Abstract
Three experiments asked whether phonotactic regularities not present in English could be acquired by adult English speakers from brief listening experience. Subjects listened to consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) syllables displaying restrictions on consonant position. Responses in a later speeded repetition task revealed rapid learning of (a) first-order regularities in which consonants were restricted to particular positions (e.g. [bæp] not *[pæb]), and (b) second-order regularities in which consonant position depended on the adjacent vowel (e.g. [bæp] or [pIb], not *[pæb] or *[bIp]). No evidence of learning was found for second-order regularities in which consonant position depended on speaker's voice. These results demonstrated that phonotactic constraints are rapidly learned from listening experience and that some types of contingencies (consonant-vowel) are more easily learned than others (consonant-voice).
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | B13-B23 |
Journal | Cognition |
Volume | 83 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2002 |
Keywords
- Phonotactic learning
- Speech perception
- Statistical learning
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
- Language and Linguistics
- Developmental and Educational Psychology
- Linguistics and Language
- Cognitive Neuroscience