Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Contextual variability and exemplar strength in phonotactic learning.

Thomas Denby1, Jeffrey Schecter1, Sean Arn1

  • 1Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University.

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition
|September 22, 2017
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Unique Challenges of Multidisciplinary Clinical Science: Perspectives from a Multidisciplinary Team.

Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science·2026
Same author

Speech as an objective measure of psychomotor dysfunction in major depressive disorder: validation from non-speech motor measures.

Psychiatry research·2026
Same author

Open-vocabulary Keyword Spotting with Hyper-Matched Filters for Small Footprint Devices.

Computer speech & language·2026
Same author

How does a deep neural network look at lexical stress in English words?

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America·2026
Same author

Predicting relative intelligibility from inter-talker distances in a perceptual similarity space for speech.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2025
Same author

Syntax drives default language selection in bilingual connected speech production.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2024
Same journal

Testing the predictions of a distinctiveness model of memory: The production effect in backward recall.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same journal

On the impact of adjacency on transposed-word effects under serial presentation.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same journal

It's time to opt out: Metacognitive analysis of time regulation under uncertainty.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same journal

The role of statistical learning in attentional guidance during search through naturalistic scenes.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same journal

Representing objects and features in long-term memory: A case for direct feature-feature binding.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same journal

Crossmodal correspondences influence adaptation during rule-based category learning of objects.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
See all related articles

Contextual variability, not exemplar strength, drives phonotactic learning. This research shows learners prioritize patterns with more unique contexts, aiding acquisition of speech sound constraints.

Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Cognitive Science
  • Speech Acquisition

Background:

  • Phonotactics, the rules governing speech sound combinations, exhibit statistical variations impacting language use.
  • Previous research struggled to differentiate between contextual variability and exemplar strength in phonotactic acquisition due to their correlation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the distinct roles of contextual variability (type frequency) and exemplar strength (token frequency) in learning gradient phonotactic constraints.
  • To determine which statistical property is the primary driver of phonotactic rule acquisition.

Main Methods:

  • An artificial language learning paradigm was employed across three experiments.
  • The study systematically manipulated and disentangled contextual variability and exemplar strength.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Learner generalization of phonotactic patterns was assessed under different statistical conditions.

    • Main Results:

    • When contextual variability and exemplar strength were decorrelated, participants generalized patterns with higher contextual variability more effectively.
    • In conditions where the two factors were anticorrelated, participants favored patterns with higher contextual variability, even if they had lower exemplar strength.
    • Learners demonstrated a preference for phonotactic patterns advantaged by contextual variability.

    Conclusions:

    • Contextual variability emerges as the critical factor in phonotactic learning.
    • This suggests that learners focus on the unique contexts of phonological patterns to identify invariant features, facilitating language acquisition.