Language structure reflects biases in pattern learning across domains and modalities

A central goal for psychological science is the explanation of variation in human behaviour. In the domain of language, patterns of cross-linguistic variation have been extensively documented, but there has been vigorous debate over how to explain them. A particularly contentious question is whether...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) Vol. 78; no. 7; p. 1303
Main Authors: Culbertson, Jennifer, Compostella, Arianna, Kirby, Simon
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: England 01.07.2025
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Bias
Female
Humans
Language
Learning - physiology
Male
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Photic Stimulation
Psycholinguistics
Young Adult
syntax
Language
cognitive biases
pattern learning
ISSN:1747-0226, 1747-0226
Online Access:Get more information
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Summary:A central goal for psychological science is the explanation of variation in human behaviour. In the domain of language, patterns of cross-linguistic variation have been extensively documented, but there has been vigorous debate over how to explain them. A particularly contentious question is whether constraints on linguistic variation are driven by properties of the human mind that are specific to language or domain-general. In this paper, we present four pattern-learning experiments ( = 306 English- and Italian-speaking adults) across domains (linguistic and nonlinguistic) and modalities (visual, auditory, and tactile) to show that the patterns that are more easily learned are precisely the ones that are found most frequently across languages. This supports a domain-general, cognitive explanation for cross-linguistic variation. However, we suggest that the general/specific dichotomy is ultimately misleading because language structure arises when domain- and modality-general biases meet domain-specific representations.
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ISSN:1747-0226
1747-0226
DOI:10.1177/17470218241282404