The Impact of Similar Place Avoidance on Novel Word Learning in Adults

Similar Place Avoidance (SPA) is the cross-linguistic tendency whereby languages avoid transvocalic consonants with the same place of articulation within a word. In this study, we examine if SPA is the result of learning biases against words where the consonants share a place of articulation. In two experiments we examine whether adults show a learning difference between place-disagreeing novel words (e.g. [tip]) and place-agreeing novel words (e.g. [tid], where [t] and [d] are coronal). Participants are taught novel words and are then tested in an object-mapping or lexical decision task. We measure participants’ learning performance based on accuracy and reaction times. Results indicate that, while accuracy is comparable for place-agreeing and place-disagreeing words in both tasks, participants’ lexical decision responses are generally slower for place-agreeing words. These results suggest that participants experience processing difficulties when accessing newly-formed representations of place-agreeing words, which may contribute to the existence of SPA.