Language Learning ISSN 0023-8333

Implicit Artificial Grammar and Incidental

Natural Second Language Learning:
How Comparable Are They?
Peter Robinson
Aoyama Gakuin University

Artificial Grammar learning is an experimental paradigm for studying domain-general

learning processes that operate largely outside of awareness. Many studies in this
paradigm have demonstrated that learners exposed to strings of letters that conform
to the grammar come to know, in a very short time, complex constraints on how they
can be sequenced, without being able to verbalize this knowledge. This article summa-
rizes results of a study (Robinson, 2002, 2005) that compared learning of an Artificial
Grammar, by experienced second language learners, with their learning of a novel natu-
ral second language, Samoan. Implications are drawn from this comparison concerning
the extent to which inferences about the earliest stages of natural second language ac-
quisition can be drawn from the many studies of Artificial Grammar learning that have
been done in the broader field of cognitive psychology.

Introduction: Artificial Grammar and Natural Language Learning

Laboratory studies of Artificial Grammar (AG) and incidental second language
(L2) learning both afford the experimental control necessary to understand-
ing the very earliest stages of acquisition in each of their structured stimulus
domains. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have
located specific areas of the frontal cortex of the brain involved in syntactic (In-
defrey, Hagoort, Herzog, Seitz, & Brown, 2001) and, specifically, AG process-
ing (Folia, Udden, de Vries, Forkstram, & Petersson, this volume; Udden et al.,
2008) and have drawn implications from this evidence for the neurobiology of
natural language syntax (Petersson, Folia, & Hagoort, 2010). Complementary

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Peter Robinson, Aoyama

Gakuin University, Department of English, 4-4-25 Shibuya, Tokyo 150-8366, Japan. Internet:
peterr@cl.aoyama.ac.jp

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C 2010 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan
Robinson Implicit Artificial Grammar and Incidental Natural L2 Learning

to these studies of brain activation, behavioral studies comparing the extent of

AG learning and natural L2 learning in the same individual are necessary to
understanding the significance of the findings for second language acquisition
(SLA).
Given their complexity, AGs have been widely used to study differences in
the extent of broadly defined implicit, unaware learning, and its conscious
explicit counterpart and to draw conclusions about the domain-general learn-
ing mechanisms implicated in implicit and explicit learning across a variety
of incidental learning content (Perruchet & Pacton, 2006; Reber, 1993). In
what has become a widely followed procedure in studies of AG learning (see
Perruchet, 2008; Pothos, 2007, for recent reviews) participants are asked to
memorize sequences of letters, such as XVYYXZ, presented during training
sessions. The sample of letter strings presented in training conforms to the con-
straints on any permissible letter sequence, as defined by a finite-state AG, but
does not illustrate them all. Subsequent transfer grammaticality judgment (GJ)
tests have often shown participants in implicit conditions perform at above-
chance levels of accuracy on these tests and more successfully so than compar-
ison groups explicitly instructed to try and understand the constraints on the
underlying grammar. What is learned is implicit in the sense that the knowl-
edge guiding correct judgments cannot be verbalized and has been variously
explained as a process of abstract rule induction (Knowlton & Squire, 1996;
Reber, 1993); sensitivity to probabilistic, statistical patterns of covariation be-
tween specific letters (Conway & Christianson, 2006; Williams, this volume);
sensitivity to chunking in the input (Perruchet, 2008; Servan-Schreiber &
Anderson, 1990); or frequency-independent judgments of similarity of transfer
set to training set exemplar items (Higham, 1997; Pothos, 2005).
Although there has been less research in this area, it has also been shown
that implicit AG learning is insensitive to some measures of individual differ-
ences (IDs) in cognitive abilities (Gebauer & Mackintosh, 2007; McGeorge,
Crawford, & Kelly, 1997; Reber & Allen, 2000; Reber, Walkenfeld, & Hern-
stadt, 1991) and that the capacity for implicit AG learning is preserved in aged,
amnesic, and other populations (Abrams & Reber, 1988; Knowlton & Squire,
1994, 1996), in contrast to explicit learning, which shows evidence of decline.
Thus, although much debate still focuses on interpretations of these results,
it has been claimed that results of AG learning studies show that there is ev-
idence for a powerful cognitive unconscious, which is capable of learning
the abstract structure of the complex AG stimulus display and that this implicit
learning is relatively insensitive to population variance in cognitive abilities
(Reber, 1993).

