Statistical learning of adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies among nonlinguistic sounds. Gebhart, A. L., Newport, E. L., & Aslin, R. N. Psychon Bull Rev, 16(3):486–490, 2009.
doi  abstract   bibtex   
Previous work has demonstrated that adults are capable of learning patterned relationships among adjacent syllables or tones in continuous sequences but not among nonadjacent syllables. However, adults are capable of learning patterned relationships among nonadjacent elements (segments or tones) if those elements are perceptually similar. The present study significantly broadens the scope of this previous work by demonstrating that adults are capable of encoding the same types of structure among unfamiliar nonlinguistic and nonmusical elements but only after much more extensive exposure. We presented participants with continuous streams of nonlinguistic noises and tested their ability to recognize patterned relationships. Participants learned the patterns among noises within adjacent groups but not within nonadjacent groups unless a perceptual similarity cue was added. This result provides evidence both that statistical learning mechanisms empower adults to extract structure from nonlinguistic and nonmusical elements and that perceptual similarity eases constraints on nonadjacent pattern learning. Supplemental materials for this article can be downloaded from pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.
@Article{Gebhart2009a,
  author      = {Gebhart, Andrea L. and Newport, Elissa L. and Aslin, Richard N.},
  journal     = {Psychon Bull Rev},
  title       = {Statistical learning of adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies among nonlinguistic sounds.},
  year        = {2009},
  number      = {3},
  pages       = {486--490},
  volume      = {16},
  abstract    = {Previous work has demonstrated that adults are capable of learning
	patterned relationships among adjacent syllables or tones in continuous
	sequences but not among nonadjacent syllables. However, adults are
	capable of learning patterned relationships among nonadjacent elements
	(segments or tones) if those elements are perceptually similar. The
	present study significantly broadens the scope of this previous work
	by demonstrating that adults are capable of encoding the same types
	of structure among unfamiliar nonlinguistic and nonmusical elements
	but only after much more extensive exposure. We presented participants
	with continuous streams of nonlinguistic noises and tested their
	ability to recognize patterned relationships. Participants learned
	the patterns among noises within adjacent groups but not within nonadjacent
	groups unless a perceptual similarity cue was added. This result
	provides evidence both that statistical learning mechanisms empower
	adults to extract structure from nonlinguistic and nonmusical elements
	and that perceptual similarity eases constraints on nonadjacent pattern
	learning. Supplemental materials for this article can be downloaded
	from pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.},
  doi         = {10.3758/PBR.16.3.486},
  keywords    = {Association Learning; Attention; Humans; Multilingualism; Phonetics; Pitch Perception; Recognition (Psychology); Speech Perception; Verbal Learning},
  language    = {eng},
  medline-pst = {ppublish},
  pmid        = {19451373},
  school      = {University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA. agebhart@bcs.rochester.edu},
  timestamp   = {2016.04.12},
}

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