Abstract
Incidental learning of grammar has been an area of interest for many decades; nevertheless, existing research has primarily focused on artificial or semi-artificial languages. The present study examines the incidental acquisition of the grammar of a natural language by exposing adult speakers of an ungendered L1 (English) to the gender agreement patterns in Russian (a language that was novel to the learners). Both receptive and productive knowledge and the mediating role of working memory (WM) in learning were measured. Speakers of the ungendered language were able to successfully acquire receptive but not productive grammatical knowledge in a new language under incidental exposure. WM was engaged in production but not in a grammaticality judgment task in the incidental learning condition, indicating cognitive effort during knowledge retrieval.
Highlights
Implicit learning refers to the human ability to derive information about the world in an unconscious, non-reflective way (Winter and Reber 1994), leading to implicit knowledge
Performance in production in the incidental learning conditions was poor, while participants in the explicit learning condition performed at a level above chance (Fig. 3)
The aim of the current study was to investigate the extent to which adults can incidentally acquire receptive and productive knowledge of a grammatical feature not present in their L1 and whether such learning is predicted by working memory (WM)
Summary
Implicit learning refers to the human ability to derive information about the world in an unconscious, non-reflective way (Winter and Reber 1994), leading to implicit knowledge. Explicit learning is understood as a conscious process based on selective attention, leading to explicit knowledge (Leow 2000; Rebuschat and Williams 2012; Robinson 2005; Schmidt 1993; Williams 2005). Incidental learning conditions, are defined as learning environments in which learners are unaware of the underlying grammatical regularity. In studies employing such experimental conditions, during the training phase participants are usually asked to understand the meaning of sentential stimuli without receiving feedback on their performance, and without being informed about subsequent testing (Rebuschat and Williams 2012). Many essential skills, including language-related skills, are acquired incidentally, i.e., without conscious intention to learn and without awareness of the rules and regularities underlying the input. L2 adult learners rarely attain native-like proficiency and have persistent difficulty in mastering grammatical gender (Lew-Williams and Fernald 2010)
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