Older adults are able to implicitly pick up structural regularities in the environment in a relatively unaffected way despite age-related cognitive decline. Although there is extensive evidence for this observation in the domain of motor skill learning, it is not clear whether this is also true for aspects of language learning. In this study, we investigate the effect of aging on implicitly learning novel phonotactic constraints in the native spoken language. During four sessions on consecutive days, a group of fifteen young (18-25 years) and fifteen healthy older (74-82 years) Dutch-speaking adults were asked to rapidly recite sequences of syllables conform Dutch phonotactics (e.g., siet mieng kief hien). Within the setting of the experiment, two unrestricted consonants in the Dutch spoken language were constrained to an onset or coda position depending on the medial vowel. Analysis of speech errors revealed rapid adherence to the novel second- order constraints in the older group. Strikingly, the effect mirrors earlier developmental work with children using the same paradigm (Smalle, Muylle, Szmalec, & Duyck, 2017). The findings are discussed in light of possible age-dependent differences in implicit and explicit cognitive subsystems underlying human skill learning.
The different time course of phonotactic constraint learning in children and adults: Evidence from speech errors.
