{"pk":50375,"title":"Probing for experience-driven critical period effects in a large language model","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Critical period effects (CPEs), wherein learning during childhood is easier, are often considered to be maturationally-driven. However, recent findings of CPEs in artificial, non-maturing models suggest they can be driven by experience alone. We investigate to what extent experience can drive CPEs in second language (L2) grammar acquisition by probing for CPEs in a large language model (LLM). Constantinescu et al. (2024) report no evidence for experience-driven L2 CPEs in LLMs, but do not discuss the fine-grained grammatical rules used in prior behavioral studies of CPEs. We document that LLM learning patterns vary across these rules, but mostly find no evidence for human-like CPEs. Our results therefore support previous conclusions that CPEs in L2 grammar acquisition are not driven by experience alone.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Language acquisition; Learning; Machine learning; Statistical learning"}],"section":"Member Abstracts with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sc5186h","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Dyana","middle_name":"","last_name":"Muller","name_suffix":"","institution":"UC Berkeley","department":""},{"first_name":"Koquiun","middle_name":"","last_name":"Li Lin","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Melbourne","department":""},{"first_name":"Charles","middle_name":"","last_name":"Kemp","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Melbourne","department":""},{"first_name":"Francis","middle_name":"","last_name":"Mollica","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Melbourne","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/50375/galley/38337/download/"}]}