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Related Concept Videos

Language Development01:22

Language Development

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Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
The critical period for language acquisition suggests that the ability to acquire language is at its peak early in life. As people age, this proficiency decreases. Language development begins very...
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Components of Language01:24

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Language, whether spoken, signed, or written, consists of specific components: lexicon and grammar. The lexicon is the vocabulary of a language, comprising its words. Grammar is the set of rules used to convey meaning through the lexicon. For example, English grammar adds “-ed” to most verbs to indicate past tense. Words are formed by combining phonemes, which are the basic sound units of a language. Different languages have different sets of phonemes (e.g., “ah” vs.
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Purposive Learning01:22

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E. C. Tolman emphasized the purposiveness of behavior — the idea that much of our behavior is goal-directed. For instance, employees who aim for a promotion work diligently to meet their targets. Tolman argued that when classical conditioning and operant conditioning occur, the organism acquires certain expectations. In classical conditioning, a child might fear a dog because they expect it to bite. In operant conditioning, a person might consistently work overtime because they expect a...
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Language and Cognition01:27

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Language serves as a bridge between ideas and communication, influencing how individuals perceive and interact with the world. Psychologists have long debated whether language shapes thought or vice versa. This discussion gained grip with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s, who proposed that language determines thought, a concept known as linguistic determinism. They suggested that the vocabulary and structure of a language influence how its speakers think and perceive reality.
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Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon01:10

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The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon is a cognitive experience characterized by a temporary inability to retrieve specific information from memory despite having a strong feeling of knowing the information. Although individuals cannot access the target word or detail, they frequently recall related elements, such as its initial letter, syllable count, or context. This partial retrieval often causes frustration, as one might recognize a familiar face or know that a name starts with a specific...
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Genome Size and the Evolution of New Genes03:21

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While every living organism has a genome of some kind (be it RNA, or DNA), there is considerable variation in the sizes of these blueprints. One major factor that impacts genome size is whether the organism is prokaryotic or eukaryotic. In prokaryotes, the genome contains little to no non-coding sequence, such that genes are tightly clustered in groups or operons sequentially along the chromosome. Conversely, the genes in eukaryotes are punctuated by long stretches of non-coding sequence.
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Oct 21, 2025

Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effect of Induced Emotion on Grammar Learning
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Beyond input: Language learners produce novel relative clause types without exposure.

Adam M Morgan1, Victor S Ferreira2

  • 1NYU School of Medicine, Department of Neurology, 227 E 30th St, 8th Floor, New York NY 10016 USA.

Journal of Cognitive Psychology (Hove, England)
|September 6, 2021
PubMed
Summary

Speakers can learn abstract syntactic structures beyond direct exposure. Learning one type of a grammatical rule, like relative clauses, implies understanding all types, demonstrating higher-level cognitive abstraction.

Keywords:
artificial language learninggeneralizationrelative clausessyntax

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Area of Science:

  • Linguistics
  • Cognitive Science
  • Psychology

Background:

  • Syntax involves hierarchical representations for sentence construction.
  • Theories propose a higher level of abstract representation guiding sentence formation.
  • Experimental evidence for this higher level of abstraction is currently lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the existence of a higher level of abstract syntactic representation.
  • To determine if speakers can generalize learned syntactic structures to untrained types.
  • To test the hypothesis that learning one type of a grammatical structure implies learning a general rule.

Main Methods:

  • Participants were taught a novel grammar for specific types of relative clauses.
  • Knowledge of untrained relative clause types was subsequently tested.
  • Experimental design focused on distinguishing between specific and general syntactic representations.

Main Results:

  • Participants consistently produced untrained types of relative clauses after learning a subset.
  • This generalization suggests a higher level of abstract syntactic knowledge.
  • Findings support the existence of abstract representations beyond direct input.

Conclusions:

  • The study provides experimental evidence for a higher level of abstract syntactic representation.
  • This abstract knowledge allows speakers to generate novel structures.
  • The findings have implications for understanding language acquisition and cognitive processing.