The effect of explicitness of instruction and language knowledge on adults’ ability to learn an artificial grammar

Extracting and generalizing rules from a complex input is one of the foundations of learning a language and can be studied using artificial grammar learning tasks. Different results have been found, between artificial grammar learning studies but also within these studies. This thesis tries to explain some of this variance by looking into whether different study backgrounds influence the ability to learn an artificial grammar in adults. The experiment is based on earlier research conducted by Geambaşu (2018), in which she tested adults’ ability to learn an artificial grammar by using clear and vague instructions. She found participants who received clear instructions (explicit instruction condition) to perform better in the experiment than participants who received vague instructions (implicit instruction condition). The participants in the present task were divided into two groups: linguistics students and science students, since they differ most in their courses. They were...Show moreExtracting and generalizing rules from a complex input is one of the foundations of learning a language and can be studied using artificial grammar learning tasks. Different results have been found, between artificial grammar learning studies but also within these studies. This thesis tries to explain some of this variance by looking into whether different study backgrounds influence the ability to learn an artificial grammar in adults. The experiment is based on earlier research conducted by Geambaşu (2018), in which she tested adults’ ability to learn an artificial grammar by using clear and vague instructions. She found participants who received clear instructions (explicit instruction condition) to perform better in the experiment than participants who received vague instructions (implicit instruction condition). The participants in the present task were divided into two groups: linguistics students and science students, since they differ most in their courses. They were exposed to the grammar via a passive familiarization and tested with yes/no grammaticality judgment task. The two instruction conditions and the stimuli were similar to those used by Geambaşu (2018). Participants who received clear instructions were expected to perform better in the task, than participants who received vague instructions. Further, participants with a linguistic study background were expected to have more explicit language knowledge and therefore perform better in the task, than participants with a science study background. Results indicate that there is no difference in the ability to extract and generalize rules from the sequences between students with a linguistics study background and students with a science study background. Further, no effect was found based on the different instruction conditions or for the pattern participants were exposed to. However, participants who showed explicit knowledge of the rule, by indicating a strategy based on extracting and generalizing the pattern of the sequences, performed significantly better.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

The effect of explicitness of instruction and language knowledge on adults’ ability to learn an artificial grammar