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Robinson Implicit Artificial Grammar and Incidental Natural L2 Learning

There has been little research into the generalizability of these findings for
AG learning to natural L2 acquisition. For SLA theory, the issue of whether
learners who have already had considerable success in learning natural lan-
guages can successfully learn AGsand so may similarly have learned their
L2sis of particular relevance, as is the issue of whether the cognitive abilities
contributing to their aptitude for SLA (Carroll, 1993; Robinson, 2007) facili-
tate or impede AG learning in any way. Secondly, finite-state AGs are clearly
different from natural languages since natural L2s require semantic processing
during the temporally charted or imagined events involved in their everyday
use and further learning (Baddeley, 2007; Burt, 2008; Robinson, 1996, 1997a,
1997b). Such semantic processing draws on declarative memory and leads
to neural activity in the medial temporal lobe regions of the brain (Laine &
Salmelin, this volume; Lindsay & Gaskell, this volume) and the extent to which
declarative memory competes with nondeclarative memory during AG syntac-
tic processing is not yet clear (Petersson et al., 2009; Poldrack et al., 2001). To
what extent, then, does this additional semantic, conceptually driven process-
ing of meaningful L2 stimuli facilitate or inhibit the associative data-driven
processes involved in learning AG letter contingencies?
To examine these issues, in this article I summarize results of a study that
aimed to replicate two findings concerning implicit AG learning, using ex-
perienced L2 learners as the subject population (Robinson, 2002, 2005). All
participants were Japanese native speakers, taking English-medium university
content courses: Most were English majors, although some were Education
majors preparing for careers in teaching English. The first finding the study
aimed to replicate (Reber et al., 1991) showed that AG learning was insensi-
tive to IDs in intelligence quotient (IQ), in contrast to explicit learning, which
was significantly and positively correlated with IQ scores. The second finding
(Knowlton & Squire, 1996) was that learning depends on implicit acquisition
of both abstract rules and exemplar-specific information about chunk frequen-
cies. This was so, Knowlton and Squire (1996) argued, because bigrams (e.g.,
XY) and trigrams (e.g., JJX) occurring with high frequency during AG training
exposure in their study wrongly influenced participants to judge ungrammatical
items as acceptable during transfer tests of AG learning but had no influence
on judgments of grammatical items. To examine the generalizability of these
findings for AG learning to learning of natural L2s, I added a third condition to
the implicit and explicit conditions of these studies, in which learners seman-
tically processed sentences in a novel language, Samoan, during training, after
which I assessed the extent to which they had acquired knowledge of Samoan
grammar and morphology.

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Robinson Implicit Artificial Grammar and Incidental Natural L2 Learning

Issues Raised by the Reber et al. (1991) Study

1. I was interested in whether the effects that Reber et al. (1991) found
for the independence of IQ and implicit learning in their population of
undergraduate psychology majors would also be found for a population of
experienced and successful L2 learners who might be expected to differ in
the way they apply the abilities measured by IQ when faced with language
learning tasks.
2. Adding the incidental Samoan learning condition to the implicit and ex-
plicit conditions enabled a second issue to be addressed: the direct compar-
ison of the extent of AG learning and incidental natural language learning
for each learner.
3. I was interested in whether implicit AG learning would be independent
of other strengths in cognitive abilities this population may be expected
to have, such as language learning aptitude and working memory (WM),
which have been shown to contribute to successful SLA during both in-
structed and also naturalistic exposure (Harley & Hart, 2002; Skehan,
1998). If it was found that WM and aptitude were correlated significantly
and positively with AG learning, it might indeed imply that the learning
processes taking place during exposure to input in AG learning tasks could
also have contributed to SLA for these learners. However, even if it were
found, this would only be indirect evidence for a relationship between
implicit AG learning and incidental L2 learning. Therefore, to directly
address this issue, I examined the influence of IQ, WM, and aptitude on in-
cidental Samoan learning and compared it to the influence of these on AG
learning.

