Item-specific and generalization effects on brain activation when learning Chinese characters - PubMed (original) (raw)

Comparative Study

Item-specific and generalization effects on brain activation when learning Chinese characters

Yuan Deng et al. Neuropsychologia. 2008.

Abstract

Neural changes related to learning of the meaning of Chinese characters in English speakers were examined using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We examined item specific learning effects for trained characters, but also the generalization of semantic knowledge to novel transfer characters that shared a semantic radical (part of a character that gives a clue to word meaning, e.g. water for lake) with trained characters. Behavioral results show that acquired semantic knowledge improves performance for both trained and transfer characters. Neuroimaging results show that the left fusiform gyrus plays a central role in the visual processing of orthographic information in characters. The left superior parietal cortex seems to play a crucial role in learning the visual-spatial aspects of the characters because it shows learning related decreases for trained characters, is correlated with behavioral improvement from early to late in learning for the trained characters, and is correlated with better long-term retention for the transfer characters. The inferior frontal gyrus seems to be associated with the efficiency of retrieving and manipulating semantic representations because there are learning related decreases for trained characters and this decrease is correlated with greater behavioral improvement from early to late in learning.

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Figures

Fig. 1

Fig. 1

Examples of stimuli with their English translation and their pronunciation in pinyin. Numbers for the pinyin indicate one of four tones: (a) semantic-implied type characters, the left part of each character (semantic radical) indicates “body part”; (b) semantic-unrelated type characters, the left part of each character indicates different meanings, while the right part (phonetic radical) of each character is the same; (c) two examples of visual stimulus for the baseline task in the fMRI scan with the left part or right part of the symbol bolded.

Fig. 2

Fig. 2

(a) Illustration of overall training procedure; (b) illustration of experiment tasks in the fMRI session.

Fig. 3

Fig. 3

Behavioral results. (a) Mean accuracy (bars indicate 1 standard error) for the quizzes for SI and SU character types: (1) collapsed data from all quizzes in the learning phase, (2) collapsed data from the first two quizzes in review phase, and (3) collapsed data from the third and fourth quizzes in review phase. (b) Mean accuracy (bars indicate 1 standard error) for trained characters in the early and late fMRI session. (c) Mean d′ (bars indicate 1 standard error) for transfer characters in the early and late fMRI session. SI, semantic-implied; SU, semantic-unrelated.

Fig. 4

Fig. 4

(a) Brain activation maps for the semantic matching task (collapsed across SI and SU types) relative to a perceptual baseline for the trained characters in the early and late scan sessions. (b) Brain regions that showed greater activation for trained characters from early to late in learning that were positively (superior parietal lobule) and negatively (inferior frontal gyrus) correlated with greater accuracy improvement from early to late in learning.

Fig. 5

Fig. 5

(a) Brain activation maps for the semantic matching task relative to a perceptual baseline for the transfer characters for SI and SU types in the late scan session. (b) Brain regions that showed greater activation for transfer characters from early to late in learning that were positively correlated with higher recognition rate of radicals in a delayed test given 3–6 months after training. Please note that only 10 of the 12 subjects were available for the delayed testing.

Fig. 6

Fig. 6

Percentage signal change for SI and SU types on both trained and transfer characters in three ROIs: (a) fusiform gyrus, (b) superior parietal lobule, and (c) inferior frontal gyrus. Asterisks indicates a significant difference from early to late in training (_t_-test p < 0.05).

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