The issue of the learnability of language contrasts the proposals of Chomsky (e.g. 1965), who claimed that the major part of language mastery involves innate domain-specific structures, to more recent nonnativist approaches, from the usage-based theories to Bayesian models, which contend that language acquisition rests on all-purpose domain-general learning processes. This chapter aims at examining the potential contribution to this issue of the literature on implicit learning, defined as the set of studies addressing the question of how participants learn in incidental conditions when they are faced with complex situations governed by arbitrary rules in laboratory settings. Overall, a striking parallelism emerges between usage-based approaches of language acquisition and implicit learning results, opening to a common research agenda.
(1995) Modality independence of implicitly learned grammatical knowledge. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21(4), 899–912.
Ambridge, B. & Lieven, E.V.M
(2011) Child language acquisition: Contrasting theoretical approaches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bannard, C., & Matthews, D
(2008) Stored word sequences in language learning: The effect of familiarity on children's repetition of four-word combinations. Psychological Science, 19(3), 241–248.
Berwick, R.C., Pietroski, P., Yankama, B., & Chomsky, N
(2011) Poverty of the stimulus revisited. Cognitive Science, 35(7), 1207–1242.
Bigand, E., Perruchet, P., & Boyer, M
(1998) Implicit learning of an artificial grammar of musical timbres. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive/Current Psychology of Cognition, 17(3), 577–600.
Brooks, L.R
(1978) Nonanalytic concept formation and memory for instances. In E. Rosch & B.B. Lloyd (Eds.), Cognition and categorization (pp. 169–211). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Brown, A.S
(1988) Encountering misspellings and spelling performance: Why wrong isn’t right. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 488–494.
Bybee, J
(2007) Frequency of use and the organization of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chomsky, N
(1965) Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Chomsky, N
(2011) Language and other cognitive systems. What is special about language? Language Learning and Development, 7(4), 263–278.
Christiansen, M.H., & Chater, N
(2008) Language as shaped by the brain. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(5), 489–558.
Conway, C.M., & Christiansen, M.H
(2005) Modality-constrained statistical learning of tactile, visual, and auditory sequences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31(1), 24–39.
Croft, W
(1991) Syntactic categories and grammatical relations: The cognitive organization of information. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.
Desmet, C., Poulin-Charronnat, B., Lalitte, P., & Perruchet, P
(2009) Implicit learning of nonlocal musical rules: A comment on Kuhn and Dienes (2005). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35(1), 299–305.
Diessel, H
2007Frequency effects in language acquisition, language use, and diachronic change. New Ideas in Psychology, 25, 108–127.
Dulany, D.E
(1991) Conscious representation and thought systems. In R.S. Wyer, & T.K. Srull (Eds.), Advances in social cognition (Vol. 4; pp. 97–120), Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Endress, A.D., & Mehler, J
(2009) The surprising power of statistical learning: When fragment knowledge leads to false memories of unheard words. Journal of Memory and Language, 60, 351–367.
Evans, N., & Levinson, S.C
(2009) The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32(5), 429–494.
Frensch, P.A., & Miner, C.S
(1994) Effects of presentation rate and individual differences in short-term memory capacity on an indirect measure of serial learning. Memory & Cognition, 22(1), 95–110.
Freudenthal, D., Pine, J.M., & Gobet, F
(2006) Modelling the development of children's use of optional infinitives in Dutch and English using MOSAIC. Cognitive Science, 30, 277–310.
Giroux, I., & Rey, A
(2009) Lexical and sublexical units in speech perception. Cognitive Science, 33(2), 260–272.
Gregg, K.R
(2003) The state of emergentism in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 19, 95–128.
Hauser, M.D., Chomsky, N., & Fitch, W.T
(2002) The faculty of language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?Science, 298, 1569–1579.
Hoffman, J., & Sebald, A
(2005) When obvious covariations are not even learned implicitly. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 17(4), 449–480.
Ibbotson, P
(2013) The scope of usage-based theory. Frontiers in Psycholology, 4(Article 255), 1–15.
Jiménez, L., & Méndez, C
(1999) Which attention is needed for implicit sequence learning?Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 25(1), 236–259.
Johnstone, T., & Shanks, D.R
(2001) Abstractionist and processing accounts of implicit learning. Cognitive Psychology, 42(1), 61–112.
Karmiloff-Smith, A
(1992) Beyond modularity: A developmental perspective on cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press/Bradford Books.
(1994) What is learned during automatization? The role of attention in constructing an instance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20(5), 1022–1050.
Lotz, A., & Kinder, A
(2006) Transfer in artificial grammar learning: The role of repetition information. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32(4), 707–715.
