Children’s learning of non-adjacent dependencies using a web-based computer game setting
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- dc.contributor.author Marimon Tarter, Mireia
- dc.contributor.author Hofmann, Andrea
- dc.contributor.author Veríssimo, João
- dc.contributor.author Männel, Claudia
- dc.contributor.author Friederici, Angela D.
- dc.contributor.author Höhle, Barbara
- dc.contributor.author Wartenburger, Isabell
- dc.date.accessioned 2025-11-11T07:14:40Z
- dc.date.available 2025-11-11T07:14:40Z
- dc.date.issued 2021
- dc.description.abstract Infants show impressive speech decoding abilities and detect acoustic regularities that highlight the syntactic relations of a language, often coded via non-adjacent dependencies (NADs, e.g., is singing). It has been claimed that infants learn NADs implicitly and associatively through passive listening and that there is a shift from effortless associative learning to a more controlled learning of NADs after the age of 2 years, potentially driven by the maturation of the prefrontal cortex. To investigate if older children are able to learn NADs, Lammertink et al. (2019) recently developed a word-monitoring serial reaction time (SRT) task and could show that 6–11-year-old children learned the NADs, as their reaction times (RTs) increased then they were presented with violated NADs. In the current study we adapted their experimental paradigm and tested NAD learning in a younger group of 52 children between the age of 4–8 years in a remote, web-based, game-like setting (whack-a-mole). Children were exposed to Italian phrases containing NADs and had to monitor the occurrence of a target syllable, which was the second element of the NAD. After exposure, children did a “Stem Completion” task in which they were presented with the first element of the NAD and had to choose the second element of the NAD to complete the stimuli. Our findings show that, despite large variability in the data, children aged 4–8 years are sensitive to NADs; they show the expected differences in r RTs in the SRT task and could transfer the NAD-rule in the Stem Completion task. We discuss these results with respect to the development of NAD dependency learning in childhood and the practical impact and limitations of collecting these data in a web-based setting.en
- dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
- dc.identifier.citation Marimon M, Hofmann A, Veríssimo J, Männel C, Friederici AD, Höhle B, et al. Children’s learning of non-adjacent dependencies using a web-based computer game setting. Front Psychol. 2021 Nov 3;12:734877. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.734877
- dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.734877
- dc.identifier.issn 1664-1078
- dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/71849
- dc.language.iso eng
- dc.publisher Frontiers
- dc.relation.ispartof Frontiers in Psychology. 2021 Nov 3;12:734877
- dc.rights © 2021 Marimon, Hofmann, Veríssimo, Männel, Friederici, Höhle and Wartenburger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
- dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
- dc.rights.uri http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- dc.subject.keyword Non-adjacent dependenciesen
- dc.subject.keyword Rule learningen
- dc.subject.keyword Web-baseden
- dc.subject.keyword Implicit learningen
- dc.subject.keyword Serial reaction time (SRT) tasken
- dc.subject.keyword SRTen
- dc.title Children’s learning of non-adjacent dependencies using a web-based computer game settingen
- dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
- dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion