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{
    "pk": 28725,
    "title": "Privileged Computations for Closed-Class Items in Language Acquisition",
    "subtitle": null,
    "abstract": "In natural languages, closed-class items predict open-classitems but not the other way around. For example, in English, ifthere is a determiner there will be a noun, but nouns can occurwith or without determiners. Here, we asked whether languagelearners’ computations are also asymmetrical. In threeexperiments we exposed adults to a miniature language withthe one-way dependency “if X then Y”: if X was present, Ywas also present, but X could occur without Y. We createddifferent versions of the language in order to ask whetherlearning depended on which of these categories was an open orclosed class. In one condition, X was a closed class and Y wasan open class; in a contrasting condition, X was an open classand Y was a closed class. Learning was significantly betterwith closed-class X, even though learners’ exposure wasotherwise identical. Additional experiments demonstrated thatthe perceptual distinctiveness of closed-class items driveslearners to analyze them differently; and, crucially, that theprimary determinant of learning is the mathematicalrelationship between closed- and open-class items and not theirlinear order. These results suggest that learners privilegecomputations in which closed-class items are predictive of,rather than predicted by, open-class items. We suggest that thedistributional asymmetries of closed-class items in naturallanguages may arise in part from this learning bias.",
    "language": "eng",
    "license": {
        "name": "",
        "short_name": "",
        "text": null,
        "url": ""
    },
    "keywords": [
        {
            "word": "language acquisition; statistical learning;computational mechanisms; morphosyntax; function words;closed-class items"
        }
    ],
    "section": "Papers with Poster Presentations",
    "is_remote": true,
    "remote_url": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5712299p",
    "frozenauthors": [
        {
            "first_name": "Heidi",
            "middle_name": "R.",
            "last_name": "Getz",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Georgetown University Medical Center",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Elissa",
            "middle_name": "L.",
            "last_name": "Newport",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Georgetown University Medical Center",
            "department": ""
        }
    ],
    "date_submitted": null,
    "date_accepted": null,
    "date_published": "2019-01-01T18:00:00Z",
    "render_galley": null,
    "galleys": [
        {
            "label": "PDF",
            "type": "pdf",
            "path": "https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/28725/galley/18596/download/"
        }
    ]
}