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Related Experiment Video

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Generalization to unfamiliar talkers in artificial language learning.

¹Department of Psychology, Waldorf College, 106 S 6th Street, Forest City, IA 50436, USA. sara.finley@waldorf.edu

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

|March 5, 2013

Summary

Adult learners generalize novel linguistic patterns, like vowel harmony, to unfamiliar talkers, demonstrating abstract, talker-independent representations in language processing.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Psycholinguistics
Phonetics

Background:

Evidence suggests talker-specific phonetic details are stored in the lexicon and in sentence processing.
It remains unclear if categorical linguistic patterns also incorporate talker-specific information.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether adult learners form talker-independent representations for productive linguistic patterns.
To determine if learners can generalize novel linguistic patterns to unfamiliar talkers.

Main Methods:

Participants were exposed to spoken words exhibiting a vowel harmony pattern (vowels agreeing in place of articulation) from a single talker.
Learners were subsequently tested on their ability to recognize this pattern with both the familiar talker and unfamiliar talkers, across familiar and unfamiliar accents.

Main Results:

Participants successfully generalized the vowel harmony pattern to unfamiliar talkers, irrespective of accent familiarity.
A slight advantage for talker familiarity was observed for familiar words, but not for novel words.

Conclusions:

Adult learners form abstract, talker-independent representations for productive linguistic patterns.
This suggests that while the lexicon may store talker-specific phonetic details, language production processes utilize generalized representations.