Issues Raised by the Knowlton and Squire (1996) Study

1. I was interested in whether the effects for frequency and chunking found
by Knowlton and Squire (1996) in their AG learning experiment would
generalize to experienced L2 learner participants and also influence their
incidental learning of Samoan in the same way. If so, it would demonstrate
that this population of learners also had capacities for acquiring instance-
based as well as rule-based knowledge during exposure to AG training set
items and that AG learning and natural language learning are similar in
this respect.
2. It would also indirectly suggest that this instance-based knowledge is
independent of explicit memory for the chunks encountered in differ-
ent frequencies during training, as this effect was found both for normal
and amnesic subjects in Knowlton and Squires study. However, a direct

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examination of this latter issue was possible, as I took measures of explicit

WM capacity and explicit rote-memory ability using the paired-associates
subtest of the aptitude test battery. Paired-associates learning is thought to
engage declarative memory and is known to rely heavily on the medial tem-
poral lobe (Winocur & Weiskrantz, 1976). If there are significant positive
correlations of scores on these measures of explicit memory with accuracy
on transfer test items high in chunk strength, then it will suggest, in contrast
to Knowlton and Squires findings, that the effects of chunk strength on AG
learning and natural Samoan language learning are mediated by explicit
memory abilities under executive control.
3. I was also interested in whether any of these measures of IDs in WM and
aptitude positively predicted learning of items low in chunk strength. If
this is so, then this is again support for the claim that abilities contributing
to implicit AG learning draw on those measured by tests of aptitude for
natural language learning, supporting the claim that implicit AG learning
and natural L2 learning have some processes in common.

Comparing AG Learning and Incidental Natural

Language Learning
Learning Tasks: Measures and Procedures
Thirty-seven participants completed three experimental tasks. The explicit
learning task was a forced-choice, series-solution problem task used by
Reber et al. (1991, p. 891). Twelve series-solution problems were randomly
selected from a set of 21 and presented in a fixed random order. For exam-
ple, alphabetic problems (e.g., ABCBCDCDE_ D or C) depend on repeating
alphabetic sequences, ABC, BCD, and CDE, in which the last two letters of
one triplet are repeated as the first two letters of the following triplet. These
problems were presented on a computer screen and percent-correct scores were
calculated.
As in Reber et al. (1991), the implicit learning AG task was described
to participants during the orientation phase as a memory task. During two
trials of training, participants viewed strings of letters generated by the AG,
such as XXVT and VXJJJJ, for 3 s each and then wrote them down on a
piece of paper. The AG chosen was one used by Abrams and Reber (1988)
and Knowlton and Squire (1996). The training and transfer sets were those
used in Knowlton and Squire (1996). There were 32 transfer set items, of four
types: grammatical/high and low chunk strength; ungrammatical/high and low
chunk strength. The chunk strength of items in the transfer set was calculated

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by Knowlton and Squire (1994, 1996) on the basis of whether a transfer set
string contained bigrams (e.g., XV) or trigrams (e.g., XVT) that had appeared
in the input during training and the frequency with which those bigrams and
trigrams had appeared in the two training trials. Thus, if a string XVTX occurred
in the transfer set and only the above bigram XV and trigram XVT chunks
had occurred in training, with frequencies of five and two times, respectively,
then the chunk strength for that transfer set item was 7. Therefore, the mean
associative chunk strength of the item XVTX, with two chunks, occurring a
combined total of seven times during training, is 3.5. The same procedure was
followed in determining the chunk strength of the incidental Samoan learning
transfer set items.
The incidental Samoan learning task required 10 trials of training that were
spread over a number of days. Participants first memorized the meanings of 27
Samoan words (a language unknown to participants): 1 article, 15 nouns, and
11 verbs for which English and Japanese translation equivalents were provided.
They then took part in 10 trials of training. During each trial, participants
viewed 45 Samoan sentences of three constructional types, making a total of
450 presentations150 of each type (see Robinson, 1994, 2002, for detailed
descriptions). The first of these constructional types involved ergative mark-
ing, in which a particle e is inserted before the subject of a transitive verb
(e.g., ave [drove] e [ergative marker] le tama [the boy] le taavale [the car] [ave
e le tama le taavale/the boy drove the car]). The second type involved marking
the adverbial phrase with a locative marker, I, as in taalo (play) le tama
(the boy) i (locative marker) le paka (the park) (taalo le tama i le paka/the
boy played in the park). The third type involved incorporation of direct object
nouns into verbs. This was illustrated by use of a hyphen to join the two words
as in, ave (drive)taavale (car) le tama (the boy) (avetaavale le tama/the
boy drove the car). During training, to test comprehension following the 10-s
presentation of each stimulus, participants responded to yes/no comprehension
questions by pressing yes or no keys on the keyboard.
Following training, a GJ test was presented in the visual/written mode (as
in Reber et al., 1991). The transfer set for this GJ test consisted of 27 items
of the following types: 9 old items viewed in training (3 for each rule type
described above); 9 new grammatical items (3 for each type); and 9 new
ungrammatical items (3 for each type) (see Robinson, 2005, Appendix D,
p. 268). Response time and accuracy of response were calculated. Chunk
strength was calculated for the 18 new items in the transfer GJ test follow-
ing the same procedure described by Knowlton and Squire (1994, 1996) for
calculating the mean associative chunk strength of AG transfer set items.

