Order in the Statistical Learning of Phonotactics

Overview

Journal J Psycholinguist Res

Publisher Springer

Specialty Psychology

Date 2024 Dec 14

PMID 39673597

Authors

Peter T Richtsmeier

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

A premise of statistical learning research is that learners attend to and learn the frequencies of co-occurring sounds in the input, or phonotactic sequences. Inherent to the concepts of both frequency and phonotactics is order, or the temporal arrangement of the relevant elements. Order is similarly inherent to statistical learning, yet the effect of order on statistical learning is not well understood. In the present study, adult participants learned the relative frequencies of eight consonant sequences, for example, /mk/ and /st/ in the nonwords /nʌmkət/ and /gɪstək/. Both familiarization and test stimuli were independently ordered and randomized, thus allowing for a relatively broad search for order effects in an established statistical learning paradigm. Participants learned the target frequencies equivalently across the five ordering conditions, indicating no modulating effect of order. Nevertheless, the results reflect an initial pass at further integration of statistical learning with existing research on the effects of order in memory and general cognition. (155 words).

References

Benitez V, Bulgarelli F, Byers-Heinlein K, Saffran J, Weiss D . Statistical learning of multiple speech streams: A challenge for monolingual infants. Dev Sci. 2019; 23(2):e12896. PMC: 7028448. DOI: 10.1111/desc.12896. View

Bulgarelli F, Weiss D . Anchors aweigh: The impact of overlearning on entrenchment effects in statistical learning. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2016; 42(10):1621-1631. PMC: 5014725. DOI: 10.1037/xlm0000263. View

Christiansen M . Implicit Statistical Learning: A Tale of Two Literatures. Top Cogn Sci. 2018; 11(3):468-481. DOI: 10.1111/tops.12332. View

Cowan N . The magical number 4 in short-term memory: a reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behav Brain Sci. 2001; 24(1):87-114; discussion 114-85. DOI: 10.1017/s0140525x01003922. View

Denby T, Schecter J, Arn S, Dimov S, Goldrick M . Contextual variability and exemplar strength in phonotactic learning. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2017; 44(2):280-294. DOI: 10.1037/xlm0000465. View

Edwards J, Beckman M, Munson B . The interaction between vocabulary size and phonotactic probability effects on children's production accuracy and fluency in nonword repetition. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2004; 47(2):421-36. DOI: 10.1044/1092-4388(2004/034). View

Finley S . LEARNING NONADJACENT DEPENDENCIES IN PHONOLOGY: TRANSPARENT VOWELS IN VOWEL HARMONY. Language (Baltim). 2015; 91(1):48-72. PMC: 4486290. DOI: 10.1353/lan.2015.0010. View

Gebhart A, Aslin R, Newport E . Changing Structures in Midstream: Learning Along the Statistical Garden Path. Cogn Sci. 2010; 33(6):1087-1116. PMC: 2889674. DOI: 10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01041.x. View

Neath I, Guerard K, Jalbert A, Bireta T, Surprenant A . Irrelevant speech effects and statistical learning. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2009; 62(8):1551-9. DOI: 10.1080/17470210902795640. View

10.

Ohala D . The influence of sonority on children's cluster reductions. J Commun Disord. 1999; 32(6):397-421; quiz 421-2. DOI: 10.1016/s0021-9924(99)00018-0. View

11.

Onishi K, Chambers K, Fisher C . Learning phonotactic constraints from brief auditory experience. Cognition. 2002; 83(1):B13-23. DOI: 10.1016/s0010-0277(01)00165-2. View

12.

Plante E, Bahl M, Vance R, Gerken L . Beyond phonotactic frequency: presentation frequency effects word productions in specific language impairment. J Commun Disord. 2010; 44(1):91-102. PMC: 3010444. DOI: 10.1016/j.jcomdis.2010.07.005. View

13.

Richtsmeier P . Word-types, not word-tokens, facilitate extraction of phonotactic sequences by adults. Lab Phonol. 2021; 2(1):157-183. PMC: 8443219. DOI: 10.1515/labphon.2011.005. View

14.

Richtsmeier P . Phonological and Semantic Cues to Learning from Word-Types. Lab Phonol. 2017; 7(1). PMC: 5703426. DOI: 10.5334/labphon.39. View

15.

Richtsmeier P, Gerken L, Goffman L, Hogan T . Statistical frequency in perception affects children's lexical production. Cognition. 2009; 111(3):372-7. PMC: 2719879. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.02.009. View

16.

Richtsmeier P, Gerken L, Ohala D . Contributions of phonetic token variability and word-type frequency to phonological representations. J Child Lang. 2010; 38(5):951-78. PMC: 7359303. DOI: 10.1017/S0305000910000371. View

17.

Richtsmeier P, Goffman L . Perceptual statistical learning over one week in child speech production. J Commun Disord. 2017; 68:70-80. PMC: 5581257. DOI: 10.1016/j.jcomdis.2017.06.004. View

18.

Richtsmeier P, Moore M . Perceptual Learning and Production Practice Differentially Affect How Children Produce Novel Words. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2020; 63(10):3432-3442. DOI: 10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00077. View

19.

Saffran J, Aslin R, Newport E . Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science. 1996; 274(5294):1926-8. DOI: 10.1126/science.274.5294.1926. View

20.

Weber A, Cutler A . First-language phonotactics in second-language listening. J Acoust Soc Am. 2006; 119(1):597-607. DOI: 10.1121/1.2141003. View