Making adults learn from larger linguistic units can facilitate learning article–noun agreement. Here we ask whether initial exposure to larger units improves learning by increasing the predictive associations between the article and noun. Using an artificial language learning paradigm, we taught 106 Hebrew‐speaking participants novel article–noun associations with either segmented input first or unsegmented input first, and tested their learning of the article–noun association and their ability to use articles to predict nouns. Our results showed that participants exposed to unsegmented input first were more likely to treat the article–noun unit as one word and were more accurate at learning the correct article–noun associations. However, participants in the unsegmented‐first condition did not show increased gaze to the target compared to those in the segmented‐first condition. We discuss how these findings inform our understanding of the challenges that adults face when learning a second language.

中文翻译：

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早期的单位大小是否会影响语言预测的形成？语法性别作为案例研究

让成年人从更大的语言单位学习可以促进学习冠词-名词的一致性。在这里，我们询问最初接触更大的单元是否可以通过增加文章和名词之间的预测关联来改善学习。使用人工语言学习范式，我们向 106 名希伯来语参与者讲授新颖的冠词-名词关联，先分段输入或先不分段输入，并测试他们对冠词-名词关联的学习以及使用冠词预测名词的能力。我们的结果表明，首先接触未分段输入的参与者更有可能将冠词-名词单元视为一个单词，并且更准确地学习正确的冠词-名词关联。然而，与分段优先条件下的参与者相比，未分段优先条件下的参与者并未表现出对目标的更多注视。我们讨论这些发现如何帮助我们理解成年人在学习第二语言时面临的挑战。