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Individual Difference Measures

As in Reber et al. (1991), a short form of the WAIS-R intelligence test was used
(which consisted of picture arrangement [PA], block design [BD], vocabulary
[V], and arithmetic [A]). Participants had a mean IQ of 113, which is almost
identical to Reber et al.s (1991) participants mean of 110 using the tetradic
short form (V, A, BD, PA). I also used Sasakis (1996) Language Aptitude
Battery for the Japanese (LABJ). This consists of three sections: a measure
of rote-memory for 24 paired-associates (M); grammatical sensitivity (GS),
a measure of the ability to identify grammatical patterns in a new language;
and phonemic sensitivity (PS), a measure of the ability to match sounds and
symbols. Third, I used Osaka and Osakas (1992) reading span test of WM and
scored this using the total number of correctly recalled words.
Finally, to assess individual differences in the extent of each participants
awareness during training on Samoan sentences, following the GJ test partici-
pants answered a questionnaire in Japanese. This asked if they had (a) noticed
any rules during the training sessions; (b) had been searching for rules while
they completed the training exercises; (c) could say what any of the rules were
in the sentences viewed during training; (d) could say what i (the locative
marker) meant in the sentences they had seen, and/or state the rule for its use,
and give an example; (e) could say what e (the ergative marker) meant in the
sentences they had seen, and/or state the rule for its use, and give an example;
and (f) could say what (the symbol showing noun incorporation) meant
in the sentences they had seen, and/or state the rule for its use, and give an
example. On the basis of these responses, participants were coded from 0 to
a maximum of 6 for awareness. For questions (a) and (b), participants were
given one point for simply saying they had noticed, or searched for rules, and
0 if they said they had not. For question (c), statements demonstrating aware-
ness of any rule relating to the sentences viewed during training, such as the
typical VOS and VSO word orders or that verbs always come first, were ac-
cepted. For questions (d)(f), exhaustive metalinguistic rule statements were
not required, simply demonstrating awareness of the different rules, through a
partial explanationoften supported by exampleswas judged to be enough.
For question (d), statements to the effect that the locative marker is a preposi-
tion (that it is like in in English) or comes before a place or location were
acceptable. For question (e), statements to the effect that the ergative marker
occurs before the subject, or between the verb and the subject, in the order VSO
were acceptable, although comments that it was a plural, or tense marker, or
that participants had no idea were common. In cases where participants iden-
tified both the correct positional constraint and commented that the particle

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functioned as a plural or tense marker, these were considered acceptable, as

it was knowledge of the obligatory positional constraint that was drawn on in
transfer set grammatical/ungrammatical responses for this constructional type.
For question (f), statements such as it joins together the verb and the object
or a noun and a verb supported by an example were acceptable.

AG Learning by Experienced L2 Learners:

What Influences Success?
Do cognitive abilities influence AG learning for the experienced and successful
L2 learner population I studied in the same way they influenced learning by
the original population studied by Reber et al. (1991)? Similarly, do input
factors, such as chunk strength, have the same influence on AG learning for
this population that was found in Knowlton and Squires (1996) study?

Processing Factors: Cognitive Abilities in Implicit

and Explicit AG Learning
As Table 1 shows, implicit learning was significantly negatively correlated with
IQ (r = .34, p < .05), whereas explicit learning was nonsignificantly corre-
lated with IQ (r = .3, p = .06). However, although WM was not significantly
related to either implicit or explicit learning, explicit learning was signifi-
cantly positively related to LABJ scores of language learning aptitude (r = .38,

Table 1 Intercorrelations of implicit, explicit, and incidental Samoan learning and

individual differences in aptitude, intelligence, working memory, and awareness

ID measures Learning condition and content

IQ WM AW Imp Exp Inc

Apt .17 .35 .44 .03 .38 .25

IQ .13 .08 .34 .3 .11
WM .03 .09 .04 .08
AW .15 .22 .002
Imp .13 .06
Exp .21
Apt = aptitude, IQ = intelligence quotient, WM = working memory, AW = awareness
during incidental Samoan learning, Imp = implicit AG learning, Exp = explicit series-
solution learning, Inc = incidental Samoan learning.

p < .05.

p < .01.

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Table 2 Mean accuracy and variance and reliability for implicit, explicit, and incidental
learning

M% (RWH91) Variance (RWH91) Kurtosis Skewness Rel (RWH91)

Imp 55.2 60.9 88.3 51.84 1.19 .18 .52 .51

Exp 68.5 61 176.1 237.5 .59 .17 .68 nr
Inc 63.8 102.7 .38 .23 .72
M% = mean percent-correct, RWH91 = Reber, Walkenfeld, and Hernstadts (1991)
results, Rel = reliability, Imp = implicit AG learning, Exp = explicit series-solution,
Inc = incidental Samoan learning, nr = not reported.
From Robinson (2002, p. 239).

p < .05) in contrast to implicit learning (r = .03, p = .8). The mean percent-
correct scores for implicit learning in this replication were somewhat lower
than in Reber et al.s (1991) study, and the mean percent-correct scores for
explicit learning were higher (see Table 2).
Table 3 shows that the two IQ subtests that measure verbal abilities and
crystallized intelligence, vocabulary (V), and arithmetic (A), were significantly
positively correlated (r = .33, p < .05) and were both negatively correlated with
implicit AG learning, significantly so in the case of arithmetic (r = .39, p <
.05). There were no significant correlations of these subtests with explicit or
incidental learning or of the block design (BD) subtest measuring analytic, fluid
intelligence with learning in any condition. Table 4 shows that paired-associates
rote-memory (M) and GS subtests were significantly and positively correlated
(r = .37, p < .05), as were GS and PS (r = .36, p < .05). Both GS (r = .36,
p < .05) and PS (r = .48, p < .01) were significantly positively correlated

Table 3 Intercorrelations of IQ subtests with implicit AG, explicit series-solution, and

incidental Samoan learning

IQ subtests Learning condition and content

A BD Imp Exp Inc

V .33 .09 .29 .13 .18

A .06 .39 .16 .03
BD .05 .28 .17
V = vocabulary, BD = block design, A = arithmetic, Imp = implicit AG learning,
Exp = explicit series-solution, Inc = incidental Samoan learning.

p < .05.
From Robinson (2005, p. 250).

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Table 4 Intercorrelations of aptitude subtests with implicit AG, explicit series-solution,

and incidental Samoan learning

Aptitude subtests Learning condition and content

GS PS Imp Exp Inc

M .37 .3 .04 .08 .24

GS .36 .03 .36 .11
PS .01 .48 .18
M = paired-associates rote-memory, GS = grammatical sensitivity, PS = phonological
sensitivity, Imp = implicit AG learning, Exp = explicit series-solution, Inc = incidental
Samoan learning.

p < .05.

with explicit learning, although no subtest showed significant correlations with

implicit AG or incidental Samoan learning.

Input Factors: Chunk Strength and Implicit AG Learning

As Table 5 shows, Knowlton and Squire (1996) found that low and high chunk
strength grammatical items were correctly accepted at very similar rates (62%
and 64% correct, respectively). However, high chunk strength influenced learn-
ers to wrongly accept ungrammatical AG items (45% correct) in contrast to un-
grammatical items low in chunk strength (72% correct). In this study, the same

Table 5 Percentage accuracy of transfer test GJs of high/low mean associative chunk
strength items in Knowlton and Squire (1996) and the implicit and incidental conditions
of the present study

Grammaticality

Ungrammatical Grammatical

Chunk strength/ Low High Low high

condition

Knowlton & Squire 72% 45% 62% 64%

(implicit)
This study 65% 34% 62% 59%
(implicit)
This study 65% 49% 61% 35%
(incidental)
From Robinson (2005, p. 254).

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Robinson Implicit Artificial Grammar and Incidental Natural L2 Learning

effect was found. High chunk strength ungrammatical AG items were incor-
rectly accepted (34% correct) in contrast to low chunk strength ungrammatical
items (65% correct). Chunk strength did not influence correct acceptance of
grammatical items.

