TY - JOUR
T1 - Probabilistically Cued Patterns Trump Perfect Cues in Statistical Language Learning
AU - Lany, Jill
AU - Gómez, Rebecca L.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant F32 HD057698 to J.L. and R01 HD42170 to R.L.G. We thank Jessica Payne for thoughtful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
PY - 2013/1
Y1 - 2013/1
N2 - Probabilistically cued co-occurrence relationships between word categories are common in natural languages but difficult to acquire. For example, in English, determiner-noun and auxiliary-verb dependencies both involve co-occurrence relationships but determiner-noun relationships are more reliably marked by correlated distributional and phonological cues and appear to be learned more readily. We tested whether experience with co-occurrence relationships that are more reliable promotes learning those that are less reliable using an artificial language paradigm. Prior experience with deterministically cued contingencies did not promote learning of less reliably cued structure, nor did prior experience with relationships instantiated in the same vocabulary. In contrast, prior experience with probabilistically cued co-occurrence relationships instantiated in different vocabulary did enhance learning. Thus, experience with co-occurrence relationships sharing underlying structure but not vocabulary may be an important factor in learning grammatical patterns. Furthermore, experience with probabilistically cued co-occurrence relationships, despite their difficultly for naïve learners, lays an important foundation for learning novel probabilistic structure.
AB - Probabilistically cued co-occurrence relationships between word categories are common in natural languages but difficult to acquire. For example, in English, determiner-noun and auxiliary-verb dependencies both involve co-occurrence relationships but determiner-noun relationships are more reliably marked by correlated distributional and phonological cues and appear to be learned more readily. We tested whether experience with co-occurrence relationships that are more reliable promotes learning those that are less reliable using an artificial language paradigm. Prior experience with deterministically cued contingencies did not promote learning of less reliably cued structure, nor did prior experience with relationships instantiated in the same vocabulary. In contrast, prior experience with probabilistically cued co-occurrence relationships instantiated in different vocabulary did enhance learning. Thus, experience with co-occurrence relationships sharing underlying structure but not vocabulary may be an important factor in learning grammatical patterns. Furthermore, experience with probabilistically cued co-occurrence relationships, despite their difficultly for naïve learners, lays an important foundation for learning novel probabilistic structure.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84871922482&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84871922482&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/15475441.2012.685826
DO - 10.1080/15475441.2012.685826
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84871922482
SN - 1547-5441
VL - 9
SP - 66
EP - 87
JO - Language Learning and Development
JF - Language Learning and Development
IS - 1
ER -