Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Non-adjacent dependencies are ubiquitous in language, butdifficult to learn. Previous research has shown that the presenceof high variability between dependent items facilitateslearning. Yet what allows learning of non-adjacentdependencies even without high variability in interveningelements? One possibility is that learning non-adjacentdependencies highlights similar structures, allowing people tolearn new non-adjacent dependencies that are otherwisedifficult. In two studies, we show how being exposed tolearnable non-adjacent dependencies can change learners’sensitivity to novel non-adjacent regularities that are moredifficult to detect. These findings demonstrate a new way inwhich learning can build on and shape later learning aboutcomplex linguistic structure.