Interim Summary of Findings

What is clear from these findings is that input factors, such as chunk strength,
exhibited a similar effect on AG learning for both experienced L2 learners and
Knowlton and Squires (1996) population of learners. However, the influence
of cognitive abilities on implicit and explicit learning differs from the findings
of Reber et al. (1991). There was a significant negative correlation of IQ and
implicit learning and a positive, but nonsignificant correlation of IQ and explicit
learning. Possibly this is due to the fact that the experienced L2 learners in the
present study were much more actively trying to understand the languagelike
properties of the AG stimulus display (however they construe these) than par-
ticipants in Reber et al. (1991). Those participants in the present study with
higher IQs tried harder to understand and learn explicitly, and because the pat-
terns regulating the AG strings are complex, they failed, with the consequence
that the passive associative memory aggregation of patterns underlying implicit
learning was disrupted.
The experienced L2 learners in this study were more successful on the
explicit task than Reber et al.s (1991) subjects (see Table 2), and there was less
variance in their scores (see Table 2), resulting in a nonsignificant correlation
between IQ and success. However, the correlation with aptitude, assessed us-
ing LABJ (Sasaki, 1996), was significant (Table 1) and this is attributable to
differences between learners in GS, a measure of the ability to identify word
order patterns in a novel language, and PS, a measure of pattern recognition
involving sound symbol correspondences (Table 4). Those who scored higher
on these measures were more successful on the explicit series-solution task,
which similarly required patterns in repeated sets of letters to be identified. For
these experienced L2 learners, then, success in AG learning was influenced by
IDs in cognitive abilities, as was their success in explicit learning, to a greater
extent than Reber et al.s participants, reflecting a propensity that these L2
learners had to approach both the AG and series-solution task as problems to
be solved and actively analyzed. However, the influence of chunk strength on
the knowledge acquired during AG learning was the same for these experi-
enced L2 learners as it was for Knowlton and Squires (1996) amnesics and
controls.

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AG and Incidental Natural Language Learning: How Comparable

Are They?
If AG learning and incidental natural language learning draw on shared learning
processes, then one would expect to find similar effects of the chunking and
frequency input factors on implicit AG and incidental L2 learning. One would
also expect that cognitive abilities, and measured individual differences in them,
mediate the processing effects of chunking and frequency across both AG and
natural language stimulus domains in similar ways. Is this so?

Input Factors: Effects of Mean Associative Chunk Strength on Incidental

Samoan Learning
The effects of mean associative chunk strength on GJs of items in the incidental
Samoan learning transfer set differed from its effects on judgments of items in
the AG transfer set (see Table 5). As in the AG transfer test, high chunk strength
led learners to wrongly accept ungrammatical items (49% correct) in contrast
to ungrammatical items low in chunk strength (65% correct). However, unlike
the findings for AG transfer test performance in Knowlton and Squire (1996),
or this study, high chunk strength influenced incidental learners to wrongly
reject grammatical items (35% correct), in contrast to grammatical items low
in chunk strength (61% correct).

Input Factors: Effects of Item Similarity (Number of Chunks)

and Frequency of Exposure on Incidental Learning
It is possible, however, because mean associative chunk strength showed a
negative effect on judgments of grammatical Samoan items, in contrast to
judgments of grammatical AG items in both Knowlton and Squires (1996)
study and this replication: that similarity (the number of chunks a transfer set
item contained that had appeared in training) and raw frequency had separate
influences on incidental learning of Samoan.
As Table 6 shows, there was no significant correlation of accuracy on all
of the new (grammatical and ungrammatical) items in the GJ transfer test with
either the number of chunks transfer set items contained (r = .28, p = .25)
or the frequency with which the chunks they contained appeared in training
(r = .19, p = .45). However, for new grammatical items in the transfer
set, the number of chunks those items contained was positively and signifi-
cantly correlated with accuracy of response to them (r = .68, p < .05). New
grammatical items containing more chunks that had appeared in training were
responded to more accurately. The frequency of these chunks in the training set
was not significantly related to accuracy of response to these items (r = .04,

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Table 6 Correlations of accuracy of response to incidental Samoan learning GJ transfer

set new items with number of chunks they contained and with the frequency of prior
occurrence of the chunks during training

New/all New/grammatical New/ungrammatical

Chunks .28 .68 .45

Frequency .19 .04 .22
Chunks = number of chunks transfer set new items contained that had also ap-
peared during incidental Samoan training exposure, Frequency = frequency with which
chunks transfer set GJ items contained had appeared during incidental Samoan training
exposure.

p < .05.
From Robinson (2005, p. 256).

p = .9). In contrast for the new ungrammatical items in the transfer set, neither
the number of chunks they contained (r = .22, p = .56) nor the frequency
with which the chunks had appeared during training (r = .45, p = .2) was
significantly correlated with accuracy of response to these items.

Interactions of Effects of Chunk Strength and Cognitive Abilities During

Implicit AG and Incidental L2 Learning
With only a few exceptions, there were no significant correlations of IDs in
cognitive abilities with accuracy on items high versus low in chunk strength in
the AG or incidental Samoan transfer GJ tests. Chunk strength had the effects
it had on GJs largely independently of the abilities learners brought to the AG
and Samoan learning tasks. The exceptions to this were as follows:

1. For implicit AG learning, accuracy of judgments of grammatical items

with high chunk strength were significantly negatively correlated with the
two verbal subtests of IQ, vocabulary (r = .46, p < .01) and arithmetic
(r = .43, p < .01) and, consequently, with overall IQ (r = .49, p <.01).
2. In contrast, for incidental Samoan learning, accurate performance on gram-
matical high chunk strength items in the GJ transfer test was significantly
positively correlated with scores on the vocabulary IQ subtest (r = .33,
p < .05).
3. Additionally, WM was significantly positively correlated with accurate
judgments of ungrammatical items low in chunk strength (r = .33,
p < .05).

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Robinson Implicit Artificial Grammar and Incidental Natural L2 Learning

Discussion and Conclusion

How does the AG learning performance of successful L2 learners compare
to the performance of more general populations who, one could assume, are
likely to be lower in the abilities drawn on during L2 learning? If the processes
underlying AG learning contribute to natural language learning, one would
have expected this population to be better at AG learning than Reber et al.s
(1991) participants, but they were not. As Table 2 shows, they were poorer at
AG learning than participants in Reber et al.s (1991) study and better at ex-
plicit learning. Additionally, although the mean IQ of both groups was almost
identical (113 in this study, 110 in Reber et al., 1991), the effects of IQ on AG
learning and explicit series solution learning were different in the two studies.
In contrast to Reber et al.s findings and those of Gebauer and Mackintosh
(2007) (who studied school students, of mean age 15 years, learning AGs and
performing an explicit rule discovery task) IQ was not significantly positively
correlated with explicit learning and it was significantly negatively correlated
with AG learning. This negative correlation was the result of abilities measured
by the verbal (V and A) subtests, not the nonverbal BD subtest (see Table 3).
So it looks like these learners are less susceptible to AG learning than those
in other studies. Possibly this is because participants in the present study had
a much greater propensity to adopt an intentional, explicit learning stance to
the AG learning task than did participants in Reber et al.s and Gebauer and
Mackintoshs studies, reflecting the heavy emphasis on explicit language learn-
ing and metalinguistic understanding in Japanese classrooms. In attempting to
understand, explicitly, they drew heavily on abilities measured by the verbal V
and A subtests, disrupting the passive aggregation of implicit memory for con-
tingencies between letters that Conway and Christianson (2006) (cf. Williams,
2009, this volume) argued is necessary for successful AG learning.
How similar are the effects of, and the processes underlying, implicit AG
learning and incidental L2 learning? The extent of learning under the two con-
ditions was not significantly correlated, negatively or positively. As Table 1
shows, there were no significant correlations of implicit AG learning with inci-
dental Samoan transfer test performance on the GJ posttest. Further, although
mean associative chunk strength did influence incidental Samoan learning, as
Table 5 shows the findings differ from those for the effects of chunk strength on
AG learning. In line with Knowlton and Squires (1996) findings, high chunk
strength negatively influenced learners to wrongly accept ungrammatical items
in both AG and incidental transfer GJ tests. However, it additionally negatively
influenced incidental Samoan learners to wrongly reject grammatical sentences

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Robinson Implicit Artificial Grammar and Incidental Natural L2 Learning

