Transfer in artificial grammar learning: A reevaluation

This article covers methodological and theoretical issues in artificial grammar learning. Arguments that such tasks are mediated by abstract knowledge (e.g., A. S. Reber, 1969, 1990) are based primarily on evidence from transfer experiments, where the surface vocabulary is changed between learning and test items. Because of a number of methodological concerns, the small magnitudes of artificial grammar learning effects generally are difficult to interpret. Possible solutions are offered here. Furthermore, even reliable transfer effects imply neither that subjects have acquired abstract knowledge of the underlying grammar nor that they are performing a process of abstract analogy from memorized whole exemplars. Models that learn only surface fragments of the training stimuli and perform abstraction at test rather than during learning are wholly consistent with transfer phenomena.