Statistical learning of foreign language words in younger and older adults

Ge, Yuxin and Correia, Susana and Lee, Yun-Wei and Jin, Ziyi and Rothman, Jason and Rebuschat, Patrick (2024) Statistical learning of foreign language words in younger and older adults. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. ISSN 1366-7289 (In Press)

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Abstract

Statistical learning, i.e. our ability to track and learn from distributional information in the environment, plays a fundamental role in language acquisition, yet little research has investigated this process in older language learners. In the present study, we address this gap by comparing the cross-situational learning of foreign words in younger and older adults. We also tested whether learning was affected by previous experience with multiple languages. We found that both age groups successfully learned the novel words after a short exposure period, confirming that statistical learning ability is preserved in late adulthood. However, the two groups differed in their learning trajectories, with the younger group outperforming the older group during the later stages of learning. Previous language experience did not predict learning outcomes. Our findings suggest that implicit language learning could be leveraged as a targeted intervention to help build or maintain resilience to age-related cognitive decline.