Syntactic learning by mere exposure--an ERP study in adult learners.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Artificial language studies have revealed the remarkable ability of humans to extract syntactic structures from a continuous sound stream by mere exposure. However, it remains unclear whether the processes acquired in such tasks are comparable to those applied during normal language processing. The present study compares the ERPs to auditory processing of simple Italian sentences in native and non-native speakers after brief exposure to Italian sentences of a similar structure. The sentences contained a non-adjacent dependency between an auxiliary and the morphologically marked suffix of the verb. Participants were presented four alternating learning and testing phases. During learning phases only correct sentences were presented while during testing phases 50 percent of

SUBMITTER: Mueller JL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2726980 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature