Infants appear to learn abstract rule-like regularities (e.g., la la da follows an AAB pattern) more easily from speech than from a variety of other auditory and visual stimuli (Marcus et al., 2007). We test if that facilitation reflects a specialization to learn from speech alone, or from modality-independent communicative stimuli more generally, by measuring 7.5-month-old infants’ ability to learn abstract rules from sign language-like gestures. Whereas infants appear to easily learn many different rules from speech, we found that with sign-like stimuli, and under circumstances comparable to those of Marcus et al. (1999), hearing infants were able to learn an ABB rule, but not an AAB rule. This is consistent with results of studies that demonstrate lower levels of infant rule learning from a variety of other non-speech stimuli, and we discuss implications for accounts of speech-facilitation.
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机译：婴儿似乎比其他多种听觉和视觉刺激更容易从语音中学习类似于规则的规律性（例如，la la da遵循AAB模式）（Marcus等，2007）。我们通过测量7.5个月大的婴儿从类似手势语的手势中学习抽象规则的能力，来测试这种促进是否体现了一种专门从语音中学习或从与模式无关的交流刺激中学习的专业化能力。婴儿似乎很容易从言语中学习许多规则，但我们发现，在类似马库斯等人的情况下，它们具有类似符号的刺激。 （1999年），听力正常的婴儿能够学习ABB规则，但不能学习AAB规则。这与显示较低水平的婴儿规则从其他各种非语音刺激中学习的研究结果一致，我们讨论了言语促进的含义。
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