Consistent and cumulative effects of syntactic experience in children's sentence production: Evidence for error-based implicit learning.
Error-based implicit learning models (e.g., Chang, Dell, & Bock, 2006) propose that a single learning mechanism underlies immediate and long-term effects of experience on children's syntax. We test two key predictions of these models: That individual experiences of infrequent structures should yield both immediate and long-term facilitation, and that such learning should be consistent in individual speakers across time. Children (and adults) described transitive events in two picture-matching games, held a week apart. In both sessions, the experimenter's immediately preceding syntax (active vs. passive) dynamically influenced children's (and adults') syntactic choices in an individually consistent manner. Moreover, children showed long-term facilitation, through an increased likelihood to produce passives in Session 2, with speakers who were most likely to immediately repeat passives in Session 1 being most likely to produce passives in Session 2. Our results are consistent with an error-based syntactic learning mechanism that operates across the lifespan.
Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, 7 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JZ, UK. Electronic address: Holly.Branigan@ed.ac.uk.
Holly P
HP
Branigan
Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK. Electronic address: K.Messenger@warwick.ac.uk.
Katherine
K
Messenger
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D007858:Learning; D008037:Linguistics; D013060:Speech; D013067:Speech Perception
Error-based learning; Implicit learning; Language development; Structural priming; Syntactic priming