Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-grxwn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-12T03:48:08.709Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE IMPLICIT LEARNING OF MAPPINGS BETWEEN FORMS AND CONTEXTUALLY DERIVED MEANINGS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2011

Janny H. C. Leung  and
John N. Williams
Janny H. C. Leung*
Affiliation:
The University of Hong Kong
John N. Williams
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
*
*Address correspondence to: Janny Leung, School of English, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong; e-mail: jannyleung@hku.hk.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The traditional implicit learning literature has focused primarily on the abstraction of statistical regularities in form-form connections. More attention has been recently directed toward the implicit learning of form-meaning connections, which might be crucial in the acquisition of natural languages. The current article reports evidence for implicit learning of a mapping between a novel set of determiners and thematic roles, obtained using a newly developed reaction time methodology. The results conclude that contextually derived form-meaning connections might be implicitly learned.

Type
Research Articles
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 33 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alanen, R. (1995). Input enhancement and rule presentation in second language acquisition. In Schmidt, R. (Ed.), Attention and awareness in foreign language learning and teaching (pp. 259–302). Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Bates, E., & MacWhinney, B. (1989). Functionalism and the competition model. In MacWhinney, B. & Bates, E. (Eds.), The crosslinguistic study of sentence processing (pp. 3–73). New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bickerton, D. (1999). Creole languages, the language bioprogram hypothesis, and language acquisition. In Ritchie, W. C. & Bhatia, T. K. (Eds.), Handbook of child language acquisition (pp. 195–220). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bickerton, D. (2001). Okay for content words, but what about functional items? Commentary on Bloom: How children learn the meanings of words. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 1104–1105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, P. (2000). How children learn the meanings of words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, P. (2001). Précis of how children learn the meanings of words. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 1095–1103.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chun, M. M. (2000). Contextual cueing of visual attention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 170–178.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DeKeyser, R. M. (1995). Learning second language grammar rules: An experiment with a miniature linguistic system. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 17, 379–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Destrebecqz, A., & Cleeremans, A. (2001). Can sequence learning be implicit? New evidence with the process dissociation procedure. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 8, 343–350.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dowty, D. (1991). Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language, 67, 547–619.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, N. C. (1994). Vocabulary acquisition: The implicit ins and outs of explicit cognitive mediation. In Ellis, N. C. (Ed.), Implicit and explicit learning of languages (pp. 211–282). London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Ellis, N. C. (2006). Selective attention and transfer phenomena in L2 acquisition: Contingency, cue competition, salience, interference, overshadowing, blocking, and perceptual learning. Applied Linguistics, 27, 164–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, R. (2005). Measuring implicit and explicit knowledge of a second language: A psychometric study. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 141–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frensch, P. A., Haider, H., Runger, D., Neugebauer, U., Voigt, S., & Werg, J. (2002). Verbal report of incidentally experienced environmental regularity: The route from implicit learning to verbal expression of what has been learned. In Jiménez, L. (Ed.), Attention and implicit learning (pp. 335–366). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Gabrieli, J. D. E., Cohen, N. J., & Corkin, S. (1988). The impaired learning of semantic knowledge following medial temporal lobe resection. Brain and Cognition, 7, 157–177.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gabrieli, J. D. E., Keane, M., Zarella, M. M., & Poldrack, R. A. (1997). Preservation of implicit memory for new associations in global amnesia. Psychological Science, 8, 326–329.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goujon, A., Didierjean, A., & Marmèche, E. (2007). Contextual cueing based on specific and categorical properties of the environment. Visual Cognition, 15, 257–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gupta, P., & Dell, G. S. (1999). The emergence of language from serial order and procedural memory. In MacWhinney, B. (Ed.), The emergence of language (pp. 447–481). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Haist, F., Musen, G., & Squire, L. (1991). Intact priming of words and nonwords in amnesia. Psychobiology, 19, 275–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hama, M., & Leow, R. P. (2010). Learning without awareness revisited: Extending Williams (2005). Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 32, 465–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirst, W., Phelps, E. A., Johnson, M. K., & Volpe, B. T. (1988). Amnesia and second language learning. Brain and Cognition, 8, 105–116.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hulstijn, J. H. (2002). Towards a unified account of the representation, processing and acquisition of second language knowledge. Second Language Research, 18, 193–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jiang, Y., & Chun, M. M. (2003). Contextual cueing: Reciprocal influences between attention and implicit learning. In Jiménez, L. (Ed.), Attention and implicit learning (pp. 277–296). Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jiménez, L., Vaquero, J. M. K., & Lupianez, J. (2006). Qualitative differences between implicit and explicit sequence learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32, 475–490.Google ScholarPubMed
