Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The effect of repetition and similarity on sequence learning
AU - Monaghan, Padraic
AU - Rowson, Chris
PY - 2008/12
Y1 - 2008/12
N2 - Repetition is a pervasive feature of children's environments, and may be an important contributor to learning such complex sequential structures as language. Endress, Dehaene-Lambertz, and Mehler (2007) found that repeated tone sequences were learned more easily than sequences containing ordinal relations, but there have been no direct comparisons of repeating sequences versus sequences that contain similar, but not identical, stimuli. In Experiment 1, we compared learning from repeating tone sequences to learning from tones that varied in similarity, and confirmed that repetition is a special case for learning. In Experiment 2 we showed that the learning distinction between repeated and similar elements is not affected by whether similarity is variable. We conclude by indicating that repetition provides an important constraint on learning, and we discuss the extent to which such constraints are consistent with general-purpose statistical learning mechanisms.
AB - Repetition is a pervasive feature of children's environments, and may be an important contributor to learning such complex sequential structures as language. Endress, Dehaene-Lambertz, and Mehler (2007) found that repeated tone sequences were learned more easily than sequences containing ordinal relations, but there have been no direct comparisons of repeating sequences versus sequences that contain similar, but not identical, stimuli. In Experiment 1, we compared learning from repeating tone sequences to learning from tones that varied in similarity, and confirmed that repetition is a special case for learning. In Experiment 2 we showed that the learning distinction between repeated and similar elements is not affected by whether similarity is variable. We conclude by indicating that repetition provides an important constraint on learning, and we discuss the extent to which such constraints are consistent with general-purpose statistical learning mechanisms.
KW - SHORT-TERM-MEMORY
KW - NEURAL NETWORKS
KW - SPEECH
KW - CONSTRAINTS
KW - COMPUTATIONS
KW - INFANTS
U2 - 10.3758/MC.36.8.1509
DO - 10.3758/MC.36.8.1509
M3 - Journal article
VL - 36
SP - 1509
EP - 1514
JO - Memory and Cognition
JF - Memory and Cognition
SN - 0090-502X
IS - 8
ER -