Learning Repetition, but not Syllable Reversal

Abstract

Reduplication is common, but analogous reversal processes are rare, even though reversal, which involves nested rather than crossed dependencies, is less complex on the Chomsky hierarchy. We hypothesize that the explanation is that repetitions can be recognized when they match and reactivate a stored trace in short-term memory, but recognizing a reversal requires rearranging the input in working memory before attempting to match it to the stored trace. Repetitions can thus be recognized, and repetition patterns learned, implicitly, whereas reversals require explicit, conscious awareness. To test these hypotheses, participants were trained to recognize either a reduplication or a syllable-reversal pattern, and then asked to state the rule. In two experiments, above-chance classification performance on the Reversal pattern was confined to Correct Staters, whereas above-chance performance on the Reduplication pattern was found with or without correct rule-stating. Final proportion correct was positively correlated with final response time for the Reversal Correct Staters but no other group. These results support the hypothesis that reversal, unlike reduplication, requires conscious, time-consuming computation.

Regular and polyregular theories of reduplication

“…The formalization of reduplication theories raises the issue of how theories represent the idea of not only copying segments, but also the sequencing of repeated segments within a reduplicative construction. These issues have analogs to the role of sequencing and repetition in cognition (Endress et al 2007;Moreton et al 2021).…”

“…Formalizing theories of reduplication raises the issue of how theories represent the idea of not only copying segments, but also the sequencing of repeated segments within a reduplicative construction. These issues bear on the role of sequencing and repetition in cognition (Endress et al 2007;Buzsáki & Tingley 2018;Moreton et al 2021), as well as how machine learning methods infer these constructions (Dolatian & Heinz 2018a;Beguš 2021;Nelson et al 2020;Prickett et al 2022).…”

On regular copying languages

“…Evidence that reduplication/copying (ww) patterns have an importantly different status than reversal (ww R ) patterns -converging [ 7 ] with the typological absence of reversal patterns noted above -comes from one recent artificial grammar learning study (AGL) (Moreton et al 2021). In this experiment, adult learners were trained to identify either a reduplication or a syllable reversal pattern.…”