Less is more: Depleting cognitive resources enhances language learning abilities in adults.

It is still an unresolved question why adults do not learn languages as effortlessly as children do. We tested the hypothesis that the higher cognitive control abilities in adults interfere with implicit learning mechanisms relevant for language acquisition. Across 2 days, Dutch-speaking adults were asked to rapidly recite novel syllable strings in which, unannounced to the participants, the allowed position of a phoneme depended on another adjacent phoneme. Their cognitive control system was either depleted or not depleted prior to learning, after performing an individually tailored dual working-memory task under high or low cognitive load. A third group did not perform any cognitive task prior to training. Speech error analyses revealed stronger (and faster) learning of the novel phoneme combination constraints in the cognitively depleted group compared with the other two groups. This indicates that late-developing cognitive control abilities, and in particular attentional control, constitute an important antagonist of implicit learning behavior relevant for language acquisition. These findings offer novel insights into developmental changes in implicit learning mechanisms and how to alter them temporarily in order to improve language skills in adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

On the limits of shared syntactic representations: When word order variation blocks priming between an artificial language and Dutch.

Several studies used artificial language (AL) learning paradigms to investigate structural priming between languages in early phases of learning. The presence of such priming would indicate that these languages share syntactic representations. Muylle et al. (2020a) found similar priming of transitives and ditransitives between Dutch (SVO order) and an AL with either SVO or SOV order. However, it is unclear whether such sharing would occur if the AL allows both the same and different word order as the L1. Indeed, the presence of a (easy to share) similar structure might block (i.e., impede) sharing of a less similar structure. Here, we report 2 experiments that each tested 48 Dutch native speakers on an AL that allowed both SVO and SOV order in transitive and ditransitive sentences. We assessed both within-AL and AL-Dutch priming. We predicted (a) priming of both structure and word order within the AL, and (b) weaker AL-Dutch priming from SOV versus SVO sentences due to the presence of SVO sentences in the AL. Indeed, cross-linguistic priming was significantly weaker in SOV versus SVO conditions, but the blocking hypothesis was only supported by the transitive results. Unexpectedly, in the absence of a condition with verb overlap between prime and target sentences, no priming was found in AL and Dutch target conditions without verb overlap (Experiment 1), but priming emerged when a verb overlap condition was added (Experiment 2). This finding suggests that lexical repetition across sentences is crucial to establish abstract syntactic representations during early L2 acquisition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

English norming data for 423 short animated action movie clips.

We present a set of 423 animated action movie clips of 3 s, that we expect to be useful for a variety of experimental paradigms in which sentences are elicited. The clips either depict an action involving only an agent (intransitive action, e.g., a policeman that is sleeping), an action involving an agent and a patient (transitive action, e.g., a policeman shooting a pirate), or an action involving an agent, an object, and a beneficiary (ditransitive action, e.g., a policeman showing a hat to a pirate). In order to verify that the movie clips (when presented with a verb) indeed elicit intransitive, transitive, or ditransitive sentences, we conducted a written norming study with native speakers of American English. We asked 203 participants to describe the clips with a sentence using a given verb. The movie clips elicited valid responses in 90% of the cases. Moreover, there was an active response bias for the transitives, and a prepositional object dative (PO-dative) response bias for the ditransitives. This bias differed between verbs in the ditransitives. A list is provided with all clips and the proportion of each response type for each clip. The clips are stored as MP4-files and can be freely downloaded.

The different time course of phonotactic constraint learning in children and adults: Evidence from speech errors.

Speech errors typically respect the speaker's implicit knowledge of language-wide phonotactics (e.g., /t/ cannot be a syllable onset in the English language). Previous work demonstrated that adults can learn novel experimentally induced phonotactic constraints by producing syllable strings in which the allowable position of a phoneme depends on another phoneme within the sequence (e.g., /t/ can only be an onset if the medial vowel is /i/), but not earlier than the second day of training. Thus far, no work has been done with children. In the current 4-day experiment, a group of Dutch-speaking adults and 9-year-old children were asked to rapidly recite sequences of novel word forms (e.g., kieng nief siet hiem) that were consistent with phonotactics of the spoken Dutch language. Within the procedure of the experiment, some consonants (i.e., /t/ and /k/) were restricted to the onset or coda position depending on the medial vowel (i.e., /i/ or "ie" vs. /øː/ or "eu"). Speech errors in adults revealed a learning effect for the novel constraints on the second day of learning, consistent with earlier findings. A post hoc analysis at the trial level showed that learning was statistically reliable after an exposure of 120 sequence trials (including a consolidation period). However, children started learning the constraints already on the first day. More precisely, the effect appeared significantly after an exposure of 24 sequences. These findings indicate that children are rapid implicit learners of novel phonotactics, which bears important implications for theorizing about developmental sensitivities in language learning. (PsycINFO Database Record