Implicit learning out of the lab: The case of orthographic regularities

Children's (Grades 1 to 5) implicit learning of French orthographic regular ities was investigated through nonword judgment (Experiments 1 and 2) and c ompletion (Experiments 3a and 3b) tasks. Children were increasingly sensiti ve to (a) the frequency of double consonants (Experiments 1, 2, and 3a), (b ) the fact that vowels can never be doubled (Experiment 2), and (c) the leg al position of double consonants (Experiments 2 and 3b). The latter effect transferred to never doubled consonants but with a decrement in performance . Moreover, this decrement persisted without any trend toward fading, even after the massive amounts of experience provided by years of practice. This result runs against the idea that transfer to novel material is indicative of abstract rule-based knowledge and suggests instead the action of mechan isms sensitive to the statistical properties of the material. A connectioni st model is proposed as an instantiation of such mechanisms.