Children's Learning of Unfamiliar Phonological Sequences

1971

4 groups of 15 4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-yr.-old children learned nonsense phonological sequences that varied in grammaticality by violating 0, 1, or 2 phonological rules of Ss' native language. The youngest age group made fewer errors in learning the most nongrammatical phonological sequences than in learning grammatical ones. With the 10- and 8-yr.-olds an opposite trend was found. The differences were not statistically significant. Implications for second language learning were discussed.