Mechanisms of Language Acquisition
نویسندگان
چکیده
Mechanisms of language acquisition have mostly been studied in isolation. Here, we review behavioral and imaging evidence concerning the role and the operation of three such mechanisms: statistical learning, rule extraction and perceptual primitives. Statistical learning is a general learning mechanism, found in animals, adults and infants, that tracks the distributional and statistical information in the input. Rule extraction allows the fast mapping of regularities and the positing of generalizations that go beyond actual experience. Perceptual primitives, the least investigated of the three mechanisms, are specific configurations automatically processed and detected as a result of the way perceptual systems function. We present empirical findings suggesting that neither of the three mechanisms alone is sufficient to explain language development. Rather, the most accurate models of language acquisition will probably emerge from the integration of these and other such mechanisms. Such integrative investigations can greatly benefit from recent advances in brain imaging, such as the use of near infrared optical imaging, the developmental applications of which we briefly discuss here. Mechanisms of Language Acquisition 3
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