From limited evidence, children track the regularities of their language impressively fast and they infer generalized rules that apply to novel instances. This study investigated what drives the inductive leap from memorizing specific items and statistical regularities to extracting abstract rules. We propose an innovative entropy model that…

Children learning the inflections of their native language show the ability to generalize beyond the perceptual particulars of the examples they are exposed to. The phenomenon of "rule learning"--quick learning of abstract regularities from exposure to a limited set of stimuli--has become an important model system for understanding generalization…

Previous work demonstrated that 9-month-olds who were familiarized with 3-syllable strings consistent with both a broader (AAB or ABA) and narrower (AA"di" or A"di"A) generalization made only the latter. Because the narrower generalization is a subset of the broader one, any example that is consistent with the broader generalization but not the…

An infant's ability to process auditory signals presented in rapid succession (i.e. rapid auditory processing abilities [RAP]) has been shown to predict differences in language outcomes in toddlers and preschool children. Early deficits in RAP abilities may serve as a behavioral marker for language-based learning disabilities. The purpose of this…

The nonword repetition (NWR) test has been shown to be a good predictor of children's vocabulary size. NWR performance has been explained using phonological working memory, which is seen as a critical component in the learning of new words. However, no detailed specification of the link between phonological working memory and long-term memory…

Previous research has shown that infants begin to display sensitivities to language-specific phonotactics and probabilistic phonotactics at around 9 months of age. However, certain phonotactic patterns have not yet been examined, such as contrast neutralization, in which phonemic contrasts are neutralized typically in syllable- or word-final…

Examines the effects of a first-language orthographic system on second-language (L2) word recognition strategies. Lexical judgment tests using Japanese syllabic script were given to native English and native Chinese learners of Japanese. Results indicated that Chinese speakers relied more on visual information in L2 Japanese words, whereas the…