Crosslinguistic Differences in Implicit Language Learning

Abstract

We report three experiments that explore the effect of prior linguistic knowledge on implicit language learning. Native speakers of English from the United Kingdom and native speakers of Cantonese from Hong Kong participated in experiments that involved different learning materials. In Experiment 1, both participant groups showed evidence of learning a mapping between articles and noun animacy. In Experiment 2, neither group showed learning of a mapping between articles and a linguistically anomalous concept (the number of capital letters in an English word or that of strokes in a Chinese character). In Experiment 3, the Chinese group, but not the English group, showed evidence of learning a mapping between articles and a concept derived from the Chinese classifier system. It was concluded that first language knowledge affected implicit language learning and that implicit learning, at least when natural language learning is concerned, is subject to constraints and biases.

Sleep facilitates learning a new linguistic rule

“…We also recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to provide additional measures of learning and rule awareness. We hypothesized that learning of the hidden rule should be evident in slower responses to phrases that violated the rule, similar to previous findings (Leung & Williams, 2012, in press). We additionally hypothesized that ERP differences would emerge between canonical and violation phrases as participants implicitly learned the hidden rule, representing a neural index of learning.…”

“…For example, Leung and Williams (2011) found RT evidence for implicit learning of mappings between novel articles and thematic role (i.e., whether a noun is an agent or patient). Similarly, using a paradigm that provided the methodological basis for the present study, Leung and Williams (2012; in press) found RT delays to phrases that violated a hidden noun animacy rule, providing evidence for implicit learning of associations between forms and animacy.…”

“…This difference, termed the Rule Learning Index (RLI), provides a measure of the influence of the learned hidden rule. This effect has been previously shown to be sensitive to learning (Leung & Williams, 2012; in press), and can be interpreted as an interference effect, similar to the Stroop effect (MacLeod, 1991). We presumed that due to the automatic nature of reading, both the article and noun should be processed concurrently, prior to the animacy response.…”

“…Building on the methodology used by Leung and Williams (2012; in press), as described above, participants were trained on an artificial article system composed of four novel articles: gi, ro, ul, a nd ne . They were instructed that these articles functioned like the English word “the” but that they also designated relative distance, with two of them ( gi and ro) meaning “near” and the other two ( ul and ne) meaning “far.” However, participants were not told that the four novel articles also predicted the animacy of the subsequent noun (Table 1).…”

“…We built upon a paradigm developed by Leung and Williams (2012, in press), in which participants were presented with phrases containing four novel articles ( gi, ul , ro and ne ). Participants were explicitly instructed that these novel articles encode distance, with two of the articles used when the accompanying noun refers to a nearby object, and the other two used when the accompanying noun refers to objects that are far away.…”