The development of long-term lexical representations through Hebb repetition learning (original) (raw)
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Short Article: The Hebb Repetition Effect as a Laboratory Analogue of Novel Word Learning
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2009
The present study tests the hypothesis that a common ordering mechanism underlies both short-term serial recall of verbal materials and the acquisition of novel long-term lexical representations, using the Hebb repetition effect. In the first experiment, participants recalled visually presented nonsense syllables following a typical Hebb effect learning protocol. Replicating the Hebb repetition effect, we observed improved recall for repeated sequences of syllables. In the second experiment, the same participants performed an auditory lexical decision task, which included nonwords that were constructed from the syllables used in the first experiment. We observed inhibited rejection of nonwords that were composed of the repeated Hebb sequences, compared to nonwords that were built from nonrepeated filler sequences. This suggests that a long-term phonological lexical representation developed during Hebb learning. Accordingly, the relation between immediate serial recall and word learn...
Overview The Hebb repetition effect (Hebb, 1961) is a phenomenon whereby per-formance on the immediate serial recall of a list of familiar items is seen to improve over unannounced repetitions of a given list. One possible real-world counterpart of this effect is the learning of phonological word-forms that are themselves sequences of familiar items, in this case phonemes or syllables. We discuss this hypothesis with reference to a variety of recent data, and propose a modelling framework, based on the primacy model of immediate serial recall (Page & Norris, 1998), that seeks to identify common underlying mechanisms.
Semantic and phonological schema influence spoken word learning and overnight consolidation
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2018
We studied the initial acquisition and overnight consolidation of new spoken words that resemble words in the native language (L1) or in an unfamiliar, non-native language (L2). Spanish-speaking participants learned the spoken forms of novel words in their native language (Spanish) or in a different language (Hungarian), which were paired with pictures of familiar or unfamiliar objects, or no picture. We thereby assessed, in a factorial way, the impact of existing knowledge (schema) on word learning by manipulating both semantic (familiar vs unfamiliar objects) and phonological (L1- vs L2-like novel words) familiarity. Participants were trained and tested with a 12-hr intervening period that included overnight sleep or daytime awake. Our results showed (1) benefits of sleep to recognition memory that were greater for words with L2-like phonology and (2) that learned associations with familiar but not unfamiliar pictures enhanced recognition memory for novel words. Implications for c...
Consolidation of novel word learning in native English-speaking adults
Memory (Hove, England), 2015
Sleep has been shown to improve the retention of newly learned words. However, most methodologies have used artificial or foreign language stimuli, with learning limited to word/novel word or word/image pairs. Such stimuli differ from many word-learning scenarios in which definition strings are learned with novel words. Thus, we examined sleep's benefit on learning new words within a native language by using very low-frequency words. Participants learned 45 low-frequency English words and, at subsequent recall, attempted to recall the words when given the corresponding definitions. Participants either learned in the morning with recall in the evening (wake group), or learned in the evening with recall the following morning (sleep group). Performance change across the delay was significantly better in the sleep than the wake group. Additionally, the Levenshtein distance, a measure of correctness of the typed word compared with the target word, became significantly worse following...
Sleep may not benefit learning new phonological categories
Frontiers in neurology, 2012
It is known that sleep participates in memory consolidation processes. However, results obtained in the auditory domain are inconsistent. Here we aimed at investigating the role of post-training sleep in auditory training and learning new phonological categories, a fundamental process in speech processing. Adult French-speakers were trained to identify two synthetic speech variants of the syllable /d∂/ during two 1-h training sessions. The 12-h interval between the two sessions either did (8 p.m. to 8 a.m. ± 1 h) or did not (8 a.m. to 8 p.m. ± 1 h) included a sleep period. In both groups, identification performance dramatically improved over the first training session, to slightly decrease over the 12-h offline interval, although remaining above chance levels. Still, reaction times (RT) were slowed down after sleep suggesting higher attention devoted to the learned, novel phonological contrast. Notwithstanding, our results essentially suggest that post-training sleep does not benefit more than wakefulness to the consolidation or stabilization of new phonological categories.