Krashen, S. D., & Terrell, T. D. (1983). The natural approach: Language acquisition in the classroom. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Lambert, A. J., & Sumich, A. L. (1996). Spatial orienting controlled without awareness: A semantically-based implicit learning effect. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 49, 490–518.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lambert, T. (2002). Visual orienting, learning and conscious awareness. In Jiménez, L. (Ed.), Attention and implicit learning (pp. 253–275). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Leow, R. P. (2000). A study of the role of awareness in foreign language behavior: Aware versus unaware learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22, 557–584.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leung, J., & Williams, J. N. (2010). Constraints on implicit learning of grammatical form-meaning connections. Manuscript submitted for publication.Google Scholar
Lovibond, P. F., & Shanks, D. R. (2002). The role of awareness in Pavlovian conditioning: Empirical evidence and theoretical implications. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 28, 3–26.Google ScholarPubMed
Manns, J. R., Clark, R. E., & Squire, L. R. (2002). Standard delay eye blink classical conditioning is independent of awareness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 28, 32–37.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. (1960). Word and object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Reber, A. S. (1967). Implicit learning of artificial grammars. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 6, 855–863.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reber, A. S., & Allen, R. (1978). Analogic and abstraction strategies in synthetic grammar learning: A functionalist interpretation. Cognition, 6, 189–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, P. (1996). Learning simple and complex second language rules under implicit, incidental, rule-search, and instructed conditions. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 27–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, P. (1997). Individual differences and the fundamental similarity of implicit and explicit adult second language learning. Language Learning, 47, 45–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, P. (2002). Effects of individual differences in intelligence, aptitude and working memory on adult incidental SLA: A replication and extension of Reber, Walkenfeld and Hernstadt, 1991. In Robinson, Peter (Ed.), Individual differences and instructed language learning (pp. 211–266). Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roediger, H. L. (1990). Implicit memory: Retention without remembering. American Psychologist, 45, 1043–1056.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosa, E. M., & Leow, R. P. (2004). Awareness, different learning conditions, and second language development. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 269–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosa, E., & O’Neill, M. D. (1999). Explicitness, intake, and the issue of awareness. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21, 511–556.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saffran, J. R. (2001). The use of predictive dependencies in language learning. Journal of Memory and Language, 44, 493–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saffran, J. R., Newport, E. L., & Aslin, R. N. (1996). Word segmentation: The role of distributional cues. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 606–621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, R. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 11, 129–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, R. (2001) Attention. In Robinson, P. (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 3–32). New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shanks, D. R., & St. John, M. F. (1994). Characteristics of dissociable human learning systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 17, 367–447.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, L., & Yu, C. (2008). Infants rapidly learn word-referent mappings via cross-situational statistics. Cognition, 106, 1558–1568.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Squire, L. (1992). Memory and the hippocampus: A synthesis from findings with rats, monkeys, and humans. Psychological Review, 99, 195–231.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tanenhaus, M. K., Spivey-Knowlton, M., Eberhard, K., & Sedivy, J. (1995). Integration of visual and linguistic information during spoken language comprehension. Science, 268, 1632–1634.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vargha-Khadem, F., Gadian, D. G., Watkins, K. E., Connelly, A., Van Paesschen, W., & Mishkin, M. (1997). Differential effects of early hippocampal pathology on episodic and semantic memory. Science, 277, 376–380.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Williams, J. N. (2004). Implicit learning of form-meaning connections. In VanPatten, B., Williams, J., Rott, S., & Overstreet, M. (Eds.), Form meaning connections in second language acquisition (pp. 203–218). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Williams, J. N. (2005). Learning without awareness. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 269–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar