A Prospective Attempt to Observe a Learning Interaction Between Statistical Learning Experiments

This study investigated whether statistical learning from one linguistic input influences learning of a subsequent input in preschool-aged children. The first input comprised word-medial consonant sequences in an "alien" word-learning experiment (e.g., /st/ or /nt/ in alien names). The second input comprised different consonant sequences (e.g., /sk/ and /ns/) in a follow-up "make-believe animal" statistical learning experiment . Thirty-four children were pseudorandomly assigned to one of two word sets in the initial alien experiment and subsequently completed a statistical learning task with manipulated the experimental frequency of the consonant sequences in the make-believe animal names. We hypothesized that prior exposure to /st/ or /nt/ in the alien names would lead to predictable phonological errors—fronting or stopping of /sk/ and /ns/, respectively—in the make-believe animal task. Mixed-effects and ordinal regression analyses revealed no significant effects of alien word set on error patterns or production accuracy for make-believe animal names, though experimental frequency influenced accuracy differently across consonant sequences. These findings suggest that while statistical learning is sensitive to input frequency, cross-experiment interactions may require greater similarity between inputs to manifest. The study contributes to the growing literature on multistream statistical learning and highlights the complexity of generalization in child speech development.