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Since its first adoption as a computational model for language learning, evidence has accumulated that Rescorla–Wagner error‐correction learning (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) captures several aspects of language processing. Whereas previous studies have provided general support for the Rescorla–Wagner rule by using it to explain the behavior of participants across a range of tasks, we focus on testing predictions generated by the model in a controlled natural language learning task and model the data at the level of the individual learner. By adjusting the parameters of the model to fit the trial‐by‐trial behavioral choices of participants, rather than fitting a one‐for‐all model using a single set of default parameters, we show that the model accurately captures participants' choices, time latencies, and levels of response agreement. We also show that gender and working memory capacity affect the extent to which the Rescorla–Wagner model captures language learning. A one‐page Accessible Summary of this article in non‐technical language is freely available in the Supporting Information online and at https://oasis‐database.org [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is a broad consensus that both the procedural and declarative memory systems play a crucial role in language learning, use, and knowledge, the mapping between linguistic types and memory structures remains underspecified: by default, a dual‐route mapping of language systems to memory systems is assumed, with declarative memory handling idiosyncratic lexical knowledge and procedural memory handling rule‐governed knowledge of grammar. We experimentally contrast the processing of morphology (case and aspect), syntax (subordination), and lexical semantics (collocations) in a healthy L1 population of Polish, a language rich in form distinctions. We study the processing of these four types under two conditions: a single task condition in which the grammaticality of stimuli was judged and a concurrent task condition in which grammaticality judgments were combined with a digit span task. Dividing attention impedes access to declarative memory while leaving procedural memory unaffected and hence constitutes a test that dissociates which types of linguistic information each long‐term memory construct subserves. Our findings confirm the existence of a distinction between lexicon and grammar as a generative, dual‐route model would predict, but the distinction is graded, as usage‐based models assume: the hypothesized grammar–lexicon opposition appears as a continuum on which grammatical phenomena can be placed as being more or less "ruly" or "idiosyncratic." However, usage‐based models, too, need adjusting as not all types of linguistic knowledge are proceduralized to the same extent. This move away from a simple dichotomy fundamentally changes how we think about memory for language, and hence how we design and interpret behavioral and neuroimaging studies that probe into the nature of language cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore how general principles of learning apply to and combine with usage‐based approaches to language learning and teaching, with a focus on the effects of order of exposure to new information in second language (L2) instruction. Although the effects of input spacing and timing on memory and learning have been previously explored (see Rogers, 2020; Shintani, 2017, for an overview), the effects of order of exposure to the input remain understudied. In this study, we tested whether order of exposure to information in the L2 plays a role in L2 learning and whether an optimal order where the most reliable cues are introduced first ensures that foreign language learners are better equipped to form representations that allow flexible, yet accurate generalisations. We analysed data collected through a training study that teaches the English article system to first language (L1) speakers whose language does not have markers of definiteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the effects of pattern learning on language processing are well known, the way in which pattern learning shapes exploratory behavior has long gone unnoticed. We report on the way in which individual differences in statistical pattern learning affect performance in the domain of language along multiple dimensions. Analyzing data from healthy monolingual adults' performance on a serial reaction time task and a self‐paced reading task, we show how individual differences in statistical pattern learning are reflected in readers' knowledge of linguistic co‐occurrence patterns and in their exploration and exploitation of content‐specific and task‐general information. First, we investigated the extent to which an individual's pattern learning correlates with his or her sensitivity to systematic morphological and syntactic co‐occurrences, as evidenced while reading authentic sentences. We found that the stream of morphological and syntactic information has a more pronounced effect on the reading speed of, as we will label them, content‐sensitive learners in that the more probable the co‐occurrence pattern, the faster their reading of that pattern will be. Next, we investigated how differences in pattern learning are reflected in the ways in which individuals approach the reading task itself and adapt to it. Casting this relation in terms of exploration/exploitation strategies, known from Reinforcement Learning, we conclude that content‐sensitive learners are also more likely to initially probe (explore) a wider range of directly relevant patterns, which they can later use (exploit) to optimize their reading performance further. By affecting exploratory behavior, pattern learning influences the information that is gathered and becomes available for exploitation, thereby increasing the effect pattern learning has on language cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of studies report that frequency is a poor predictor of acceptability, in particular at the lower end of the frequency spectrum. Because acceptability judgments provide a substantial part of the empirical foundation of dominant linguistic traditions, understanding how acceptability relates to frequency, one of the most robust predictors of human performance, is crucial. The relation between low frequency and acceptability is investigated using corpus- and behavioral data on the distribution of infinitival and finite that-complements in Polish. Polish verbs exhibit substantial subordination variation and for the majority of verbs taking an infinitival complement, the that-complement occurs with low frequency (<0.66 ipm). These low-frequency that-clauses, in turn, exhibit large differences in how acceptable they are to native speakers. It is argued that acceptability judgments are based on configurations of internally structured exemplars, the acceptability of which cannot reliably be assessed until sufficient evidence about the core component has accumulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on grammatical constructions that attenuate or eliminate the expression of agency in Russian, using the frameworks of Radical Construction Grammar and Cognitive Grammar. Emphasis is on the organization of these constructions in larger networks of related personal and impersonal constructions, with impersonal constructions as peripheral members of the system. More specifically, we compare the role of the dative case in impersonal constructions containing a finite verb and an infinitive and demonstrate that there are two such constructions, which has implications for the concepts of main verb-hood and agentivity. This type of nuanced analysis takes into account factors such as case semantics and relationships among constructions in assessing how agency is assigned or avoided in Russian impersonal constructions, hence makes it possible to tease apart the differences between two impersonal constructions that appear identical in structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]