Syntax-induced pattern deafness.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Ansgar D Endress, Marc D Hauser

Abstract

Perceptual systems often force systematically biased interpretations upon sensory input. These interpretations are obligatory, inaccessible to conscious control, and prevent observers from perceiving alternative percepts. Here we report a similarly impenetrable phenomenon in the domain of language, where the syntactic system prevents listeners from detecting a simple perceptual pattern. Healthy human adults listened to three-word sequences conforming to patterns readily learned even by honeybees, rats, and sleeping human neonates. Specifically, sequences either started or ended with two words from the same syntactic category (e.g., noun-noun-verb or verb-verb-noun). Although participants readily processed the categories and learned repetition patterns over nonsyntactic categories (e.g., animal-animal-clothes), they failed to learn the repetition pattern over syntactic categories, even when explicitly instructed to look for it. Further experiments revealed that participants successfully learned the repetition patterns only when they were consistent with syntactically possible structures, irrespective of whether these structures were attested in English or in other languages unknown to the participants. When the repetition patter...Continue Reading

References

Jan 5, 1999·Science·G F MarcusP M Vishton
Feb 15, 2001·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·M SigmanM O Magnasco
Apr 20, 2001·Nature·M GiurfaM V Srinivasan
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Mar 29, 2008·Science·Robin A MurphyVictoria A Murphy
Sep 5, 2008·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Judit GervainJacques Mehler

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Citations

Mar 5, 2013·Cognition·Ansgar D Endress
May 6, 2016·Developmental Science·Amanda SaksidaMarina Nespor
Jul 10, 2009·Biology Letters·Ansgar D EndressMarc D Hauser

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