Cross-cultural differences in implicit learning of chunks versus symmetries.

Xiaoli Ling,Li Zheng,Zoltan Dienes,Lining Sun,Xiuyan Guo,Shiyu Song,Shouxin Li

doi:10.1098/rsos.180469

Abstract

Three experiments explore whether knowledge of grammars defining global versus local regularities has an advantage in implicit acquisition and whether this advantage is affected by cultural differences. Participants were asked to listen to and memorize a number of strings of 10 syllables instantiating an inversion (i.e. a global pattern); after the training phase, they were required to judge whether new strings were well formed. In Experiment 1, Western people implicitly acquired the inversion rule defined over the Chinese tones in a similar way as Chinese participants when alternative structures (specifically, chunking and repetition structures) were controlled. In Experiments 2 and 3, we directly pitted knowledge of the inversion (global) against chunk (local) knowledge, and found that Chinese participants had a striking global advantage in implicit learning, which was greater than that of Western participants. Taken together, we show for the first time cross-cultural differences in the type of regularities implicitly acquired.

Highlights

Implicit learning is the term coined by A.S
In Experiment 1, we controlled both chunks and repetition patterns, leaving open the question as to whether there is a priority for processing different types of structures when both structures are simultaneously present; and whether this process is affected by cross-cultural differences
Given that most of the participants in Experiment 2 had learnt Tang poetry at school and they may have been previously familiar with the inversion rule of ping–ze that we used in the artificial poetry, the question is raised of whether the differences in linguistic experience in the use of the rule in Tang poetry induce the differences in preference for global versus local processing for these particular stimuli

Summary

Introduction

Implicit learning is the term coined by A.S. Reber [1,2] to describe this process by which people can acquire knowledge of the structure in the environment without awareness. A fundamental issue for the field is what sort of structures can be implicitly learnt. Reber [3] argued that people can implicitly learn abstract rules. Others have argued that implicit learning may consist only of.

Methods

Results

Conclusion