Constraining generalisation in language learning: a rational learning approach

Successful language acquisition relies on generalisation, yet many 'sensible' generalisations are actually ungrammatical (eg 'John carried me teddy.'). This grant explores how language learners balance generalisation and exception learning using the Artificial Language Learning (ALL) methodology, ie experiments where participants learn and are tested on novel experimenter-designed languages. Earlier research (Wonnacott et al. 2008) had used only adults - an important limitation given evidence for maturational differences in language learning (Newport, 1990).
This grant therefore consists of a series of ALL experiments conducted with both child and adult participants, designed to address the following questions: (i) Do children, (like adults in previous studies) use distributional statistics eg word and construction frequency to determine which words should generalise/are exceptions? (ii) How do learners weigh such information against other sources of information such as semantics (eg if words with similar meanings tend to behave similarly). (iii) Do these processes differ across adults and children? (iv) Are there any factors that predict the extent of generalisation/exception learning for individual learners (eg working memory)?
The long-term goal is to shed light on why language learning is generally more successful when it begins in childhood and the loci of individual differences in learning.