187 research outputs found
Chunking or not chunking? How do we find words in artificial language learning?
What is the nature of the representations acquired in implicit statistical
learning? Recent results in the field of language learning have shown that
adults and infants are able to find the words of an artificial language when
exposed to a continuous auditory sequence consisting in a random ordering of
these words. Such performance can only be based on processing the transitional
probabilities between sequence elements. Two different kinds of mechanisms may
account for these data: Participants may either parse the sequence into smaller
chunks corresponding to the words of the artificial language, or they may become
progressively sensitive to the actual values of the transitional probabilities
between syllables. The two accounts are difficult to differentiate because they
make similar predictions in comparable experimental settings. In this study, we
present two experiments that aimed at contrasting these two theories. In these
experiments, participants had to learn 2 sets of pseudo-linguistic regularities:
Language 1 (L1) and Language 2 (L2) presented in the context of a serial
reaction time task. L1 and L2 were either unrelated (none of the syllabic
transitions of L1 were present in L2), or partly related (some of the
intra-words transitions of L1 were used as inter-words transitions of L2). The
two accounts make opposite predictions in these two settings. Our results
indicate that the nature of the representations depends on the learning
condition. When cues were presented to facilitate parsing of the sequence,
participants learned the words of the artificial language. However, when no cues
were provided, performance was strongly influenced by the employed transitional
probabilities
Statistical Learning of Two Artificial Languages Presented Successively: How Conscious?
Statistical learning is assumed to occur automatically and implicitly, but little is known about the extent to which the representations acquired over training are available to conscious awareness. In this study, we focus on whether the knowledge acquired in a statistical learning situation is available to conscious control. Participants were first exposed to an artificial language presented auditorily. Immediately thereafter, they were exposed to a second artificial language. Both languages were composed of the same corpus of syllables and differed only in the transitional probabilities. We first determined that both languages were equally learnable (Experiment 1) and that participants could learn the two languages and differentiate between them (Experiment 2). Then, in Experiment 3, we used an adaptation of the Process-Dissociation Procedure (Jacoby, 1991) to explore whether participants could consciously manipulate the acquired knowledge. Results suggest that statistical information can be used to parse and differentiate between two different artificial languages, and that the resulting representations are available to conscious control
Implicit learning in a prediction task: Neither abstract nor based on exemplars
LâhypothĂšse selon laquelle lâapprentissage de rĂšgles peut avoir lieu implicitement a Ă©tĂ© remise en question car, dans plusieurs Ă©tudes, des connaissances abstraites se sont rĂ©vĂ©lĂ©es inutiles pour accomplir les tĂąches utilisĂ©es pour mesurer lâapprentissage. Dans cette Ă©tude, nous Ă©tudions cette question Ă lâaide dâune tĂąche sĂ©quentielle de prĂ©diction dĂ©crite initialement par Kushner, Reber, et Cleeremans (1991). La tĂąche consiste Ă prĂ©dire la position du cinquiĂšme Ă©lĂ©ment dâune sĂ©quence parmi trois positions possibles. La rĂ©ponse dĂ©pend, Ă lâinsu des sujets, de la relation existant entre deux des quatre Ă©lĂ©ments de la sĂ©quence. AprĂšs lâapprentissage, la performance de transfert est comparĂ©e dans deux conditions. Dans la condition âRule Deletionâ, les sĂ©quences de transfert incluent de nouvelles combinaisons dâĂ©lĂ©ments pertinents et, dans la condition âContext Deletionâ, de nouvelles combinaisons dâĂ©lĂ©ments non-pertinents. Sur base des rĂ©sultats comportementaux et de simulations connexionnistes, nous confirmons lâinfluence importante de la similaritĂ© dans le transfert mais nous montrons Ă©galement que les sujets ont appris implicitement Ă diffĂ©rencier les Ă©lĂ©ments pertinents et non-pertinents â un processus dâapprentissage qui ne peut ĂȘtre assimilĂ© Ă de la simple mĂ©morisation.The notion that rule-based learning can occur implicitly has been previously challenged based on the observation that abstract information was not always necessary to perform the tasks used to assess the acquired knowledge. Some authors suggest instead that implicit learning is based on memorization of training material. In this study, we address this issue in the context of a sequential prediction task initially described in Kushner, Cleeremans & Reber (1991). The task consists in predicting the location of the fifth element of a sequence amongst three possible locations. Unknown to the participants, the correct location can be predicted based on the relationship between two of the four preceding sequence elements. After training, we compared transfer performance in two conditions. In the ârule deletionâ condition, transfer sequences contained new combinations of relevant elements and in the âcontext deletionâ condition, new combinations of irrelevant elements. Based on behavioral and modeling results, we confirm the strong influence of similarity in transfer performance but, crucially, we also conclude that participants progressively learned implicitly to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant elements for the prediction task â a learning process that is not equivalent to rule abstraction but that is clearly a step away from rote memorization
Cognitive control of sequential knowledge in 2-year-olds: evidence from an incidental sequence-learning and generation-task
Thirty-eight two-year-olds were trained under incidental instructions on a six element deterministic sequence of spatial locations. Following training, participants were informed of the presence of a sequence and asked to either reproduce or suppress the learned material. Children's production of the trained sequence was modulated by these instructions. When asked to suppress the trained sequence they were able to increase generation of paths that were not from the training sequence. Their performance was thus dependent on active suppresion of knowledge rather than a random generation strategy. This degree of control in two-year-olds stands in stark contrast to 3-year-olds' failure to control explicitly instructed rule-based knowledge (as measured the Dimensional Change Card Sort Task). We suggest that this is because the incidental nature of the learning enables the acquisition of a more procedural form of knowledge with which this age-group have more experience prior to the onset of fluent language
Rapid detection of snakes modulates spatial orienting in infancy
Recent evidence for an evolved fear module in the brain comes from studies showing that adults, children and infants detect evolutionarily threatening stimuli such as snakes faster than non-threatening ones. A decisive argument for a threat detection system efficient early in life would come from data showing, in young infants, a functional threat-detection mechanism in terms of âwhatâ and âwhereâ visual pathways. The present study used a variant of Posnerâs cuing paradigm, adapted to 7â11-month-olds. On each trial, a threat-irrelevant or a threat-relevant cue was presented (a flower or a snake, i.e., âwhatâ). We measured how fast infants detected these cues and the extent to which they further influenced the spatial allocation of attention (âwhereâ). In line with previous findings, we observed that infants oriented faster towards snake than flower cues. Importantly, a facilitation effect was found at the cued location for flowers but not for snakes, suggesting that these latter cues elicit a broadening of attention and arguing in favour of sophisticated âwhatâwhereâ connections. These results strongly support the claim that humans have an early propensity to detect evolutionarily threat-relevant stimuli
Cerebral correlates of explicit sequence learning
peer reviewedUsing positron emission tomography (PET) and regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) measurements, we investigated the cerebral correlates of consciousness in a sequence learning task through a novel application of the Process Dissociation Procedure, a behavioral paradigm that makes it possible to separately assess conscious and unconscious contributions to performance. Results show that the metabolic response in the anterior cingulate/mesial prefrontal cortex (ACC/MPFC) is exclusively and specifically correlated with the explicit component of performance during recollection of a learned sequence. This suggests a significant role for the ACC/MPFC in the explicit processing of sequential material. © 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
Apprentissage implicite de séquences: une application de la procédure de dissociation de processus
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe
Mesures directes et indirectes de l'apprentissage implicite: étude expérimentale et modélisation
Doctorat en sciences psychologiquesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe
Quantitative and qualitative differences between implicit and explicit sequence learning
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe
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