Gómez Rebecca L
Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721-0068, USA
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2017 Jan 5;372(1711). doi: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0054.
Statistical structure abounds in language. Human infants show a striking capacity for using statistical learning (SL) to extract regularities in their linguistic environments, a process thought to bootstrap their knowledge of language. Critically, studies of SL test infants in the minutes immediately following familiarization, but long-term retention unfolds over hours and days, with almost no work investigating retention of SL. This creates a critical gap in the literature given that we know little about how single or multiple SL experiences translate into permanent knowledge. Furthermore, different memory systems with vastly different encoding and retention profiles emerge at different points in development, with the underlying memory system dictating the fidelity of the memory trace hours later. I describe the scant literature on retention of SL, the learning and retention properties of memory systems as they apply to SL, and the development of these memory systems. I propose that different memory systems support retention of SL in infant and adult learners, suggesting an explanation for the slow pace of natural language acquisition in infancy. I discuss the implications of developing memory systems for SL and suggest that we exercise caution in extrapolating from adult to infant properties of SL.This article is part of the themed issue 'New frontiers for statistical learning in the cognitive sciences'.
语言中充满了统计结构。人类婴儿在利用统计学习（SL）从其语言环境中提取规律方面表现出惊人的能力，这一过程被认为是他们语言知识的基础。至关重要的是，对统计学习的研究在婴儿熟悉之后的几分钟内对其进行测试，但长期记忆的形成要经过数小时甚至数天，而且几乎没有研究调查统计学习的记忆保持情况。鉴于我们对单次或多次统计学习经历如何转化为永久性知识知之甚少，这在文献中造成了一个关键空白。此外，具有截然不同的编码和记忆保持特征的不同记忆系统在发育的不同阶段出现，底层记忆系统决定了数小时后记忆痕迹的保真度。我描述了关于统计学习记忆保持的稀少文献、记忆系统在应用于统计学习时的学习和记忆保持特性，以及这些记忆系统的发展。我提出不同的记忆系统支持婴儿和成人学习者对统计学习的记忆保持，这为婴儿期自然语言习得的缓慢进程提供了一种解释。我讨论了记忆系统发展对统计学习的影响，并建议我们在从成人的统计学习特性推断婴儿的特性时要谨慎。本文是主题为“认知科学中统计学习的新前沿”特刊的一部分。