Spaced Learning and the Lexical Integration ofovel Words
Learning a new word involves integration with existing lexical knowledge. Previous work has shown that sleepdependent memory consolidation processes are important for the engagement of novel items in lexical competition. We used spaced learning and testing to investigate memory for novel words and their lexicalization across the course of a single day, compared with a day later. We expected that the benefits of spaced learning would enhance knowledge of the novel words, and may provide the interleaving of new and old information that allows lexicalization to occur. The degree to which a new word engaged in lexical competition with phonological neighbors was employed as a marker for lexicalization. We found evidence for enhancements in memory performance following a time period including sleep, but we also found lexical competition effects emerging within a single day. This suggests that while sleep-dependent memory consolidation may be sufficient for lexicalization, it is not a necessary pre-condition.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2009
We briefly review the considerable evidence for a common ordering mechanism underlying both immediate serial recall (ISR) tasks (e.g. digit span, non-word repetition) and the learning of phonological word forms. In addition, we discuss how recent work on the Hebb repetition effect is consistent with the idea that learning in this task is itself a laboratory analogue of the sequence-learning component of phonological word-form learning. In this light, we present a unifying modelling framework that seeks to account for ISR and Hebb repetition effects, while being extensible to word-form learning. Because word-form learning is performed in the service of later word recognition, our modelling framework also subsumes a mechanism for word recognition from continuous speech. Simulations of a computational implementation of the modelling framework are presented and are shown to be in accordance with data from the Hebb repetition paradigm.
The role of sleep in the consolidation of novel words in english as a foreign language
The main aim of this research was to investigate the role of sleep and frequency of exposure in the consolidation of novel words in English as a foreign language (FL). Twenty advanced adult speakers of English (FL) were presented with 20 novel words in English, which were divided into two sets of 10 items. Half of the participants were exposed to the words in a single-training session and the other half in a double-training session. Participants learned the first set of words and had a full night's sleep before learning the second set. The first testing session took place immediately after the second training session and involved categorizing each novel word into living or nonliving entities. A week later, participants were required to take the same test again without the mediation of further training. The experiment showed a significant difference between consolidated and unconsolidated newly learned on day 2, with unconsolidated novel words showing an advantage over consolidated items. However, in the second test, performed a week later, there was no difference between the two sets of words.
Sleep facilitates learning a new linguistic rule
Neuropsychologia, 2014
Natural languages contain countless regularities. Extraction of these patterns is an essential component of language acquisition. Here we examined the hypothesis that memory processing during sleep contributes to this learning. We exposed participants to a hidden linguistic rule by presenting a large number of two-word phrases, each including a noun preceded by one of four novel words that functioned as an article (e.g., gi rhino). These novel words (ul, gi, ro and ne) were presented as obeying an explicit rule: two words signified that the noun referent was relatively near, and two that it was relatively far. Undisclosed to participants was the fact that the novel articles also predicted noun animacy, with two of the articles preceding animate referents and the other two preceding inanimate referents. Rule acquisition was tested implicitly using a task in which participants responded to each phrase according to whether the noun was animate or inanimate. Learning of the hidden rule ...
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2016
Lexical competition processes are widely viewed as the hallmark of visual word recognition, but little is known about the factors that promote their emergence. This study examined for the first time whether sleep may play a role in inducing these effects. A group of 27 participants learned novel written words, such as banara, at 8 am and were tested on their learning at 8 pm the same day (AM group), while 29 participants learned the words at 8 pm and were tested at 8 am the following day (PM group). Both groups were retested after 24 hours. Using a semantic categorization task, we showed that lexical competition effects, as indexed by slowed responses to existing neighbor words such as banana, emerged 12 h later in the PM group who had slept after learning but not in the AM group. After 24 h the competition effects were evident in both groups. These findings have important implications for theories of orthographic learning and broader neurobiological models of memory consolidation.