Strengthening the Case for Stimulus-Specificity in Artificial Grammar Learning
No Evidence for Abstract Representations With Extended Exposure
Abstract
Different theories have been proposed regarding the nature of the mental representations formed as a result of implicit learning of sequential regularities. Some theories postulate abstract surface-independent representations, while other theories postulate stimulus-specific representations. This article reports three experiments investigating the development of abstract representations in artificial grammar learning (AGL), using a methodological approach developed by Conway and Christiansen (2006). In all the experiments, the number of blocks during the exposure phase was manipulated (6 blocks vs. 18 blocks of exposure to sequences). Experiments 1 and 2 investigated both visual and auditory learning where sequences were presented element-by-element. Experiment 3 investigated visual learning using a sequence-by-sequence presentation technique more commonly used in visual AGL studies. Extending previous research (Conway & Christiansen, 2006) and in support of stimulus-specific accounts, the results of the experiments showed that extended observational learning results in increased stimulus-specific knowledge rather than abstraction towards surface-independent representations.
References
(1995). Modality independence of implicitly learned grammatical knowledge. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 899–912.
(1991). Abstract analogies and abstracted grammars: Comments on Reber (1989) and Mathews et al. (1989). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 120, 316–323.
(2004). Visual feature learning in artificial grammar classification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 714–722.
(2002). Is implicit learning spared in amnesia? Rule abstraction and item familiarity in artificial grammar learning. Neuropsychologia, 40, 2185–2197.
(1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
(2005). Modality-constrained statistical learning of tactile, visual, and auditory sequences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31, 24–39.
(2006). Statistical learning within and between modalities: Pitting abstract against stimulus-specific representations. Psychological Science, 17, 905–912.
(1999). The power of statistical learning: No need for algebraic rules In The Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 114–119). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
(1999). Mapping across domains without feedback: A neural network model of transfer of implicit knowledge. Cognitive Science, 23, 53–82.
(2005). Measuring unconscious knowledge: Distinguishing structural knowledge and judgment knowledge. Psychological Research, 69, 338–351.
(2007). G*Power3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 175–191.
(2006). Neural correlates of artificial syntactic structure classification. NeuroImage, 32, 956–967.
(2003). The transfer of abstract principles governing complex adaptive systems. Cognitive Psychology, 46, 414–466.
(1999). Two mechanisms in implicit artificial grammar learning? Comment on Meulemans and Van der Linden (1997). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 25, 524–531.
(2001). Abstractionist and processing accounts of implicit learning. Cognitive Psychology, 42, 61–112.
(2003). Recollection, fluency, and the explicit/implicit distinction in artificial grammar learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 132, 551–565.
(2005). Implicit learning of non-local musical rules: Implicitly learning more than chunks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31, 1417–1432.
(2006). Differences in the type of musical regularity learnt in incidental- and intentional-learning conditions. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 59, 1725–1744.
(2007). How abstract is symbolic thought? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 33, 720–733.
(2004). An event-related fMRI study of artificial grammar learning in a balanced chunk strength design. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, 427–438.
(2006). Transfer in artificial grammar learning: The role of repetition information. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32, 707–715.
(1997). Representing artificial grammars: Transfer across stimulus forms and modalities. In , How implicit is implicit learning? (pp. 73–106). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
(1999). Reply to Seidenberg and Elman. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3, 289.
(1999). Rule learning by seven-month-old infants. Science, 283, 77–79.
(1989). Role of implicit and explicit processes in learning from examples: A synergistic effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 15, 1083–1100.
(1997). Associative chunk strength in artificial grammar learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 23, 1007–1028.
(2008). An attention-based associative account of adjacent and nonadjacent dependency learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34, 80–96.
(2001). Implicit learning out of the lab: The case of orthographic regularities. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 401–426.
(2006). Implicit learning and statistical learning: Two approaches, one phenomenon. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 233–238.
(2002). The self-organizing consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, 297–330.
(2004). Artificial syntactic violations activate Broca’s region. Cognitive Science, 28, 383–407.
(2004). Cautionary note on reporting eta-squared values from multifactor ANOVA designs. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 64, 916–924.
(2007). Theories of artificial grammar learning. Psychological Bulletin, 133, 227–244.
(1989). Implicit learning and tacit knowledge. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 118, 219–235.
(1996). Transfer in artificial grammar learning: A reevaluation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 125, 123–138.
(2002). Constraints on statistical language learning. Journal of Memory and Language, 47, 172–196.
(2003). Statistical language learning: Mechanisms and constraints. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12, 110–114.
(2007). Dog is a dog is a dog: Infant rule learning is not specific to language. Cognition, 105, 669–680.
(1999). Networks are not “hidden rules”. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3, 288–289.
(1990). Learning artificial grammars with competitive chunking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 16, 592–608.
(2005). Sources of confidence in implicit cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 12, 367–373.
(2001). Two modes of transfer in artificial grammar learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27, 614–639.
(2005). Abstract analogies and positive transfer in artificial grammar learning. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 59, 54–61.
(1993). Incidentally, things in general are particularly determined: An episodic-processing account of implicit learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 122, 227–248.
