Reframing Statistical Learning Through Natural Language Paradigms.

Scholars propose some new directions for researching statistical learning (SL), including the need to adopt stimuli with greater ecological validity. The language sciences are moving in these directions. Studies investigating adult SL after short exposure to an unfamiliar (spoken or signed) language show that SL can occur from richer, continuous, multimodal input, suggesting that learners are able to track multiple statistics. This makes it more plausible that SL operates in naturalistic, interactive situations. This paradigm shift can potentially extend our understanding of the exact ways in which SL is deployed in the service of learning languages, thereby refining it theoretically and clarifying its place in cognitive science.