{"pk":28770,"title":"Low Entropy Facilitates Word Segmentation in Adult Learners","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Do language learners benefit from exposure to input that is\nmore predictable and has lower entropy? Frequency is known\nto facilitate learning (more frequent words acquired earlier).\nHowever, frequency is only one measure of the distributional\nstructure of the linguistic input. Here, we show that entropy\nalso impacts language learning: adults show better word\nsegmentation in an artificial language when the sequence has\nlower entropy (created by making one word more frequent).\nSegmentation improved both for the language as a whole, and\nfor the less frequent words, despite appearing half the number\nof times. These results illustrate the facilitative effect of\nentropy reduction on language learning. Theoretically, they\nshow that the effect of frequency is relative, not absolute, and\nthat language learners are sensitive to more complex measures\nof the environment. Methodologically, they suggest that the\nprevalent use of uniform distributions in word segmentation\nstudies may underestimate learners’ abilities.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Statistical learning; Word segmentation;\nLanguage Learning; Information."}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentations","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8dw432n8","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Ori","middle_name":"","last_name":"Lavi-Rotbain","name_suffix":"","institution":"The Hebrew University Jerusalem","department":""},{"first_name":"Inbal","middle_name":"","last_name":"Arnon","name_suffix":"","institution":"The Hebrew University Jerusalem","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/28770/galley/18641/download/"}]}