SALIENCE OF ITEM KNOWLEDGE IN LEARNING ARTIFICIAL GRAMMARS

Both the specific similarity of test items to study items and the grammaticality of test items were found to be major determinants of performance under task conditions common in the literature. Results bearing on the issue of how item-specific effects are coordinated with knowledge pooled across items are: (a) Better item memory resulted in smaller rather than larger effects of specific similarity on judgments of grammaticality, suggesting that items can be too well differentiated to support transfer to new items. (b) Variation in the effect of specific similarity did not result in compensatory variation in grammaticality, suggesting that any scheme that tightly links the effects of the two variables is insufficient. (c) Differential reliance on the 2 knowledge resources was not under good instructional control, which poses a problem for accounts that use functional task analyses to coordinate functionally different memories.