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Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms
Published on: February 8, 2019
Implicit learning of semantic category sequences: response-independent acquisition of abstract sequential
Thomas Goschke1, Annette Bolte
1Department of Psychology, Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany. goschke@psychologie.tu-dresden.de
Abstract:
Through the use of a new serial naming task, the authors investigated implicit learning of repeating sequences of abstract semantic categories. Participants named objects (e.g., table, shirt) appearing in random order. Unbeknownst to them, the semantic categories of the objects (e.g., furniture, clothing) followed a repeating sequence. Irrespective of whether participants were instructed to attend to the categories (Experiment 1) or whether no mention was made of the categories (Experiments 2 and 3), naming latencies reliably increased when the repeating category sequence was switched to a random sequence. This was the case even for participants showing no explicit knowledge in reproduction and recognition tests. Results indicate that abstract sequential structures are learned implicitly, even if neither the surface stimuli nor the responses follow a sequence.
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