Change in the Adult Phonological Processing System by Learning Non -Adjacent Phonotactic Constraints From Brief Experience: An Experimental and Computational Study

As a result of learning, the speakers judge phonotactically legal novel words to be more grammatical than phonotactically illegal novel words. They also perceive the legal ones more quickly and accurately than the illegal ones. In addition, the experiments show that the effect of learning on perception is greater when the learned phonotactic constraint restricts co-occurrence of more confusable phonemes. This subtle effect of learning on perception is expressed as the Perceptual Facilitation Hypothesis, which provides a more detailed account of how the phonotactic knowledge functions in the adult phonological processing system to change its perceptual behavior. The experimental results are simulated with two computational models that demonstrate how the adult phonological processing system adapts to recent experience: how it comes to perceive legal sound sequences better than illegal ones after repeatedly processing sequences embodying non-adjacent phonotactic constraints, and how it learns the constraints from observing the perceptual output and computes the probability of the perceived phonological structure in judging its grammaticality. The models suggest possible mechanisms that underlie the adaptation of the adult phonological processing system and guide the direction of future research by providing falsifiable predictions.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Linguistics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Koo, Hahn

Contributors dc:contributor

• Sproat, Richard W.
• Cole, Jennifer S.

• Psychology, Cognitive

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3301171

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/82648