When life gives you lemons, make a left: Investigation of contextualization of learning in speech production using speech errors
Hwang, Suyeon
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Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132678
Description
Title
When life gives you lemons, make a left: Investigation of contextualization of learning in speech production using speech errors
Author(s)
Hwang, Suyeon
Issue Date
2025-12-03
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Fisher, Cynthia L
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Fisher, Cynthia L
Committee Member(s)
Dell, Gary S
Federmeier, Kara D
Montag, Jessica L
Willits, Jon A
Department of Study
Psychology
Discipline
Psychology
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
speech errors
phonotactics
implicit learning
Abstract
Language production is a flexible yet complex system and is constantly updated by new experience. Within this system, implicit phonotactic learning provides a window into how speakers acquire and generalize rules that govern sound patterns. This thesis investigates how such rules are represented, focusing on the role of mini-grammars, which are context-sensitive representational systems that allow learning of different patterns and protect the learning from interference. One hypothesis is that only self-interfering and English-inconsistent rules like 2nd-order vowel-contingent rules require segregation into a mini-grammar to be learned, whereas simple non-self-interfering 1st-order constraints integrate directly into the main phonotactic system. Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed this prediction: 1st-order constraints were learned rapidly and robustly but remained vulnerable to interference from English, suggesting no mini-grammar formation. Experiments 3 and 4 investigated whether 2nd-order rules, once learned inside a mini-grammar, generalize to structurally similar rules. Learners only learned the first rule and did not show evidence of learning the second rule, and later learning influenced the retention of the first rule. Computational modeling in Experiment 4 replicated these interference patterns but retained multiple constraints, unlike behavioral results. Thus, there was no clear evidence for generalization, suggesting that learned representations were specific to restricted consonants and could be reactivated to influence prior learning in similar contexts.
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