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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 19, 2026

Measuring Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Domains in School-Aged Children Via an Online Platform and Neuroimaging Techniques

Measuring Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Domains in School-Aged Children Via an Online Platform and Neuroimaging Techniques

Published on: June 30, 2020

Aging and the statistical learning of grammatical form classes.

Jessica F Schwab¹, Kathryn D Schuler², Chelsea M Stillman¹

¹Department of Psychology, Georgetown University.

Psychology and Aging

|June 14, 2016

Summary

Healthy older adults can learn statistical patterns in language, similar to young adults, but struggle with grammatical accuracy. This research offers insights into age-related learning differences and second language acquisition in later life.

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Last Updated: Mar 19, 2026

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An Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effects of Ageing on Sentence Processing

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Published on: October 25, 2019

Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Linguistics

Background:

Language acquisition relies on understanding grammatical rules, often implicitly.
Distributional information (contextual cues) aids in learning grammatical form classes.
Previous research demonstrated statistical learning in college students.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate statistical learning of grammatical form classes in healthy older adults.
To compare the learning abilities of older adults with young adults.
To explore age-related differences in processing grammatical versus ungrammatical strings.

Main Methods:

Two experiments were conducted using an artificial language paradigm.
Participants learned grammatical form classes based solely on distributional information.
Performance was assessed by distinguishing grammatical from ungrammatical strings.

Main Results:

Healthy older adults demonstrated statistical learning of grammatical form classes.
Older adults were less proficient than young adults at distinguishing grammatical from ungrammatical strings.
This suggests age-related variations in specific aspects of statistical learning.

Conclusions:

Statistical learning mechanisms are present in healthy aging.
Age-related decline impacts the precision of grammatical string discrimination.
Findings have implications for understanding second language learning in older adults.