Statistical Learning by 8-Month-Old Infants

by: Jenny R Saffran, Richard N Aslin, Elissa L Newport

Science, Vol. 274 (1996), pp. 1926-1928.

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Abstract

Learners rely on a combination of experience-independent and experience-dependent mechanisms to extract information from the environment. Language acquisition involves both types of mechanisms, but most theorists emphasize the relative importance of experience-independent mechanisms. The present study shows that a fundamental task of language acquisition, segmentation of words from fluent speech, can be accomplished by 8-month-old infants based solely on the statistical relationships between neighboring speech sounds. Moreover, this word segmentation was based on statistical learning from only 2 minutes of exposure, suggesting that infants have access to a powerful mechanism for the computation of statistical properties of the language input.

@article{citeulike:590852, abstract = {Learners rely on a combination of experience-independent and experience-dependent mechanisms to extract information from the environment. Language acquisition involves both types of mechanisms, but most theorists emphasize the relative importance of experience-independent mechanisms. The present study shows that a fundamental task of language acquisition, segmentation of words from fluent speech, can be accomplished by 8-month-old infants based solely on the statistical relationships between neighboring speech sounds. Moreover, this word segmentation was based on statistical learning from only 2 minutes of exposure, suggesting that infants have access to a powerful mechanism for the computation of statistical properties of the language input.}, author = {Saffran, Jenny R. and Aslin, Richard N. and Newport, Elissa L. }, citeulike-article-id = {590852}, journal = {Science}, keywords = {artificial-grammars, statistical-learning}, pages = {1926--1928}, posted-at = {2008-02-02 19:47:05}, priority = {0}, title = {Statistical Learning by 8-Month-Old Infants}, url = {http://www.jstor.org/stable/2891705}, volume = {274}, year = {1996} }

RIS record

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:590852 L3 - citeulike-article-id:590852 TI - Statistical Learning by 8-Month-Old Infants JF - Science VL - 274 SP - 1926 EP - 1928 N2 - Learners rely on a combination of experience-independent and experience-dependent mechanisms to extract information from the environment. Language acquisition involves both types of mechanisms, but most theorists emphasize the relative importance of experience-independent mechanisms. The present study shows that a fundamental task of language acquisition, segmentation of words from fluent speech, can be accomplished by 8-month-old infants based solely on the statistical relationships between neighboring speech sounds. Moreover, this word segmentation was based on statistical learning from only 2 minutes of exposure, suggesting that infants have access to a powerful mechanism for the computation of statistical properties of the language input. KW - artificial-grammars KW - statistical-learning AU - Saffran, Jenny AU - Aslin, Richard AU - Newport, Elissa PY - 1996/// UR - http://www.jstor.org/stable/2891705 ER -

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