Memory limitations alone do not lead to over-regularization: An experimental and computational investigation

Abstract

The “less is more” hypothesis suggests that one reason adults and children differ in their language acquisition abilities is that they also differ in other cognitive capacities. According to one version, children’s relatively poor memory may make them more likely to over-regularize inconsistent input (Hudson Kam & Newport, 2005, 2009). This paper investigates this hypothesis experimentally and computationally. Experiments in which adults were placed under a high cognitive load during a language-learning task reveal that in adults, increased load does not result in increased over-regularization. A computational model offers a possible explanation for these results, demonstrating that over-reg..