Statistical learning and spelling: Evidence from an incidental learning experiment with children.

Samara, Anna ORCID: 0000-0001-6503-5181, Singh, Daniela and Wonnacott, Elizabeth ORCID: 0000-0002-3261-7131 (2019) Statistical learning and spelling: Evidence from an incidental learning experiment with children. Cognition, 182. pp. 25-30.

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Abstract

Statistical learning processes-akin to those seen in spoken language acquisition (Saffran et al., 1996)-may be important for the development of literacy, particularly spelling development. One previous study provides direct evidence for this process: Samara and Caravolas (2014) demonstrated that 7-year-olds generalize over permissible letter contexts (graphotactics) in novel word-like stimuli under incidental learning conditions. However, unlike in actual orthography, conditioning contexts in Samara and Caravolas' (2014) stimuli comprised perfectly correlated, redundant cues in both word-initial and word-final positions. The current study explores whether 7-year-olds can extract such constraints in the absence of redundant cues. Since theories of literacy development predict greater sensitivity to restrictions within word-final units, we also contrast learning in word-initial and word-final units. We demonstrate that-for 7-year-old learners in two linguistic contexts (English and Turkish)-there is substantial evidence for the learning of both types of restriction.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Humans, Bayes Theorem, Child Behavior, Probability Learning, Psycholinguistics, Reading, Child, Female, Male
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	10 Sep 2018 07:22
Last Modified:	19 Jan 2023 01:25
DOI:	10.1016/j.cognition.2018.09.005
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3025918