Multiword units play an important role in language learning and use. It was proposed that learning from such units can facilitate mastery of certain grammatical relations, and that children and adults differ in their use of multiword units during learning, contributing to their varying language-learning trajectories. Accordingly, adults learn gender agreement better when encouraged to learn from multiword units. Previous work has not examined two core predictions of this proposal: (1) that children also benefit from initial exposure to multiword units, and (2) that their learning patterns reflect a greater reliance on multiword units compared to adults. We test both predictions using an artificial-language. As predicted, both children and adults benefit from early exposure to multiword units. In addition, when exposed to unsegmented input – adults show better learning of nouns compared to article-noun pairings, but children do not, a pattern consistent with adults’ predicted tendency to focus less on multiword units.

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从大开始：单元大小对儿童和成人语言学习的影响

多词单元在语言学习和使用中起着重要作用。有人提出，从这些单元中学习可以促进对某些语法关系的掌握，并且儿童和成人在学习过程中对多词单元的使用有所不同，这导致了他们不同的语言学习轨迹。因此，当鼓励成年人从多词单元中学习时，成年人会更好地学习性别一致性。以前的工作没有检验该提议的两个核心预测：（1）儿童也从最初接触多词单元中受益，（2）与成人相比，他们的学习模式反映了对多词单元的更大依赖。我们使用人工语言测试这两个预测。正如预测的那样，儿童和成人都受益于早期接触多字单元。此外，