The past 15-20 years have witnessed a particularly strong
interest in our ability to rapidly extract structured
information from the environment. This fundamental
process of human cognition is widely believed to underpin
many complex behaviors – from language development and
social interaction to intuitive decision making and music
cognition – so this interest spans practically all branches of
cognitive science. Research on this topic can be found in
two related, yet traditionally distinct research strands,
namely "implicit learning" (Reber, 1967) and "statistical
learning" (Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996).
Both lines of research focus on how we acquire
information from complex stimulus domains and both rely
heavily on the use of artificial systems (e.g., finite-state
grammars, pseudoword lexicons). In typical experiments,
participants are initially exposed to stimuli generated by an
artificial system and then tested to determine what they have
learned. Given these and other significant similarities,
Perruchet and Pacton (2006) argue that these distinct lines
of research actually represent two approaches to a single
phenomenon, and Conway and Christiansen (2006) propose
combining the two in name: "implicit-statistical learning".
Yet, despite frequent acknowledgements that researchers in
implicit learning and statistical learning might essentially be
looking at the same phenomenon, there is surprisingly little
alignment between the two strands.
This symposium seeks to remedy this situation by
bringing together leading researchers from both areas in
order to promote a shared understanding of research
questions and methodologies, to discuss similarities and
differences between the two approaches, and to work
towards a joint research agenda. The symposium comprises
four presentations, followed by a thematic discussion, which
provide coverage of these phenomena in terms of
development (children and adults), different language
learning tasks (sublexical phonotactics, word acquisition,
grammar learning), and their role in both production and
comprehension, each integrating multidisciplinary
perspectives. Gomez focuses on implicit-statistical learning
in early development, identifying words and grammatical
sequences and the memory systems that underlie this
learning. Monaghan and Rebuschat measure word learning
and grammar learning in adults, while varying the
knowledge that participants have of the structure they are
acquiring. Dell and Anderson demonstrate how their work
on acquisition of phonotactic constraints is exhibited in
speakers’ productions, and discuss the inter-relation in
speech between implicit and statistical learning. Finally,
Conway provides an overview of the two fields, and
proposes a novel framework that unifies implicit learning
and statistical learning.
