Phillip Hamrick

Triangulating measures of awareness:a contribution to the debate on learning without awareness

Williams’s (2005) study on “learning without awareness” and three subsequent extensions (Faretta-Stutenberg & Morgan-Short, 2011; Hama & Leow, 2010; Rebuschat, Hamrick, Sachs, Riestenberg, & Ziegler, 2013) have reported conflicting results, perhaps in part due to differences in how awareness has been measured. The present extension of Williams (2005) addresses this possibility directly by triangulating data from three awareness measures: concurrent verbal reports (think-aloud protocols), retrospective verbal reports (postexposure interviews), and subjective measures (confidence ratings and source attributions). Participants were exposed to an artificial determiner system under incidental learning conditions. One experimental group thought aloud during training, another thought aloud during training and testing, and a third remained silent, as did a trained control group. All participants were then tested by means of a forced-choice task to establish whether learning took place. In addition, all participants provided confidence ratings and source attributions on test items and were interviewed following the test. Our results indicate that, although all experimental groups displayed learning effects, only the silent group was able to generalize the acquired knowledge to novel instances. Comparisons of concurrent and retrospective verbal report data shed light on the conflicting findings previously reported in the literature and highlight important methodological issues in implicit and explicit learning research.

Child first language and adult second language are both tied to general-purpose learning systems

Significance It has long been debated whether the mechanisms that underlie language are dedicated to this uniquely human capacity or whether in fact they serve more general-purpose functions. Our study provides strong evidence that language—indeed both first and second language—is learned, in specific ways, by general-purpose neurocognitive mechanisms that preexist Homo sapiens. The results have broad implications. They elucidate both the ontogeny (development) and phylogeny (evolution) of language. Moreover, they suggest that our substantial knowledge of the general-purpose mechanisms, from both animal and human studies, may also apply to language. The study may thus lead to a research program that can generate a wide range of predictions about this critical domain. Do the mechanisms underlying language in fact serve general-purpose functions that preexist this uniquely human capacity? To address this contentious and empirically challenging issue, we systematically tested the predictions of a well-studied neurocognitive theory of language motivated by evolutionary principles. Multiple metaanalyses were performed to examine predicted links between language and two general-purpose learning systems, declarative and procedural memory. The results tied lexical abilities to learning only in declarative memory, while grammar was linked to learning in both systems in both child first language and adult second language, in specific ways. In second language learners, grammar was associated with only declarative memory at lower language experience, but with only procedural memory at higher experience. The findings yielded large effect sizes and held consistently across languages, language families, linguistic structures, and tasks, underscoring their reliability and validity. The results, which met the predicted pattern, provide comprehensive evidence that language is tied to general-purpose systems both in children acquiring their native language and adults learning an additional language. Crucially, if language learning relies on these systems, then our extensive knowledge of the systems from animal and human studies may also apply to this domain, leading to predictions that might be unwarranted in the more circumscribed study of language. Thus, by demonstrating a role for these systems in language, the findings simultaneously lay a foundation for potentially important advances in the study of this critical domain.

A neurocognitive perspective on retrieval interference in L2 sentence processing

Cunnings (Cunnings) offers an interpretation of L2-L1 sentence processing differences in terms of memory principles. We applaud such cross-domain approaches, which seem likely to significantly elucidate the neurocognition of language. Cunnings attributes sentence processing differences between (adult) high proficiency L2 and L1 speakers to an increased susceptibility to similarity-based retrieval interference, rather than to qualitative L2-L1 processing differences (cf. Clahsen & Felser, 2006). On his account, both L1 and L2 sentence processing depend upon a ‘bipartite’ working memory, which involves maintaining items active by focusing attention on long-term memory representations (Cowan, 2001).