The role of memory consolidation in generalisation of new linguistic information

Abstract

Accounts of memory that postulate complementary learning systems (CLS) have become increasingly influential in the field of language learning. These accounts predict that generalisation of newly learnt linguistic information to untrained contexts requires offline memory consolidation. Such generalisation should not be observed immediately after training, as these accounts claim unconsolidated representations are context and hippocampus-dependent and gain contextual and hippocampal independence only after consolidation. We trained participants on new affixes (e.g., -nule) attached to familiar word stems (e.g., buildnule), testing them immediately or 2days later. Participants showed an immediate advantage for trained affixes in a speeded shadowing task as long as these affixes occurred in the stem contexts in which they were learnt (e.g., buildnule). This learning effect generalised to words with untrained stems (e.g., sailnule) only in the delayed test condition. By contrast, a non-speeded definition selection task showed immediate generalisation. We propose that generalisation can be supported by initial context-dependent memories given sufficient processing time, but that context-independent lexical representations emerge only following consolidation, as predicted by CLS accounts.