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Variability and detection of invariant structure.

Rebecca L Gómez¹

¹The Johns Hopkins University, USA. rgomez@u.arizona.edu

Psychological Science

|September 11, 2002

Summary

Adults and infants learn nonadjacent dependencies in language only when adjacent elements are less predictable. This finding reveals how statistical structure guides learning of complex linguistic patterns.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Science
Developmental Psychology
Linguistics

Background:

Language acquisition relies on identifying patterns.
Learners must distinguish between adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies.

Purpose of the Study:

Investigate conditions favoring nonadjacent dependency learning.
Examine the role of statistical structure in guiding attention.

Main Methods:

Two experiments exposed adults and 18-month-olds to artificial languages.
Varied the predictability of middle elements in three-element strings.
Tested for acquisition of dependencies between the first and third elements.

Main Results:

Both infants and adults learned nonadjacent dependencies only when adjacent dependencies were least predictable.
Increased variability in middle elements facilitated nonadjacent dependency detection.

Conclusions:

Learners prioritize nonadjacent dependencies under conditions of low adjacent predictability.
Statistical structure dynamically influences attentional focus during language learning.

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