The authors argue that Ambridge's radical exemplar account of language cannot clearly explain all syntactic priming evidence, such as inverse preference effects ("greater" priming for less frequent structures), and the contrast between short-lived lexical boost and long-lived abstract priming. Moreover, without recourse to a level of…

This commentary critiques Ambridge's radical exemplar model of language acquisition using research from the Longitudinal Study of Early Language, which has tracked the language development of 30+ children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) since 2002. This research has demonstrated that the children's capacity for abstraction at the grammatical…

Ambridge argues that there is widespread agreement among child language researchers that learners store linguistic abstractions. In this commentary the authors first argue that this assumption is incorrect; anti-representationalist/exemplar views are pervasive in theories of child language. Next, the authors outline what has been learned from this…

Psycholinguistic research has shown that the influence of abstract syntactic knowledge on performance is shaped by particular sentences that have been experienced. To explore this idea, the authors applied a connectionist model of sentence production to the development and use of abstract syntax. The model makes use of (a) error-based learning to…

Nouns are generally recalled and recognized better in memory tasks, although several theoretical positions and a variety of empirical tasks indicate the importance of verbs to sentences. To try to resolve this paradox, several experiments were designed to explore the efficiency of various sentence elements as cues in recognition memory. Subjects…

This study develops an information model based on the processes involved in reading and listening as a step toward constructing a single framework for understanding both these skills. Assuming that analogous structures and processes occur in reading and listening, similar experimental questions are asked in both areas. The model incorporates data…

This paper examines whether language development can be understood epigenetically in the same manner and based on the same principles with which Piaget has analyzed intellectual-cognitive development generally. The study is subdivided into four parts: (1) some principles in Piaget's system (the epigenetic principle, the genetic circle, and the…