Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Cognitive Psychology
The Role Of Top-Down Attention In Statistical Learning Of Speech, Stacey Reyes
The Role Of Top-Down Attention In Statistical Learning Of Speech, Stacey Reyes
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
Statistical learning (SL) refers to the ability to extract regularities in the environment and has been well-documented to play a key role in speech segmentation and language acquisition. Whether SL is automatic or requires top-down attention is an unresolved question, with conflicting results in the literature. The current proposal tests whether SL can occur outside the focus of attention. Participants either focused towards, or diverted their attention away from an auditory speech stream made of repeating nonsense trisyllabic words. Divided-attention participants either performed a concurrent visual task or a language-related task during exposure to the nonsense speech stream, while control …
The Role Of Neural Entrainment In Statistical Learning, Jordan-Jerrica Mulgrew
The Role Of Neural Entrainment In Statistical Learning, Jordan-Jerrica Mulgrew
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
Statistical learning (SL) refers to our ability to extract patterns from the environment. Research has long acknowledged the importance of SL in language; however, the neural mechanisms underlying SL remain largely unknown. One potential mechanism is neural entrainment, which refers to the tendency of endogenous neural oscillations to align with an ongoing rhythmic stimulus. In the context of SL, neural entrainment may align neural excitability to the ongoing structure of the speech stream, increasing sensitivity to underlying patterns and supporting the learning of word boundaries. This thesis tested the hypothesis that neural entrainment plays a causal role in SL by …
Category Learning In Older Adulthood: Understanding And Reducing Age-Related Deficits, Rahel R. Rabi
Category Learning In Older Adulthood: Understanding And Reducing Age-Related Deficits, Rahel R. Rabi
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
Executive functions are important for learning rule-based (RB) categories, as well as non-rule-based (NRB) categories (e.g., categories learned implicitly, without a verbal rule). However, executive functioning is known to decline with age, leading to age-related deficits in category learning. The current thesis examines RB and NRB category learning in older adults using category sets that vary in difficulty (e.g., rule complexity, number of stimulus dimensions, salience of stimulus dimensions). In Chapter 2, older adults and younger adults completed three category sets (simple single-dimensional RB, disjunctive RB, and NRB). Older adults learned the simple, single-dimensional rules quite well. In contrast to …
Does Sleep Enhance The Consolidation Of Implicitly Learned Visuo-Motor Sequence Learning?, Jeremy Viczko
Does Sleep Enhance The Consolidation Of Implicitly Learned Visuo-Motor Sequence Learning?, Jeremy Viczko
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
Sleep has been shown to facilitate the consolidation (i.e., enhancement) of simple explicit (i.e., conscious) motor sequence learning (MSL). It remains unclear the degree to which this applies to implicit (i.e., unconscious) MSL. Employing reaction time and response generation tasks, we investigated the extent to which sleep is involved in consolidating implicit MSL, specifically whether the motor or the spatial cognitive representations of a learned sequence are enhanced by sleep, and whether these changes support the development of explicit sequence knowledge across sleep but not wake. Our results indicate that spatial and motor representations can be behaviourally dissociated for implicit …
The Relationship Between Implicit And Explicit Processing In Statistical Language Learning, Nicolette B. Noonan
The Relationship Between Implicit And Explicit Processing In Statistical Language Learning, Nicolette B. Noonan
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
Statistical language learning is an implicit process wherein language learners track sequential statistics in fluent speech, and may it facilitate the learning of word boundaries. This process is well studied, however, the cognitive mechanisms supporting it remain poorly understood. The present thesis investigated whether domain-specific or cross-domain explicit working memory engagement would impair implicit statistical learning of word boundaries in fluent speech. Participants (n = 110) were exposed to an implicit statistical word segmentation paradigm while concurrently engaged in no other task (control), or an explicit domain- specific (verbal) or cross-domain (visuospatial) working memory task of either low- or high- …