The metamorphosis of the statistical segmentation output:Lexicalization during artificial language learning

摘要

This study combined artificial language learning (ALL) with conventional experimentaltechniques to test whether statistical speech segmentation outputs are integrated intoadult listeners' mental lexicon. Lexicalization was assessed through inhibitory effects ofnovel neighbors (created by the parsing process) on auditory lexical decisions to realwords. Both immediately after familiarization and post-one week, ALL outputs were lexi-calized only when the cues available during familiarization (transitional probabilitiesand wordlikeness) suggested the same parsing (Experiments 1 and 3). No lexicalizationeffect occurred with incongruent cues (Experiments 2 and 4). Yet, ALL differed from chance,suggesting a dissociation between item knowledge and lexicalization. Similarly contrastedresults were found when frequency of occurrence of the stimuli was equated during famil-iarization (Experiments 3 and 4). Our findings thus indicate that ALL outputs may be lex-icalized as far as the segmentation cues are congruent, and that this process cannot beaccounted for by raw frequency.