situational statistical learning of vocabulary. We show that this methodology enables a comparison between acquisition of grammar and vocabulary, and the influences on their learning. We show that both grammar and vocabulary are promoted by explicit information about the language structure, that awareness of structure affects acquisition during learning, and awareness precedes learning, but is not distinctive at the endpoint of learning. The two traditions of learning—implicit and statistical—can be conjoined in a single paradigm to explore both the phenomenological and learning consequences of statistical structural knowledge.
Highlights
The paradigm that we describe in this paper illustrates the means by which both grammar and vocabulary learning can be explored, by simultaneously manipulating statistical learning processes associated with learning vocabulary and implicit learning processes associated with grammar acquisition, with the possibility to introduce explicit information about grammatical structure into the learning paradigm and investigate the extent to which this knowledge penetrates acquisition of grammar as well as vocabulary learning
Experiment 1 demonstrated that classic implicit learning and statistical learning approaches can be combined in a single methodology
We showed that the effectiveness of cross-situational learning – a task that has been used to test statistical learning in acquisition of language – can be modulated by explicit knowledge of the language structure to be acquired, consistent with many other studies of the benefit of syntactic information for language learning (Goo et al, 2015; Spada & Tomita, 2010)
Summary
The bisyllabic pseudowords were “content words” since they could either refer to the shapes or to motions that these objects could perform. The two monosyllabic pseudowords served as “function words” that indicated if the following content word referred to a shape or to a motion. Pairings were randomised in six different versions to avoid biases linking particular words to shapes or motions. Participants were first asked if they had noticed any rules or patterns in general. They were asked if they noticed what type of word always followed the monosyllabic words (tha and noo). A background questionnaire asked for age, gender, educational background, native language(s), and any foreign languages studied by the participants
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