Department of Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Top Cogn Sci. 2019 Jul;11(3):504-519. doi: 10.1111/tops.12428. Epub 2019 May 5.
The role of distributional information in language learning, and learning more generally, has been studied extensively in both the statistical learning and the implicit learning literatures. Despite the similarity in research questions, the two literatures have remained largely separate. Here, we draw on findings from the two traditions to critically evaluate two developmental predictions that are central to both. The first is the question of age invariance: Does learning improve during development or is it fully developed in infancy? The combined findings suggest that both implicit and statistical learning improve during childhood, contra the age invariance prediction. This raises questions about the role of implicit statistical learning (ISL) in explaining the age-related deterioration in language learning: Children's better language learning abilities cannot be attributed to their improved distributional learning skills. The second issue we examine is the predictive relation to language outcomes: Does variation in learning predict variation in language outcomes? While there is evidence for such links, there is concern in both research traditions about the reliability of the tasks used with children. We present data suggesting that commonly used statistical learning measures may not capture stable individual differences in children, undermining their utility for assessing the link to language outcomes in developmental samples. The evaluation of both predictions highlights the empirical parallels between the implicit and statistical learning literatures, and the need to better integrate their developmental investigation. We go on to discuss several of the open challenges facing the study of ISL during development.
分布信息在语言学习中的作用，以及更普遍地在学习中的作用，在统计学习和内隐学习文献中都得到了广泛的研究。尽管研究问题相似，但这两个文献仍然基本分开。在这里，我们借鉴了这两个传统的发现，批判性地评估了两个对两者都至关重要的发展预测。第一个是年龄不变性问题：学习是在发展过程中提高还是在婴儿期就完全发展了？综合研究结果表明，内隐学习和统计学习都在儿童期得到了提高，与年龄不变性预测相反。这就提出了一个问题，即内隐统计学习（ISL）在解释语言学习随年龄增长而恶化中的作用：儿童更好的语言学习能力不能归因于他们分布学习技能的提高。我们研究的第二个问题是与语言结果的预测关系：学习中的变化是否可以预测语言结果中的变化？虽然有证据表明存在这种联系，但在这两个研究传统中，人们都对儿童使用的任务的可靠性存在担忧。我们提供的数据表明，常用的统计学习测量方法可能无法捕捉儿童的稳定个体差异，从而削弱了它们在发展性样本中评估与语言结果的联系的效用。对这两个预测的评估突出了内隐学习和统计学习文献之间的经验相似性，以及需要更好地整合它们的发展研究。我们接着讨论了在发展过程中研究 ISL 面临的几个开放性挑战。
