Changing Structures in Midstream: Learning Along the Statistical Garden Path. Gebhart, A. L., Aslin, R. N., & Newport, E. L. Cognitive Science, 33(6):1087–1116, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2009.
doi  abstract   bibtex   
Previous studies of auditory statistical learning have typically presented learners with sequential structural information that is uniformly distributed across the entire exposure corpus. Here we present learners with nonuniform distributions of structural information by altering the organization of trisyllabic nonsense words at midstream. When this structural change was unmarked by low-level acoustic cues, or even when cued by a pitch change, only the first of the two structures was learned. However, both structures were learned when there was an explicit cue to the midstream change or when exposure to the second structure was tripled in duration. These results demonstrate that successful extraction of the structure in an auditory statistical learning task reduces the ability to learn subsequent structures, unless the presence of two structures is marked explicitly or the exposure to the second is quite lengthy. The mechanisms by which learners detect and use changes in distributional information to maintain sensitivity to multiple structures are discussed from both behavioral and computational perspectives.
@ARTICLE{Gebhart2009,
  author = {Gebhart, Andrea L. and Aslin, Richard N. and Newport, Elissa L.},
  title = {Changing Structures in Midstream: Learning Along the Statistical
	Garden Path},
  journal = {Cognitive Science},
  year = {2009},
  volume = {33},
  pages = {1087--1116},
  number = {6},
  abstract = {Previous studies of auditory statistical learning have typically presented
	learners with sequential structural information that is uniformly
	distributed across the entire exposure corpus. Here we present learners
	with nonuniform distributions of structural information by altering
	the organization of trisyllabic nonsense words at midstream. When
	this structural change was unmarked by low-level acoustic cues, or
	even when cued by a pitch change, only the first of the two structures
	was learned. However, both structures were learned when there was
	an explicit cue to the midstream change or when exposure to the second
	structure was tripled in duration. These results demonstrate that
	successful extraction of the structure in an auditory statistical
	learning task reduces the ability to learn subsequent structures,
	unless the presence of two structures is marked explicitly or the
	exposure to the second is quite lengthy. The mechanisms by which
	learners detect and use changes in distributional information to
	maintain sensitivity to multiple structures are discussed from both
	behavioral and computational perspectives.},
  doi = {10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01041.x},
  issn = {1551-6709},
  keywords = {Statistical learning, Word segmentation, Primacy, Representation},
  publisher = {Blackwell Publishing Ltd},
}

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