The Declarative/Procedural Model

Abstract

The fundamental claim of the declarative/procedural model is that the declarative and procedural memory systems should play roles in language that are largely analogous to the roles they play in non-linguistic domains. Declarative memory has been intensively studied in both humans and non-human animals. Declarative and procedural memory interact with each other, with important consequences for second language acquisition. Since declarative memory is important, and perhaps necessary, for learning arbitrary pieces of information and associating them, this learning and memory system should be crucial for all learned idiosyncratic knowledge in language. Declarative memory could support grammatical knowledge in a variety of ways, including learning grammatical rules explicitly or implicitly, and storing rule-governed complex forms as chunks. Retrieval of knowledge learned in declarative memory should also depend on medial temporal lobe structures, at least soon after learning, with explicit recollection relying particularly on the hippocampus, and familiarity-based recognition involving perirhinal cortex.