Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.09.01.277822v1?rss=1 Authors: Paul, M., Maennel, C., van der Kant, A., Mueller, J. L., Hoehle, B., Wartenburger, I., Friederici, A. D. Abstract: In order to become proficient native speakers, children have to learn the grammatical rules of their language. These grammatical rules can define morpho-syntactic relations between neighboring as well as distant elements of a sentence, so-called non-adjacent dependencies (NADs). Previous neurophysiological research suggests that NAD learning comprises different developmental stages during early childhood. Children up to 2 years of age show evidence of associative NAD learning under passive listening conditions, while children starting around the age of 3 to 4 years fail to show learning under passive listening, similarly to the pattern observed in adults. To test whether the transition between these developmental stages occurs in a gradual manner, we tested young children's NAD learning in a foreign language using event-related potentials (ERPs). We found ERP evidence of NAD learning across the age of 1 to 3 years. However, the amplitude of the ERP effect indexing NAD learning decreased linearly with increasing age. These findings indicate a gradual transition in children's ability to learn NADs associatively under passive listening during early childhood. Cognitively, this transition might be driven by children's increasing morpho-syntactic knowledge in their native language, hindering NAD learning in novel linguistic contexts during passive listening. Neuroanatomically, changes in brain structure might play a crucial role, especially the maturation of the prefrontal cortex, which promotes top-down learning, as opposed to bottom-up, associative learning. In sum, our study provides evidence that NAD learning under passive listening conditions undergoes a gradual transition between different developmental stages during early childhood. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info