Two for the price of one: Concurrent learning of words and phonotactic regularities from continuous speech.

Viridiana L Benitez,Jenny R Saffran,Vera Kempe

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0253039

Viridiana L Benitez, Jenny R Saffran + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253039

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Abstract

To acquire the words of their language, learners face the challenge of tracking regularities at multiple levels of abstraction from continuous speech. In the current study, we examined adults’ ability to track two types of regularities from a continuous artificial speech stream: the individual words in the speech stream (token level information), and a phonotactic pattern shared by a subset of those words (type level information). We additionally manipulated exposure time to the language to examine the relationship between the acquisition of these two regularities. Using a ratings test procedure, we found that adults can extract both the words in the language and their phonotactic patterns from continuous speech in as little as 3.5 minutes of listening time. Results from a 2AFC testing method provide converging evidence that adults rapidly learn both words and their phonotactic patterns. Together, the findings suggest that adults are capable of concurrently tracking regularities at multiple levels of abstraction from brief exposures to a continuous stream of speech.

Highlights

One of the first steps in language learning is identifying how sounds combine to form words
Our first research question was whether learners were capable of tracking regularities at two different levels of abstraction, individual words and a phonotactic pattern shared by a subset of those words, from a single input stream
We found evidence that adults were capable of tracking the individual words of the language when they listened to the language for 3.5 minutes in Experiment 1, and for the combined groups (2.5 minutes and 3.5 minutes) in Experiment 2

Summary

Introduction

One of the first steps in language learning is identifying how sounds combine to form words. This task requires learners to be sensitive to regularities at multiple levels. Language learners must track regularities at the token level, such as the individual lexical items present in the speech stream. Learners must track patterns at the type level, such as the phonological regularities shared among those lexical items. How do learners navigate acquiring both specific (token) and generalizable (type) patterns from continuous speech?. Previous research has demonstrated that learners are sensitive to a wide array of cues that aid in parsing the speech stream into individual word units (for reviews, see [1,2,3,4]). After a few minutes of exposure to a continuous stream of speech, where transitional probabilities are the only signal

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