The Role of Prior Experience in Language Acquisition

Abstract

Learners exposed to an artificial language recognize its abstract structural regularities when instantiated in a novel vocabulary (e.g., Gómez, Gerken, & Schvaneveldt, 2000; Tunney & Altmann, 2001). We asked whether such sensitivity accelerates subsequent learning, and enables acquisition of more complex structure. In Experiment 1, pre‐exposure to a category‐induction language of the form aX bY sped subsequent learning when the language is instantiated in a different vocabulary. In Experiment 2, while naíve learners did not acquire an acX bcY language, in which aX and bY co‐occurrence regularities were separated by a c‐element, prior experience with an aX bY language provided some benefit. In Experiment 3 we replicated this finding with a 24‐hour delay between learning phases, and controlled for prior experience with the aX bY language's prosodic and phonological characteristics. These findings suggest that learners, and the structure they can acquire, change as a function of experience.

Implicit learning of fifth- and sixth-order sequential probabilities

“…Also, participants were required to learn simpler contingencies before learning more complex contingencies. Learning the simpler contingencies could have bootstrapped learning the more complex contingencies (e.g., see Lany & Gomez, 2008;Lany, Gomez, & Gerken, 2007). Participants in the present study, unlike those in the Millward and Reber study, locations from left to right, respectively, Table 2 presents some of the 96 contexts and the probabilities with which successors followed contexts.…”

Simultaneous online tracking of adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies in statistical learning

“…Similar to Lany et al (2007;Experiment 3), the non-adjacent dependency pairs were divided into two subsets, each sharing the same set of six intervening items in the second position (aX 1-6 b and cX 1-6 d vs. eY 1-6 f and gY [1][2][3][4][5][6] h; adjacent transitional probability = .17, see Figure 1). Therefore, for a given participant, two non-adjacent dependency pairs (e.g., jom-mig and zol-vun) were only combined with one secondelement subset (e.g., namie, sluro, hagix, worat, ruxot, and kapek), whereas the other two non-adjacent dependency pairs (e.g., taf-bur and pes-lin) were only combined with the remaining subset of second elements (e.g., hufel, fenar, dosef, witus, dazan, and gunis).…”

“…Note that not all observed effects of adjacent on non-adjacent dependency learning are negative. Later studies (Lany & Gómez, 2008;Lany, Gómez, & Gerken, 2007) have shown that if the nonadjacent dependency to be learned has been encountered earlier as an adjacent pair, then non-adjacent dependency learning is facilitated (see also, e.g., Creel, Newport, & Aslin, 2004 for other facilitating factors). In either case, existing evidence suggests a heavy influence of adjacent on non-adjacent dependency learning.…”

“…Previous studies used an offline judgment task to measure learning of non-adjacent dependencies (e.g., Gómez, 2002, Onnis et al, 2003, or they used an online task but measured learning of adjacent and non-adjacent dependencies in different experiments Misyak, Christiansen, & Tomblin, 2010), or they trained participants on adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies within the same experiment but in a serial manner (Lany & Gómez, 2008;Lany, Gómez, & Gerken, 2007). By contrast, we tracked online learning of both adjacent and non-adjacent dependencies simultaneously in the same task as learning progressed.…”

Comparing Learning Speed of new Mazes in Rats with and without Prior Maze Learning Experience

“…Several studies have been conducted on humans on the role of previous experiences. For instance, Lany, G´omez and Gerken [22] carried out a study on the role of prior experience in language acquisition. They realized that learner"s prior experiences facilitate the new language learning.…”