“The subjects were asked to play a game of Memory…” has made me think about the validity of this kind of experiment. This is because the subjects of any such experiment are – I suppose – members of the species Homo sapiens, and as such certainly have the brain structure and “wiring” that predisposes the “creation” of language and the ability to detect and create meanings out of meaningless linguistic structures. This ability determines that a pattern will clearly emerge out of any given collection of syllables, given the time to experiment with them. The experiment would be valid – in my opinion – if the subjects were the members of a group that have not had tens of thousands of years of speaking and language use coded in their genetic stock. However, the approach is interesting, and clearly the subject matter is fascinating.