Subcategory Learning in Normal and Language Learning-Disabled Adults: How Much Information Do They Need?

Richardson, Jessica D.; Harris, Laurel; Plante, Elena; Gerken, Lou Ann

doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2006/090)

Cited by 24 publications

(39 citation statements)

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“…It is also of interest to note that there seems to be a considerable overlap between regions implicated in the perception/production of music and the perception/production of abstract sequences, including the left inferior frontal region (Janata & Grafton, 2003;Tillmann et al, 2006). Brain lesion data and results on specific language impairment (SLI) are consistent with these findings, suggesting that abnormal language processing are paralleled by impairment in structured sequence learning/processing (Christiansen, Kelly, Shillock, & Greenfield, 2009;Evans, Saffran, & Robe-Torres, 2009;Hoen et al, 2003;Hsu, Christiansen, Tomblin, Zhang, & Gómez, 2006;Pothos & Wood, 2009;Reali & Christiansen, 2009;Richardson, Harris, Plante, & Gerken, 2006;Uddén et al, 2008). However, there is a functional anterior-posterior gradient within the left inferior frontal region related to language (Bookheimer, 2002;Hagoort, 2005).…”

Section: Dynamic Functional Modularity and The Role Of The Left Infersupporting

confidence: 71%

What artificial grammar learning reveals about the neurobiology of syntax

2012

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a b s t r a c tIn this paper we examine the neurobiological correlates of syntax, the processing of structured sequences, by comparing FMRI results on artificial and natural language syntax. We discuss these and similar findings in the context of formal language and computability theory. We used a simple right-linear unification grammar in an implicit artificial grammar learning paradigm in 32 healthy Dutch university students (natural language FMRI data were already acquired for these participants). We predicted that artificial syntax processing would engage the left inferior frontal region (BA 44/45) and that this activation would overlap with syntax-related variability observed in the natural language experiment. The main findings of this study show that the left inferior frontal region centered on BA 44/45 is active during artificial syntax processing of well-formed (grammatical) sequence independent of local subsequence familiarity. The same region is engaged to a greater extent when a syntactic violation is present and structural unification becomes difficult or impossible. The effects related to artificial syntax in the left inferior frontal region (BA 44/45) were essentially identical when we masked these with activity related to natural syntax in the same subjects. Finally, the medial temporal lobe was deactivated during this operation, consistent with the view that implicit processing does not rely on declarative memory mechanisms that engage the medial temporal lobe. In the context of recent FMRI findings, we raise the question whether Broca's region (or subregions) is specifically related to syntactic movement operations or the processing of hierarchically nested non-adjacent dependencies in the discussion section. We conclude that this is not the case. Instead, we argue that the left inferior frontal region is a generic on-line sequence processor that unifies information from various sources in an incremental and recursive manner, independent of whether there are any processing requirements related to syntactic movement or hierarchically nested structures. In addition, we argue that the Chomsky hierarchy is not directly relevant for neurobiological systems.

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Section: Dynamic Functional Modularity and The Role Of The Left Infersupporting

confidence: 71%

What artificial grammar learning reveals about the neurobiology of syntax

2012

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“…There is growing evidence that distributional information plays a significant role in category and subcategory formation, and studies have shown that nonreferential cues alone are sufficient for learning to occur (Frigo & McDonald, 1998;McDonald & Plauché, 1995;Redington, Chater, & Finch, 1998). This is also true for the noun gender subcategories present in Russian language (Akhutina, Kurgansky, Polinsky, & Bates, 1999;Brooks, Kempe, & Donachie, 2011;Gerken, Wilson, & Lewis, 2005;Richardson, Harris, Plante, & Gerken, 2006;Rodina & Rodina, 2012). Because gender subcategories can be learned from distributional, nonreferential information alone, it seems that this learning problem might be served by a statistical learning mechanism (Saffran, 2003), which is particularly sensitive to the distributional patterns of the input.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 76%

“…The effect of multiple cues has also been demonstrated in subcategory learning in Russian. In Gerken et al (2005) and Richardson et al (2006), double-marked words were easier to learn relative to single-marked words. Double-marked words include correlated cues by including two grammatical morphemes that both signal subcategory membership.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A subset of the Russian gender marking system serves as the stimuli for this experiment. Similar noun gender paradigms have been used by Gerken et al (2005) and Richardson et al (2006). The paradigm in the present experiment consists of lexical word stems that are paired with either single-or double-marked suffixes that are gender specific.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If these learners correctly generate a hypothesis or rule for the assignment of gendered suffixes on the basis of the input, they should show an effect of learning with relatively few unique exemplars. Two previous studies have demonstrated that both infants and adults can form these associations between Russian nouns and their alternate gender markers with relatively few exemplars (Gerken et al, 2005;Richardson et al, 2006). In these two studies, participants were exposed to just 12 lexical root words, which could be considered low variability relative to the levels associated with learning other grammatical strings (Gómez, 2002;Grunow et al, 2006).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Input Variability Facilitates Unguided Subcategory Learning in Adults

Eidsvåg

Austad

Plante

et al. 2015

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose: This experiment investigated whether input variability would affect initial learning of noun gender subcategories in an unfamiliar, natural language (Russian), as it is known to assist learning of other grammatical forms. Method: Forty adults (20 men, 20 women) were familiarized with examples of masculine and feminine Russian words. Half of the participants were familiarized with 32 different root words in a high-variability condition. The other half were familiarized with 16 different root words, each repeated twice for a total of 32 presentations in a high-repetition condition. Participants were tested on untrained members of the category to assess generalization.Familiarization and testing was completed 2 additional times. Results: Only participants in the high-variability group showed evidence of learning after an initial period of familiarization. Participants in the high-repetition group were able to learn after additional input. Both groups benefited when words included 2 cues to gender compared to a single cue. Conclusions:The results demonstrate that the degree of input variability can influence learners' ability to generalize a grammatical subcategory (noun gender) from a natural language. In addition, the presence of multiple cues to linguistic subcategory facilitated learning independent of variability condition.A major theoretical issue concerning language learning is how to structure the input in ways that best facilitate learning. In the present experiment, we investigated whether input variability might facilitate the learning of grammatical word forms in an unfamiliar language. A growing body of research has found that increasing the variability in the input to learners is beneficial for the learning of various linguistic skills, including word learning (Perry, Samuelson, Malloy, & Schiffer, 2010), speech sound categorization (Maye, Werker, & Gerken, 2002;Sadakata & McQueen, 2013), and reading (Apfelbaum, Hazeltine, & McMurray, 2013). Variability in spoken input has also been found to facilitate grammar learning and promote generalization of the grammar (Gómez, 2002;Torkildsen, Dailey, Aguilar, Gómez, & Plante, 2013). The effect of variability on learning grammatical structures was demonstrated in a seminal study by Gómez (2002), who examined the unguided learning of nonadjacent dependencies using an artificial language. A nonadjacent dependency describes a relation between two elements separated by one or more intervening elements. This type of dependency has many counterparts in natural language. For example, the English present progressive verb tense (e.g., is singing) involves a nonadjacent dependency between is and ing (Santelmann & Jusczyk, 1998). Gómez (2002) used similar aXb grammatical forms in which the element a (a nonword) predicts the element b (a different nonword) with any number of nonwords (X ) occurring between the a and b elements. The variability of input was manipulated by drawing the middle element (X ) from a pool of two, six, 12, or 24 different X elements. The r...

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