Contribution of implicit sequence learning to spoken language processing: some preliminary findings with hearing adults

Spoken language consists of a complex, sequentially arrayed signal that contains patterns that can be described in terms of statistical relations among language units. Previous re-search has suggested that a domain-general ability to learn structured sequential patterns may underlie language acqui-sition. To test this prediction, we examined the extent to which implicit sequence learning of probabilistically struc-tured patterns in hearing adults is correlated with a spoken sentence perception task under degraded listening condi-tions. Performance on the sentence perception task was found to be correlated with implicit sequence learning, but only when the sequences were composed of stimuli that were easy to encode verbally. Implicit learning of phonolog-ical sequences thus appears to underlie spoken language processing and may indicate a hitherto unexplored cognitiv