Concurrent visual learning of adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies in adults and children

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Iao, L.-S. ORCID: 0000-0002-3509-9712, Roeser, J. ORCID: 0000-0002-4463-0923, Justice, L. ORCID: 0000-0003-3394-2283 and Jones, G. ORCID: 0000-0003-3867-9947, 2021. Concurrent visual learning of adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies in adults and children. Developmental Psychology. ISSN 0012-1649 (Forthcoming)

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Abstract

Concurrent learning of adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies has been shown in adults only. This study extended this line of research by examining dependency-specific learning for both adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies concurrently in both adults and children. Seventy adults aged 18 to 64 (40 females, 30 males; Experiment 1) and 64 children aged 10 to 11 years (40 girls, 24 boys; Experiment 2) were tested with a new serial reaction time (SRT) task in which they were trained for 6 - 8 minutes on materials comprising equally probable adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies. They were then asked to discriminate between trained and untrained dependencies in a familiarity task. Both adults and children showed implicit concurrent learning of both adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies. The two dependency types were learnt to the same extent. However, adults showed a rapid, sustainable and dependency-specific sensitivity throughout the SRT task while children only showed a dependency-specific sensitivity to violations of expectations after exposure. When the two groups were statistically compared, only adults showed a dependency-specific learning effect after exposure. These findings are in line with the age-related improvement model of dependency learning.

Item Type:

Journal article

Alternative Title:

Dependency learning in adults and children [running head]

Publication Title:

Developmental Psychology

Creators:

Iao, L.-S., Roeser, J., Justice, L. and Jones, G.

Publisher:

American Psychological Association

Date:

11 February 2021