Evidence for a learning bias against saltatory phonological alternations.

•Adults learned novel phonological alternations in an artificial language.•Participants learning alternations between dissimilar sounds assumed that more similar sounds also alternated.•Learning saltatory alternations (e.g., /p/ becomes [v], /b/ remains [b]) was difficult, even with explicit training.•It is argued that learners are biased to prefer alternations between perceptually similar sounds.