A aprendizagem implícita de dependências não adjacentes por crianças de 7 anos

Abstract

The current study investigates the implicit learning of non-adjacent dependencies (NADs) by 7-year-old Brazilian children. NADs establish a codependent relationship between two elements with a variable intervening material within a language structure (e.g., minha caneta, essa mesa; ele está dormindo, ela está comendo). These structures are commonly found in natural language, combining different functional classes or categories. These classes or categories typically include items that form codependent relationships, making the processing and learning of NADs essential for language acquisition. Specifically, this study focuses on 7-year-old children, a developmental stage marked by cognitive and metacognitive transformations. Besides, questions regarding the implicit learning of NADs at this age remain unresolved. The objectives were (i) to verify, through a behavioural experimental task, whether 7ýear-old children were sensitive to NADs embedded in a morphological class set of a pseudonatural language; (ii) to investigate the extent to which directed attention to the language patterns plays a role in its implicit learning; (iii) to evaluate the efficacy of the Two-Forced Alternative Choice task (2AFC) as an experimental method for studying NAD learning in 7 year-olds, identifying potential needs for modification and adaptation. Thirty-two children participated in the study. Of this total, 16 were part of the experimental group and were exposed to linguistic stimuli containing probabilistic NADs during the familiarization phase. The remaining 16 children formed the control group, which had no contact with linguistic stimuli during the same phase. The results did not reveal a statistically significant difference in accuracy rates between the experimental and control groups. Besides, the accuracy rate among experimental group participants was marginally above chance level. This suggests that the children in the experimental group were not sensitive to the presented NAD patterns. When compared to data from infants and adults, this lack of sensitivity may be attributed to developmental changes in learning processes and mechanisms, combined with the need of an appropriately designed behavioral experimental task for this age group.