but did not have this effect on grammatical AG transfer test items. Why should
grammatical Samoan transfer set items high in chunk strength be incorrectly
rejected? An explanation for this is in the details of the transfer test items (see
Robinson, 2005, p. 268). As described previously, during training and trans-
fer tests, Samoan constructions of three types were presented. The results of
transfer test performance showed that locative constructions were successfully
learned, with 87% of new grammatical items being correctly accepted and
59% of new ungrammatical items being correctly rejected. In contrast, only
28% of new grammatical ergative constructions and 22% of new grammatical
incorporated constructions were correctly accepted. Two of the new grammat-
ical incorporated items in the transfer set, in particular, were high in chunk
strength: These were avetaavale le tama/the boy drove the car and fana
lupe le tama/the boy shot the dove. Both of these contained only one bigram (le
tama) that had appeared with high frequency (36 times) in training, giving both
items a high mean associative chunk strength of 36. Despite this high chunk
strength, learners correctly accepted them only 22% of the time. Learners were
resistant to accepting new examples of noun incorporation that they had not
encountered during training, regardless of their high chunk strength, thus con-
tributing to the finding that high chunk strength was negatively associated with
correct acceptance of new grammatical items.
In summary, it is not possible to draw the same conclusion for incidental
L2 learning that can be drawn for AG learning on the basis of Knowlton and
Squires (1996) findings and the replication of the same findings in this study.
Both exemplar-specific knowledge of chunk-frequency and abstract knowl-
edge of grammaticality influenced AG transfer GJ judgments in similar ways
in Knowlton and Squires study (1996) and the present study. However, in con-
trast to these findings, high chunk strength did not influence incidental Samoan
L2 learners to correctly accept new grammatical transfer test items, particu-
larly incorporated constructions, which are dissimilar to constructions they are
familiar with in their L1 (Japanese) or L2 (English).
The effects found for the influence of chunk strength on AG learning in
Knowlton and Squires study (1996) and the present study may reflect the
earliest stages of child language acquisition more faithfully than they do the
earliest stages of adult natural L2 learning. Gomez and Gerken (1999), for
example, found robust AG learning in 1-year-olds after only 2-min exposure.
As experiments by Saffran and colleagues have shown (e.g., Saffran, Aslin,
& Newport, 1996), infants are clearly able to use frequency information to
discover statistical regularities and transitional probabilities in the input they
hear. This sensitivity to chunk-frequency is an essential component of what

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Robinson Implicit Artificial Grammar and Incidental Natural L2 Learning

Klein and Dimroth (2009) called the basic copying capacity drawn on in
language acquisition. It is all there is in the earliest stages of child language
acquisition, where frequency of co-occurring stimuli in the input supports gen-
eralization and learning of structure in the absence of developed WM and
long-term-memory abilities (Elman, 1993; Goldberg, 2006; Newport, 1990)
and in the absence of entrenched preexisting knowledge of L1 or other lan-
guage constructional form-meaning mappings. This sensitivity to frequency
and the copying capacity it contributes to persists into adulthood (Saffran,
Johnson, Aslin, & Newport, 1999; Williams, 2009, this volume), as is evident
from the effects of chunk strength on AG learning found by Knowlton and
Squires study (1996) and in the present study. However, for adult learners in
the present study, with fully developed working, episodic, and semantic mem-
ory abilities, other information was available in the event scene evoked for them
by prompts to process Samoan sentences for meaning, such as the semantic
salience of chunks, and this is likely to have contributed to their subsequent
memorability, independently of frequency alone. The importance of processing
lexical meaning during incidental natural language learning implicates declar-
ative memory for words and events, perhaps disrupting the passive aggregation
of associations in nondeclarative procedural memory that takes place during
AG learning (cf. Indefrey et al., 2001; Poldrack et al., 2001; Ullman, 2004).
Partially supporting this interpretation, as reported, explicit memory (WM) is
significantly positively correlated with accurate judgments of ungrammatical
Samoan transfer test items low in chunk strength (r = .33) but is not related
to performance on any AG items. In addition, as Table 6 shows, there is ev-
idence that the number of chunks an item contains in the incidental learning
GJ transfer set influences GJs but not the raw frequency of occurrence of these
chunks in training exposure alone. Those that had more chunks, and so are
more globally similar to all previously encountered instances, are those that are
more accurately endorsed as grammatical. Simple frequency of occurrence of
the chunks an item contains does not correlate significantly with responses to
grammatical or ungrammatical items.
To conclude, findings from the study summarized here (Robinson 2002,
2005) suggest that AG learning and incidental natural language learning are re-
lated but different processes. Aside from the overall nonsignificant correlations
of learning in these two conditions (Table 1), there is the evidence that chunk
strength exerts a different influence on AG learning than it does on incidental
learning (Table 5). For reasons I have described, it may be that AG learning
reflects infant natural language learning more faithfully than it does the ear-
liest stages of incidental L2 learning by adults, which additionally implicates

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Robinson Implicit Artificial Grammar and Incidental Natural L2 Learning

well-developed declarative long-term memory (which infants lack) in constru-

ing events and processing lexical meaning.

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