Implicit learning out of the lab: The case of orthographic regularities
Catégorie
Journal Article
Auteurs
Pacton, S., Perruchet, P., Fayol, M., Cleeremans, A.
Année
2001
Titre
Implicit learning out of the lab: The case of orthographic regularities
Journal / Livre / Conférence
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Résumé
Children's (Grades 1 to 5) implicit learning of French orthographic regularities was investigated through nonword judgment (Experiments 1 and 2) and completion (Experiments 3a and 3b) tasks. Children were increasingly sensitive to (a) the frequency of double consonants (Experiments 1, 2, and 3a), (b) the fact that vowels can never be doubled (Experiment 2), and (c) the legal position of double consonants (Experiments 2 and 3b). The latter effect transferred to never doubled consonants but with a decrement in performance. Moreover, this decrement persisted without any trend toward fading, even after the massive amounts of experience provided by years of practice. This result runs against the idea that transfer to novel material is indicative of abstract rule-based knowledge and suggests instead the action of mechanisms sensitive to the statistical properties of the material. A connectionist model is proposed as an instantiation of such mechanisms.
Issue
3
Volume
130
Pages
401-426