Implicit Statistical Learning of Language and Music

One fundamental ability of the human cognitive system is to become sensitive to the regularities present in the environment. By mere exposure to the surrounding environment, and without intention to learn, perceivers are able to adapt to the regularities of their environment, whether perceptual, linguistic, musical, motor, or even social. Language and music are two highly structured systems; they convey statistical regularities that can be learned by mere exposure through implicit learning mechanisms. The present article focuses on laboratory studies mainly using behavioral methods to investigate the statistical learning in language and music domains. We sequentially review research showing the structural segmentation of sequential material and the acquisition of grammatical or syntactic structures in artificial systems, followed by extensions to more real-world-like materials. The final section is dedicated to a brief overview of the potential mechanisms underlying this learning, as proposed from different theoretical perspectives.