Mackintosh, N.J
(1997) Has the wheel turned full circle? Fifty years of learning theory, 1946-1996. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 50A(4), 879–898.
MacWhinney, B
(2004) A multiple process solution to the logical problem of language acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 31, 883–914.
MacWhinney, B
(2010) Language development. In M. Borstein & M. Lamb (Eds.), Developmental science: An advanced textbook (pp. 467–508). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
(1989) Role of implicit and explicit processes in learning from examples: A synergistic effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 15(6), 1083–1100.
Medin, D.L., Schaffer, M.M
(1978) Context theory of classification learning. Psychological Review, 85, 207–238.
(2012) Statistical-sequential learning in development. In Rebuschat & Williams (Eds.) (pp.13–54).
Monaghan, P
(2011) Design features of language emerge from general purpose learning mechanisms.
Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
. Boston, MA: Cognitive Science Society.
Newport, E.L
(2011) The modularity issue in language acquisition: A rapprochement? Comments on Gallistel and Chomsky. Language Learning and Development, 7(4), 279–286.
Onnis, L
(2012) The potential contribution of statistical learning to second language acquisition. In Rebuschat & Williams (Eds.) (pp. 203–235).
Pacton, S., & Perruchet, P
(2008) An attention-based associative account of adjacent and nonadjacent dependency learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34(1), 80–96.
Perfors, A., Tenenbaum, J.B., Griffiths, T.L., & Xu, F
(2011) A tutorial introduction to Bayesian models of cognitive development. Cognition, 120(3), 302–321.
Perfors, A., Tenenbaum, J.B., & Regier, T
(2011) The learnability of abstract syntactic principles. Cognition, 118, 306–338.
Perruchet, P
(2008) Implicit learning. In J. Byrne (Ed.), Cognitive psychology of memory (Vol.2): of Learning and memory: A comprehensive reference (pp. 597–621). Oxford: Elsevier.
Perruchet, P., & Desaulty, S
(2008) A role for backward transitional probabilities in word segmentation?Memory & Cognition, 36(7), 1299–1305.
Perruchet, P., Gallego, J., & Pacteau, C
(1992) A reinterpretation of some earlier evidence for abstractiveness of implicitly acquired knowledge. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 44A(2), 193–210.
Perruchet, P., Gallego, J., & Savy, I
(1990) A critical reappraisal of the evidence for unconscious abstraction of deterministic rules in complex experimental situations. Cognitive Psychology, 22(4), 493–516.
Perruchet, P., & Pacteau, C
(1990) Synthetic grammar learning: Implicit rule abstraction or explicit fragmentary knowledge?Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 119(3), 264–275.
Perruchet, P., & Pacton, S
(2006) Implicit learning and statistical learning: One phenomenon, two approaches. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(5), 233–238.
Perruchet, P., & Poulin-Charronnat, B
(2012a) Word segmentation: Trading the (new but poor) concept of statistical computation for the (old, but richer) associative approach. In Rebuschat & Williams (Eds.) (pp. 119–143).
Perruchet, P., & Poulin-Charronnat, B
(2012b) Beyond transitional probability computations: Extracting word-like units when only statistical information is available. Journal of Memory and Language, 66, 807–818.
Perruchet, P., Rey, A., Hivert, E., & Pacton, S
(2006) Do distractors interfere with memory for study pairs in associative recognition?Memory & Cognition, 34(5), 1046–1054.
Perruchet, P., & Vinter, A
(2002) The self-organizing consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, 297–388.
Pinker, S
(1996) Language learnability and language development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
(2010) The advantage of errorless learning for the acquisition of new concepts' labels in alcoholics. Psychological Medicine, 40(3), 497–502.
Pothos, E.M
(2007) Theories of artificial grammar learning. Psychological Bulletin, 133(2), 227–244.
Reber, A.S
(1967) Implicit learning of artificial grammars. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 6, 855–863.
Reber, A.S., & Lewis, S
(1977) Implicit learning: An analysis of the form and structure of a body of tacit knowledge. Cognition, 5, 333–361.
Redington, M., & Chater, N
(1998) Connectionist and statistical approaches to language acquisition: A distributional perspective. Language and Cognitive Processes, 12(2-3), 129–191.
Redington, M. & Chater, N
(2002) Knowledge representation and transfer in artificial grammar learning. In R. French & A. Cleeremans (Eds.), Implicit Learning and Consciousness. Hove: Psychology Press.
Rebuschat, P., & Williams, J
(Eds.)2012Statistical learning and language acquisition. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Rey, A., Perruchet, P., & Fagot, J
(2012) Centre-embedded structures are a by-product of associative learning and working memory constraints: Evidence from baboons (Papio Papio). Cognition, 123(1), 180–184.
