Investigating the cause of language regularization in adults: memory constraints or learning effects?

Full Abstract

When language learners are exposed to inconsistent probabilistic grammatical patterns, they sometimes impose consistency on the language instead of learning the variation veridically. The authors hypothesized that this regularization results from problems with word retrieval rather than from learning per se. One prediction of this, that easing the demands of lexical retrieval leads to less regularization, was tested. Adult learners were exposed to a language containing inconsistent probabilistic patterns and were tested with either a standard production task or one of two tasks that reduced the demands of lexical retrieval. As predicted, participants tested with the modified tasks more closely matched the probability of the inconsistent items than did those tested with the standard task. Copyright 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

Author information

Author/s: Hudson Kam, Carla L (CL); Chang, Ann (A);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkelely, CA 94720, USA. clhudson(-atsign-)berkeley.edu

Grants: HD048572 (Agency:NICHD NIH HHS) ; R01 HD048572-01A1 (Agency:NICHD NIH HHS) ; R01 HD048572-02 (Agency:NICHD NIH HHS) ; R01 HD048572-03 (Agency:NICHD NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Journal: Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition (J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-May; vol 35 (issue 3) : pp 815-21

Dates: Created 2009/04/21; Completed 2009/06/26; Revised 2009/09/30;

PMID: 19379051, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 10/1/2009, IMS Date: 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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