Saffran, Aslin, and Newport (1996)
Saffran, Jenny R., Richard N. Aslin & Elissa L. Newport. “Statistical Learning by 8-Month-Old Infants,” Science 274 (13 December 1996).
A short but sophisticated and critical look at well-established assumptions regarding first language acquisition. In particular, the authors sought to challenge the notion of the poverty of the stimulus, as articulated by Noam Chomsky and others. [1] They summarized the standard view:
few theorists have entertained the hypothesis that learning plays a primary role in the acquisition of more complicated aspects of language, favoring instead experience-independent mechanisms. Young humans are generally viewed as poor learners, suggesting that innate factors are primarily responsible for the acquisition of language. (1926)
They went on:
In particular, we ask whether infants are in fact better learners than has previously been assumed, thus potentially reducing the extent to which experience-independent structures must be posited.(1927)
The focus of this study was the acquisition of word boundaries from speech stimuli. Moving from the established principle that “measurable statistical regularities” can serve as cues to word boundaries, [2] they tested whether 8-month old infants were able to abstract such cues from a brief exposure to artificial wordlike stimuli.
They observed:
Our results raise the intriguing possibility that infants possess experience-dependent mechanisms that may be powerful enough to support not only word segmentation but also the acquisition of other aspects of language.
and concluded:
the massive amount of experience gathered by infants during the first postnatal year may play a far greater role in development than has previously been recognized.
[1] Cited by the authors in this regard: Chomsky, N. (1965), Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Crain, S. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (1991), 597.
[2] Cited by the authors: Harris, Z. (1955), Language 31, 190; Hayes, J. and H. Clark (1970), in Cognition and the Development of Language, J. Hayes (ed.); Brent, M. and T. Cartwright (1996), Cognition 61, 93.
