Introduction:
Two experiments presented infants with artificial languages in which at least two generalizations were logically possible. The results demonstrate that infants made one of the two generalizations tested, the one which was most statistically consistent with the particular subset of the data they received.
Infants in the diagonal condition were familiarized with a subset of the stimuli in which the only common feature was an abstract AAB or ABA pattern. Like the infants studied by Marcus et al. (1999), infants in this condition were able to generalize to new test stimuli, suggesting that they had made the intended generalization, having only been exposed to four stimulus types. Infants in the column condition, who were exposed to a different subset of the same larger data set, failed to make the generalization. This pattern of results is consistent with two possible interpretations: Infants exposed to input consistent with two different formal systems make no generalization at all. Or, infants generalize based on the formal description that is more likely to have generated the input.4