Spit, S. , Andringa, S. , Rispens, J. & Aboh, E.
University of Amsterdam
A fundamental insight in the field of adult second language acquisition is that there is an interface between implicit statistical learning and explicit knowledge, while language learning by young learners is mostly assumed to happen implicitly. The goal of this study was to determine whether kindergarteners can acquire a meaningful grammatical element from the distributional properties of the input, and whether explicit instruction helps these young learners in their learning process. To test this, 102 Dutch speaking kindergarteners (M = 5;7) received training in a meaning bearing miniature language. Sentences in the language were created using a proper name, verb, grammatical marker and noun. One grammatical marker indicated the noun always referred to multiple objects, while the other indicated the noun could refer to any number of objects. 50 of the participants received explicit instruction on this regularity. After participants were exposed to this rule over 108 trials, they partook in a picture matching task during which eye movements were tracked. Our results suggest that explicit instruction did not increase accuracy, but did lead to earlier predictive eye movements. Explicit instruction thus seems to influence statistical learning by kindergarteners.