The surprising power of statistical learning: When fragment knowledge leads to false memories of unheard words

Word-segmentation, that is, the extraction of words from fluent speech, is one of the first problems language learners have to master. It is generally believed that statistical processes, in particular those tracking “transitional probabilities” (TPs), are important to word-segmentation. However, th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of memory and language 2009-04, Vol.60 (3), p.351-367
Main Authors: Endress, Ansgar D., Mehler, Jacques
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition & reasoning
Cue integration
Cues
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Language acquisition
Language Fluency
Learning. Memory
Linguistics
Memory
Perceptual cues to word learning
Phonemes
Probability
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Statistical Analysis
Statistical learning
Syllables
Transition probabilities
Word Frequency
Word segmentation
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Summary:Word-segmentation, that is, the extraction of words from fluent speech, is one of the first problems language learners have to master. It is generally believed that statistical processes, in particular those tracking “transitional probabilities” (TPs), are important to word-segmentation. However, there is evidence that word forms are stored in memory formats differing from those that can be constructed from TPs, i.e. in terms of the positions of phonemes and syllables within words. In line with this view, we show that TP-based processes leave learners no more familiar with items heard 600 times than with “phantom-words” not heard at all if the phantom-words have the same statistical structure as the occurring items. Moreover, participants are more familiar with phantom-words than with frequent syllable combinations. In contrast, minimal prosody-like perceptual cues allow learners to recognize actual items. TPs may well signal co-occurring syllables; this, however, does not seem to lead to the extraction of word-like units. We review other, in particular prosodic, cues to word-boundaries which may allow the construction of positional memories while not requiring language-specific knowledge, and suggest that their contributions to word-segmentation need to be reassessed.
ISSN:0749-596X
1096-0821
DOI:10.1016/j.jml.2008.10.003