Aging effects and feasibility of statistical learning tasks across modalities

Converging evidence points to a role for the hippocampus in statistical learning, but open questions about its necessity remain. Evidence for necessity comes from Schapiro and colleagues who report that a single patient with damage to hippocampus and broader medial temporal lobe cortex was unable to discriminate new from old sequences in several statistical learning tasks. The aim of the current study was to replicate these methods in a larger group of patients who have either damage localized to hippocampus or broader medial temporal lobe damage, to ascertain the necessity of the hippocampus in statistical learning. Patients with hippocampal damage consistently showed less learning overall compared with healthy comparison participants, consistent with an emerging consensus for hippocampal contributions to statistical learning. Interestingly, lesion size did not reliably predict performance. However, patients with hippocampal damage were not uniformly at chance and demonstrated above-chance performance in some task variants. These results suggest that hippocampus is necessary for statistical learning levels achieved by most healthy comparison participants but significant hippocampal pathology alone does not abolish such learning.

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Statistical Language Learning and Vagus Nerve Stimulation: A Pilot Study

UF Journal of Undergraduate Research ◽

10.32473/ufjur.v21i1.107919 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Ivette De Aguiar ◽

Edith Kaan

Keyword(s):

Vagus Nerve ◽

Language Learning ◽

Statistical Learning ◽

Memory Task ◽

Learning Task ◽

Phonological Memory ◽

Retest Reliability ◽

Learning Tasks ◽

Transcutaneous Stimulation ◽

Test Retest Reliability

Applying transcutaneous stimulation to the auricular branch of the vagus nerve (tVNS) has been shown to enhance associative learning in humans. The main goal of the project is to investigate the effect tVNS has on procedural learning, specifically implicit statistical language learning. The aim of the experiment reported in this paper was to determine which statistical language learning paradigms would be appropriate to use with tVNS. Since we would be looking at within-subject changes between two sessions (one session with, one session without stimulation), we tested the test-retest reliability of two statistical learning paradigms. We also tested the correlation between a explicit phonological memory task and the implicit statistical learning tasks to determine whether phonological memory was involved in the statistical learning tasks. Our results showed a high test-retest reliability for the word segmentation and adjacent dependencies statistical learning task. However, the second statistical learning task dealing with non-adjacent dependencies had low test-retest reliability, meaning it would not be appropriate for future studies incorporating tVNS. There was a high correlation between the phonological memory task and both statistical learning taks, indicating implicit statistical learning may recruit phonological memory.

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Commentary: Musicians' Online Performance during Auditory and Visual Statistical Learning Tasks

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fnhum.2017.00603 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 11 ◽

Author(s):

Federica Menchinelli ◽

Petra M. J. Pollux ◽

Simon J. Durrant

Keyword(s):

Statistical Learning ◽

Visual Statistical Learning ◽

Learning Tasks

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Do current statistical learning tasks capture stable individual differences in children? An investigation of task reliability across modality

Behavior Research Methods ◽

10.3758/s13428-019-01205-5 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 52 (1) ◽

pp. 68-81 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Inbal Arnon

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Statistical Learning ◽

Learning Tasks

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Statistical learning and dyslexia: a systematic review

10.31219/osf.io/wg3vq ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Xenia Schmalz ◽

Gianmarco Altoè ◽

Claudio Mulatti

Keyword(s):

Systematic Review ◽

Statistical Learning ◽

Cognitive Skills ◽

Theoretical Perspective ◽

Practical Importance ◽

Causal Chain ◽

Quality Data ◽

Group Differences ◽

Learning Tasks ◽

And Control

The existing literature on developmental dyslexia (hereafter: dyslexia) often focuses on isolating cognitive skills which differ across dyslexic and control participants. Among potential correlates, previous research has studied group differences between dyslexic and control participants in performance on statistical learning tasks. A statistical learning deficit has been proposed to be a potential cause and/or a marker effect for early detection of dyslexia. It is therefore of practical importance to evaluate the evidence for a group difference. From a theoretical perspective, such a group difference would provide information about the causal chain from statistical learning to reading acquisition. We provide a systematic review of the literature on such a group difference. We conclude that there is insufficient high-quality data to draw conclusions about the presence or absence of an effect.

