INDIRECT EFFECTS OF SYNTHETIC GRAMMAR LEARNING IN AN IDENTIFICATION TASK

Two experiments investigated the effects of incidental learning of an artificial grammar on an indirect measure. Ss memorized consonant strings and later identified these in a perceptual clarification procedure. The competitive chunking model by E. Servan-Schreiber and J. R. Anderson (1990) predicted faster identifications of grammatical as opposed to nongranimatical strings. Both experiments confirmed this prediction. Experiment 2 further investigated whether faster identification induces a feeling of familiarity, which should increase the probability of subjects responding ''grammatical'' to a string. Faster identifications were indeed related to ''old'' responses in a recognition judgment. However, there was no systematic relation between speed of identification and grammaticality judgments, which is inconsistent with the prediction of the competitive chunking model that familiarity exclusively mediates grammaticality judgments.