Roediger, H.L., & Marsh, E.J
(2005) The positive and negative consequences of multiple-choice testing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31, 1155–1159.
Saffran, J.R., Aslin, R.N., & Newport, E.L
(1996) Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science, 274(5294), 1926–1928.
(1999) Statistical learning of tone sequences by human infants and adults. Cognition, 70(1), 27–52.
Seidenberg, M.S., & MacDonald, M.C
(1999) A probabilistic constraints approach to language acquisition and processing. Cognitive Science, 23, 569–588.
Servan-Schreiber, E., & Anderson, J.R
(1990) Learning artificial grammars with competitive chunking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 16(4), 592–608.
Shanks, D.R
(2005) Implicit learning. In K. Lamberts & R. Goldstone (Eds.), Handbook of cognition (pp. 202–220). London: Sage.
Shanks, D.R., Johnstone, T., & Staggs, L
(1997) Abstraction processes in artificial grammar learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 50A(1), 216–252.
Skinner, B.F
(1957) Verbal behavior. New York, NY: Appleton.
Smith, K
(2012) Evolutionary perspectives on statistical learning. In Rebuschat & Williams (Eds.) (pp. 409–431).
Stadler, M.A
(1995) Role of attention in implicit learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21(3), 674–685.
Thompson, S.P., & Newport, E.L
(2007) Statistical learning of syntax: The role of transitional probability. Language Learning and Development, 3(1), 1–42.
Thorndike, E.L
(1932) The fundamentals of learning. New York, NY: Teachers College, Columbia University.
Tillmann, B., & McAdams, S
(2004) Implicit learning of musical timbre sequences: Statistical regularities confronted with acoustical (dis)similarities. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30(5), 1131–1142.
Tily, H., Frank, M.C., & Jaeger, T.F
(2011) The learnability of constructed languages reflects typological patterns.
Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
.
Tomasello, M
(2003) Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Williams, J.N., & Kuribara, C
(2008) Comparing a nativist and emergentist approach to the initial stage of SLA: An investigation of Japanese scrambling. Lingua, 118, 522–553.
Williams, J.N., & Rebuschat, P
(2012) Statistical learning and syntax: What can be learned, and what difference does meaning make? In Rebuschat & Williams (Eds.) (pp. 237–264).
Witt, A., & Vinter, A
(2012) Artificial grammar learning in children: Abstraction of rules or sensitivity to perceptual features?Psychological Research, 76(1), 97–110.
Wright, R.L., & Burton, A.M
(1995) Implicit learning of an invariant: Just say no. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 48A(3), 783–796.
Wu, R., & Kirkham, N.Z
(2010) No two cues are alike: Depth of learning during infancy is dependent on what orients attention. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 107(2), 118–136.
Cited by
Cited by 9 other publications
Adolphe Rondal, Jean
2017. Peut-on se dispenser des catégories grammaticales, des hiérarchies et des règles formelles dans l’acquisition de la syntaxe en langue naturelle ?. L’Année psychologique 117:01 ► pp. 1 ff.
Adolphe Rondal, Jean
2017. Peut-on se dispenser des catégories grammaticales, des hiérarchies et des règles formelles dans l’acquisition de la syntaxe en langue naturelle ?. L’Année psychologique► pp. 1 ff.
Rondal, Jean-Adolphe
2017. Peut-on se dispenser des catégories grammaticales, des hiérarchies et des règles formelles dans l’acquisition de la syntaxe en langue naturelle ?. L’Année psychologique Vol. 117:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Andringa, Sible & Patrick Rebuschat
2015. NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE STUDY OF IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT LEARNING. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 37:2 ► pp. 185 ff.
Hulstijn, Jan H.
2019. An Individual‐Differences Framework for Comparing Nonnative With Native Speakers: Perspectives From BLC Theory. Language Learning 69:S1 ► pp. 157 ff.
Rondal, Jean
2017. Morphosyntactic Development and Implicit Learning in Down Syndrome and Related Conditions. Journal of Intellectual Disability - Diagnosis and Treatment 5:1 ► pp. 24 ff.
Suzuki, Yuichi & Robert DeKeyser
2017. The Interface of Explicit and Implicit Knowledge in a Second Language: Insights From Individual Differences in Cognitive Aptitudes. Language Learning 67:4 ► pp. 747 ff.
[no author supplied]
2018. Références bibliographiques. In Le mythe de l'innéité du langage, ► pp. 127 ff.
[no author supplied]
2020. References. In Cognitive Mechanisms of Learning, ► pp. 261 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.