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Local versus Global Statistical Learning in Language

10.31234/osf.io/xe5uw ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Luca Onnis ◽

Shimon Edelman

Keyword(s):

Statistical Learning ◽

Human Subjects ◽

General Purpose ◽

Temporal Contiguity ◽

Plausible Assumption ◽

Learning Tasks ◽

Windows Of Opportunity ◽

Learning Hypothesis ◽

Adjacent Structures ◽

Global Statistics

A generally held assumption about human statistical learning is that learners keep track of the global statistics of the elements of interest across the entire set of stimuli they are exposed to. In naturalistic settings, this assumption is problematic because it requires that the cognitive system keep track of an exponentially growing number of relations while determining which of those relations are relevant and which are not. We investigated a more plausible assumption, namely, that statistical learning proceeds incrementally, using small windows of opportunity in which the relevant relations are assumed to hold over temporally contiguous objects or events. This local statistical learning hypothesis was tested on two learning tasks, one involving non-adjacent structures and the other -- novel word-to-world mappings. Our results suggest that human subjects make use of simple general-purpose cognitive heuristics that exploit temporal contiguity and contrast, leading to superior learning in tasks that belong on two different levels of language acquisition.

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Effects of Aging on the Subcortical Encoding of Stop Consonants

American Journal of Audiology ◽

10.1044/2020_aja-19-00044 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 29 (3) ◽

pp. 391-403

Author(s):

Dania Rishiq ◽

Ashley Harkrider ◽

Cary Springer ◽

Mark Hedrick

Keyword(s):

Older Adults ◽

Repeated Measures ◽

Mixed Model ◽

Auditory Brainstem ◽

Auditory Brainstem Responses ◽

Aging Effects ◽

Formant Frequency ◽

Place Of Articulation ◽

Second Formant ◽

Effects Of Aging

Purpose The main purpose of this study was to evaluate aging effects on the predominantly subcortical (brainstem) encoding of the second-formant frequency transition, an essential acoustic cue for perceiving place of articulation. Method Synthetic consonant–vowel syllables varying in second-formant onset frequency (i.e., /ba/, /da/, and /ga/ stimuli) were used to elicit speech-evoked auditory brainstem responses (speech-ABRs) in 16 young adults ( M age = 21 years) and 11 older adults ( M age = 59 years). Repeated-measures mixed-model analyses of variance were performed on the latencies and amplitudes of the speech-ABR peaks. Fixed factors were phoneme (repeated measures on three levels: /b/ vs. /d/ vs. /g/) and age (two levels: young vs. older). Results Speech-ABR differences were observed between the two groups (young vs. older adults). Specifically, older listeners showed generalized amplitude reductions for onset and major peaks. Significant Phoneme × Group interactions were not observed. Conclusions Results showed aging effects in speech-ABR amplitudes that may reflect diminished subcortical encoding of consonants in older listeners. These aging effects were not phoneme dependent as observed using the statistical methods of this study.

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Age Differences in Eye Movements During Reading: Degenerative Problems or Compensatory Strategy?

European Psychologist ◽

10.1027/1016-9040/a000344 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 24 (4) ◽

pp. 297-311

Author(s):

José David Moreno ◽

José A. León ◽

Lorena A. M. Arnal ◽

Juan Botella

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Eye Movement ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Age Groups ◽

Behavioral Changes ◽

Aging Effects ◽

Movement Data ◽

Sentence Reading ◽

The Difference ◽

Eye Movements During Reading

Abstract. We report the results of a meta-analysis of 22 experiments comparing the eye movement data obtained from young ( Mage = 21 years) and old ( Mage = 73 years) readers. The data included six eye movement measures (mean gaze duration, mean fixation duration, total sentence reading time, mean number of fixations, mean number of regressions, and mean length of progressive saccade eye movements). Estimates were obtained of the typified mean difference, d, between the age groups in all six measures. The results showed positive combined effect size estimates in favor of the young adult group (between 0.54 and 3.66 in all measures), although the difference for the mean number of fixations was not significant. Young adults make in a systematic way, shorter gazes, fewer regressions, and shorter saccadic movements during reading than older adults, and they also read faster. The meta-analysis results confirm statistically the most common patterns observed in previous research; therefore, eye movements seem to be a useful tool to measure behavioral changes due to the aging process. Moreover, these results do not allow us to discard either of the two main hypotheses assessed for explaining the observed aging effects, namely neural degenerative problems and the adoption of compensatory strategies.

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