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Implicit language learning: Adults' ability to segment words in Norwegian
Megan M Kittleson1, Jessica M Aguilar, Gry Line Tokerud
1University of Arizona.
Bilingualism (Cambridge, England)
|April 23, 2011
Summary
Listeners can segment words from fluent speech using statistical learning, even in natural languages. Language background did not significantly impact this word segmentation ability in adults.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
- Language Acquisition
Background:
- Previous research demonstrated word segmentation from artificial languages using statistical properties of input.
- The ecological validity of these findings in natural languages remains to be fully explored.
- The influence of a listener's native language background on this process is not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test the ecological validity of statistical learning for word segmentation in a natural language (Norwegian).
- To investigate whether a listener's language background influences their ability to segment words from continuous speech.
- To determine if adults can implicitly learn to segment words in a new language.
Main Methods:
- Study 1: Assessed the "guessibility" of Norwegian words by 22 listeners distinguishing true words from nonwords.
- Study 2: 22 adults with diverse language backgrounds implicitly learned to segment Norwegian words from continuous speech over two sessions.
- Participants listened to Norwegian sentences and then identified bisyllabic test items.
Main Results:
- Participants successfully differentiated Norwegian words from nonwords in both studies.
- Adults demonstrated the ability to segment true words from running speech.
- Results were consistent across participants from three broadly-defined language groups.
Conclusions:
- Statistical learning is effective for word segmentation in natural languages, supporting previous findings from artificial languages.
- A listener's language background does not appear to significantly hinder the ability to segment words from a new language.
- Adults possess robust implicit learning mechanisms for acquiring aspects of a new language, including word segmentation.
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