TY - JOUR
T1 - Two for the price of one
T2 - Concurrent learning of words and phonotactic regularities from continuous speech
AU - Benitez, Viridiana L.
AU - Saffran, Jenny R.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Benitez, Saffran. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2021/6
Y1 - 2021/6
N2 - To acquire the words of their language, learners face the challenge of tracking regularities at multiple levels of abstraction from continuous speech. In the current study, we examined adults’ ability to track two types of regularities from a continuous artificial speech stream: the individual words in the speech stream (token level information), and a phonotactic pattern shared by a subset of those words (type level information). We additionally manipulated exposure time to the language to examine the relationship between the acquisition of these two regularities. Using a ratings test procedure, we found that adults can extract both the words in the language and their phonotactic patterns from continuous speech in as little as 3.5 minutes of listening time. Results from a 2AFC testing method provide converging evidence that adults rapidly learn both words and their phonotactic patterns. Together, the findings suggest that adults are capable of concurrently tracking regularities at multiple levels of abstraction from brief exposures to a continuous stream of speech.
AB - To acquire the words of their language, learners face the challenge of tracking regularities at multiple levels of abstraction from continuous speech. In the current study, we examined adults’ ability to track two types of regularities from a continuous artificial speech stream: the individual words in the speech stream (token level information), and a phonotactic pattern shared by a subset of those words (type level information). We additionally manipulated exposure time to the language to examine the relationship between the acquisition of these two regularities. Using a ratings test procedure, we found that adults can extract both the words in the language and their phonotactic patterns from continuous speech in as little as 3.5 minutes of listening time. Results from a 2AFC testing method provide converging evidence that adults rapidly learn both words and their phonotactic patterns. Together, the findings suggest that adults are capable of concurrently tracking regularities at multiple levels of abstraction from brief exposures to a continuous stream of speech.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0253039
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0253039
M3 - Article
C2 - 34115799
AN - SCOPUS:85107975715
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 16
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 6 June 2021
M1 - e0253039
ER -