ABSTRACT

Beginning with the classic work of Shepard, Hovland, & Jenkins (1961), Type II visual patterns (e.g., exemplars are large white squares OR small black triangles) have held a special place in investigations of human learning. Recent research on Type II linguistic patterns has shown that they are relatively frequent across languages and more frequent than Type IV family resemblance patterns (e.g., exemplars have 2 out of 3 defining features). Research has also shown that human infants are adept at learning Type II patterns from very few exemplars, but adult learning appears to be more mixed. Because no study had directly compared adults and infants, Experiment 1 tested both groups on the same input and test stimuli. Adults at best showed weak learning of one of two Type II patterns, but infants showed robust learning of both patterns. Experiment 2 contrasted adults’ ability to learn a Type II pattern with a Type IV pattern. Adults only showed learning of the latter, replicating previous research with different stimuli and testing procedures. Thus, adults are unable to learn a frequent linguistic pattern, one readily learned by infants. Implications for possible language learning differences between infants and adults are discussed.

摘要

从Shepard，Hovland和Jenkins（1961）的经典著作开始，II型视觉模式（例如，示例是大的白色正方形或小的黑色三角形）在人类学习研究中占有特殊的位置。第二类语言学的最新研究模式已经表明，它们在各种语言中相对频繁，并且比IV型家庭相似模式更频繁（例如，示例具有3个定义特征中的2个）。研究还表明，人类婴儿擅长从很少的范例中学习II型模式，但是成人学习似乎更加混杂。由于没有研究直接比较成人和婴儿，因此实验1在相同的输入和测试刺激下对两组进行了测试。成年人充其量表现出对两种II型模式之一的学习能力较弱，而婴儿表现出对两种模式的强大学习能力。实验2对比了成年人学习II型和IV型的能力。成人只表现出对后者的学习，复制了以前的研究，但采用了不同的刺激和测试程序。因此，成年人无法学习频繁的语言模式，婴儿很容易学到的一种。讨论了婴儿和成人可能的语言学习差异的含义。