Monte-Ordoño Júlia, Toro Juan M
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, C. Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27, CP 08005, Barcelona, Spain.
ICREA, Pg. Lluís Companys, 23, 08010, Barcelona, Spain.
Psychol Res. 2019 Mar;83(2):384-394. doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1036-1. Epub 2018 Jun 11.
Humans learn the rules that govern how the elements of their language are organized over an input that is often not homogeneous (it might contain noise, or even include rules from different linguistic systems, as it might be the case for bilinguals). In the present study we explore the conditions under which participants can learn an abstract rule when it is presented in a heterogeneous context. Results from six experiments show that listeners can learn a token-independent rule even if it is presented together with some exemplars that implement a different regularity (Experiment 1a and 1b). In fact, learning rules from an input containing several patterns does not seem to differ from learning them from an input containing only one (Experiment 1c). More surprisingly, we observed that listeners can even learn an abstract rule that is only implemented over 10% of the exemplars that compose a familiarization stream (Experiments 2a and 2b). When the proportion of tokens implementing the target and the non-target rules is balanced, we did not observe any learning (Experiment 3). Our results suggest that listeners use differences in relative frequency to keep separate linguistic rules apart. This allows them to learn different abstract regularities from a non-homogeneous linguistic signal.
人类通过一种往往并非同质的输入（可能包含噪音，甚至包括来自不同语言系统的规则，双语者的情况可能就是如此）来学习支配其语言元素组织方式的规则。在本研究中，我们探讨了在异质语境中呈现抽象规则时，参与者能够学习该规则的条件。六个实验的结果表明，即使抽象规则与一些体现不同规律的示例一起呈现，听众也能够学习与示例无关的规则（实验1a和1b）。事实上，从包含多种模式的输入中学习规则，与从仅包含一种模式的输入中学习规则似乎并无差异（实验1c）。更令人惊讶的是，我们观察到听众甚至能够学习一种仅在构成熟悉流的10%的示例中得以体现的抽象规则（实验2a和2b）。当体现目标规则和非目标规则的示例比例达到平衡时，我们并未观察到任何学习现象（实验3）。我们的研究结果表明，听众利用相对频率的差异来区分不同的语言规则。这使他们能够从非同质的语言信号中学习不同的抽象规律。
