Successfully learning non-adjacent dependencies in a continuous artificial language stream

Wang, Felix Hao; Zevin, Jason D.; Mintz, Toben H.

doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2019.101223

Cited by 18 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Of the remaining six clips, three (X 1–3 ) occurred exhaustively in the middle position of a_b , and the other three (X 4–6 ) occurred exhaustively in the middle position of c_d (creating a total of six unique triplets). Prior studies have shown that three intervening items provides sufficient variability for adults to learn the NADs in speech [ 30 , 31 ] and in action sequences similar to these [ 42 ]. The assignment from action clips to the letters here were randomized for each infant, so that unintended similarities between the non-adjacent items—for example, actions both involve the hand—would not be confounded with the NADs.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some researchers even theorize that humans are constrained to learn NADs only when the non-adjacent items are at the edges of sequences, as defined by brief silences [ 29 ]. Importantly though, other types of edge or boundary cues appear to facilitate NAD learning, such as top-down structural cues [ 30 ] and rhythmic cues [ 31 ]. Indeed, in those studies [ 30 , 31 ], adults learned NADs without silences at the edges of the NADs, and with minimal variability between only three items in the middle position.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Importantly though, other types of edge or boundary cues appear to facilitate NAD learning, such as top-down structural cues [ 30 ] and rhythmic cues [ 31 ]. Indeed, in those studies [ 30 , 31 ], adults learned NADs without silences at the edges of the NADs, and with minimal variability between only three items in the middle position. Furthermore, Newport and Aslin [ 32 ] showed that when the non-adjacent elements are perceptually similar, and contrast with the intervening item—for example, when the non-adjacent segments are both consonants with a vowel intervening, or vice-versa—then adults can learn those dependencies from a continuous speech stream, but not when they do not share those similarities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Learning non-adjacent rules and non-adjacent dependencies from human actions in 9-month-old infants

Mintz

2021

PLoS ONE

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Seven month old infants can learn simple repetition patterns, such as we-fo-we, and generalize the rules to sequences of new syllables, such as ga-ti-ga. However, repetition rule learning in visual sequences seems more challenging, leading some researchers to claim that this type of rule learning applies preferentially to communicative stimuli. Here we demonstrate that 9-month-old infants can learn repetition rules in sequences of non-communicative dynamic human actions. We also show that when primed with these non-adjacent repetition patterns, infants can learn non-adjacent dependencies that involve memorizing the dependencies between specific human actions—patterns that prior research has shown to be difficult for infants in the visual domain and in speech. We discuss several possible mechanisms that account for the apparent advantage stimuli involving human action sequences has over other kinds of stimuli in supporting non-adjacent dependency learning. We also discuss possible implications for theories of language acquisition.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Learning non-adjacent rules and non-adjacent dependencies from human actions in 9-month-old infants

Mintz

2021

PLoS ONE

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“…Comparable to infant studies, behavioral studies in adults have also revealed successful NAD learning when adults were tested under the same passive listening conditions ( Frost and Monaghan, 2016 ; Gómez, 2002 ; Onnis et al, 2004 ; Wang et al, 2019 ). The majority of studies in adults, however, involves metalinguistic components from active listening paradigms, with either a 2AFC task (e.g., Frost and Monaghan, 2016 ), a familiarity judgment task ( Wang et al, 2019 ), or a grammatical judgment task (e.g., Gómez, 2002 ; Onnis et al, 2004 ). Thus, it remains unclear whether behavioral studies assessing NAD learning in adults tap into the same learning mechanisms as infant behavioral NAD learning studies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic and non-linguistic non-adjacent dependency learning in early development

Kant

Männel

Paul

et al. 2020

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience

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Highlights Non-adjacent dependency learning shows a developmental shift during the third year of life. 2-year-old children can learn non-adjacent dependencies in linguistic material from passive listening, while 3-year-old children cannot. Non-adjacent dependency learning in 2-year-olds is subserved by left-hemisphere temporal, inferior frontal and parietal brain regions. The developmental trajectory for non-adjacent dependency learning differs between the linguistic and the non-linguistic domain.

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“…Children learned to identify words in the bisyllabic language, but not the language with varying lengths. Similarly, Wang, Zevin, and Mintz [52] proposed that early stages of language learning are only possible if the structure to be acquired is regular and rhythmical-if word length varies, then Wang et al [52] predict that learning will not be successful. Thus, prior findings offer a mixed account of whether infants can indeed segment words of varying lengths from speech using statistical regularities alone.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the “anchor word” effect in infants: Segmentation and categorisation of speech with and without high frequency words

et al. 2020

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High frequency words play a key role in language acquisition, with recent work suggesting they may serve both speech segmentation and lexical categorisation. However, it is not yet known whether infants can detect novel high frequency words in continuous speech, nor whether they can use them to help learning for segmentation and categorisation at the same time. For instance, when hearing “you eat the biscuit”, can children use the high-frequency words “you” and “the” to segment out “eat” and “biscuit”, and determine their respective lexical categories? We tested this in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we familiarised 12-month-old infants with continuous artificial speech comprising repetitions of target words, which were preceded by high-frequency marker words that distinguished the targets into two distributional categories. In Experiment 2, we repeated the task using the same language but with additional phonological cues to word and category structure. In both studies, we measured learning with head-turn preference tests of segmentation and categorisation, and compared performance against a control group that heard the artificial speech without the marker words (i.e., just the targets). There was no evidence that high frequency words helped either speech segmentation or grammatical categorisation. However, segmentation was seen to improve when the distributional information was supplemented with phonological cues (Experiment 2). In both experiments, exploratory analysis indicated that infants’ looking behaviour was related to their linguistic maturity (indexed by infants’ vocabulary scores) with infants with high versus low vocabulary scores displaying novelty and familiarity preferences, respectively. We propose that high-frequency words must reach a critical threshold of familiarity before they can be of significant benefit to learning.

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Successfully learning non-adjacent dependencies in a continuous artificial language stream

Cited by 18 publications

References 34 publications

Learning non-adjacent rules and non-adjacent dependencies from human actions in 9-month-old infants

Learning non-adjacent rules and non-adjacent dependencies from human actions in 9-month-old infants

Linguistic and non-linguistic non-adjacent dependency learning in early development

Exploring the “anchor word” effect in infants: Segmentation and categorisation of speech with and without high frequency words

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