ARTIFICIAL GRAMMAR LEARNING IN ANIMALS

In this article I review the artificial grammar learning experiments in comparative psychology from the last one and a half decades. Artificial grammar learning in animals will be discussed targeting statistical learning, algebraic learning and hierarchical rule learning. Furthermore, I propose a new model which can explain some of the contradictory results in this field. I argue that social species necessarily have refined contingency detection mechanisms, which allows them to monitor contingencies between various stimuli. This mechanism and a repetition detector, which is sensitive to identical successive stimuli, create abstract contingency-profiles. These can help to recognize repetitive abstract signs, thus a part of algebraic or hierarchical rules.