Rapid phonotactic constraint learning in ageing: evidence from speech errors

Older adults are able to implicitly pick up structural regularities in the environment despite declining cognitive abilities. Here, we investigated elderly’s abilities to implicitly pick up novel linguistic constraints in speech production. Across four training days, young and healthy older Dutch-speaking adults were asked to rapidly recite Dutch phonotactic syllables. Two unrestricted consonants were experimentally constrained to onset or coda positions depending on the medial vowel. Analysis of speech errors revealed rapid adherence to the novel second-order constraints in both the younger and the older group. However, in the older group, there was weaker trial-specific learning compared to the younger group, potentially due to explicit memory deficits. Strikingly, the error pattern of the elderly mirrors earlier developmental work with children using the same paradigm. The findings are discussed in light of possible age-dependent differences in implicit and explicit cognitive subsystems underlying human skill learning.