The acquisition of complex motor, cognitive, and social skills, like playing a musical instrument or mastering sports or a language, is generally associated with implicit skill learning . Although it is a general view that SL is most effective in childhood, and such skills are best acquired if learning starts early, this idea has rarely been tested by systematic empirical studies on the developmental pathways of SL from childhood to old age. In this paper, we challenge the view that childhood (...) and early school years are the prime time for skill learning by tracking age-related changes in performance in three different paradigms of SL. We collected data from participants between 7 and 87 years for a Serial Reaction Time Task testing the learning of motor sequences, an Artificial Grammar Learning task testing the extraction of regularities from auditory sequences, and Probabilistic Category Learning in the Weather Prediction task , a non-sequential categorization task. Results on all three tasks show that adolescence and adulthood are the most efficient periods for skill learning, since instead of becoming less and less effective with age, SL improves from childhood into adulthood and then later declines with aging. (shrink)

This chapter evaluates the defective verbal paradigms in the Hungarian language. The first section of the chapter provides an overview of the defectiveness in Hungarian, with emphasis on the systematic, phonotactically motivated defectiveness of the paradigms of some verbal stems. The aim of this section is to be as theoretically neutral and descriptive as possible to facilitate a good comparison with other types of defectiveness in other languages. The second section of the chapter discusses the results of the experiments which (...) are conducted in order to determine the various aspects of the defectiveness in the verbal paradigm. Some of the aspects tested include: the gap locations such as the occurrence and variation of forms in other designated cells of the verbal paradigm, and the correlations between the occurrence of forms in some designated cells; and the gap properties such as the differences in the classification of some verb stems into various stem-classes, and the range of variation exhibited by the forms that native Hungarian speakers accept as fill-ins for the gaps that are present in the paradigms of the defective verbs. (shrink)

One of the debated issues regarding Residual Normality (RN) is frequency sensitivity in Williams syndrome (WS). We present some data on frequency sensitivity in Hungarian WS subjects. Based on vocabulary measures, we suggest that instead of the across-the-board frequency insensitivity proposed by some, a higher frequency threshold characterizes these subjects’performance. Results from a category fluency task show that whereas frequency sensitivity in WS is in line with controls, error patterns imply a qualitatively distinct, looser categorical organization. Regarding the much-debated issue (...) of morphological overgeneralizations, our data suggest that frequency sensitivity cuts across the divisions proposed by dual-process theories. In general, some of the frequency effects are the same as in typically developing populations, but with a delayed pattern. Frequency may be interpreted as supporting RN, but in WS it operates with higher thresholds that might be a general processing feature of WS individuals. (shrink)

We propose that Bloom's focus on cognitive factors involved in word learning still lacks a broader perspective. We emphasize the crucial relevance of working memory in learning elements of language. Specifically, we demonstrate through our data that in impaired populations knowledge of some linguistic elements can be dissociated according to the subcomponent of working memory (visual or verbal) involved in a task. Further, although Bloom's concentration on theory of mind as a precondition for word learning is certainly correct, theory of (...) mind being a necessary condition does not make it a sufficient one. On the basis of our studies we point out the importance of a theory of mind related goal preference in acquiring spatial language. In general, we claim that more specific cognitive preferences and constraints should be outlined in detail for the preconditions of acquiring linguistic elements. (shrink)