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Upcoming Workshop
The Neurocognition of
Developmental Language Disorders
A CBBC Workshop
Abstracts
Funder Presentation Highlights of NICHD-supported Research on Language and Bilingualism Peggy McCardle
NICHDAn overview of currently NICHD-funded research on psycholinguistics and language development, including bilingual development, will be provided. The importance of language research across age spans, as well as the importance of understanding the links between language and literacy (both reading and writing), will be discussed. Current research needs and priorities will be highlighted.
Research Presentations Neural systems for learning and controlling skills
UCLA
Los Angeles, CaliforniaIt is now well established that there are different memory systems in the brain which support the acquisition and expression of different forms of knowledge. Our research has demonstrated that these systems may compete with one another to drive behavior, and that this competition can be modulated by task characteristics, such as overlearning or the learning in presence of distraction. We have also found that the memory supported by these different systems has different characteristics, particularly with regard to its flexibility. Finally, I will discuss recent work that has examined how learned behaviors can be overridden, which highlights the interaction of executive control systems with the brain systems that support skill learning.
Problems and challenges for language attrition research
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Groningen, NetherlandsThis presentation will give an overview of the state of the art in language attrition research, which appears to be an area of investigation that is increasingly taken as a testing ground for hypotheses formulated in other areas of (applied) linguistics. It will then focus on a number of current problems and challenges to the research area. The fact that language attrition is a relatively small field of investigation offers both unique challenges and opportunities. On the one hand, investigations in attrition have much less previous data and findings on which they can base themselves than, for example, research into L2 acquisition. Furthermore, existing studies are typically relatively limited in both sample size and theoretical scope, so that comparability across studies is difficult. On the other hand, the density of the network of researchers on language attrition makes it possible to achieve consensus on a number of issues, such as standardized research designs and crosslinguistic approaches, which it would be impossible to gain in other areas of research. Here, an attempt will be made to formulate some of the current theoretical and methodological issues, and to sketch ways in which these might, in the future, be resolved.
Aging and dissociable forms of implicit learning
Georgetown University and Catholic University
Washington, DCImplicit learning is distinct from explicit learning in that it can occur without intention, and without awareness of what has been learned. There are many forms of implicit learning, making different cognitive demands and calling upon different brain systems. Nonetheless, when the implicit/explicit distinction is applied to development and aging, or to characterizing disorders, implicit learning is usually treated as unitary, in that global claims are made regarding whether it is impaired or spared. We focus here on dissociating two forms of implicit learning. One involves learning about environmental regularities distributed over time, such as in sequences of events, whereas the other involves learning about regularities distributed over space, such as when the spatial context predicts where a target will occur. Neuroimaging and patient studies suggest that these involve different neural systems; sequence learning calls on cortico-striatal circuits, whereas spatial context learning calls on medial temporal lobe areas. We present evidence that these forms of implicit learning are differentially affected by healthy aging, and by conditions such as Mild Cognitive Impairment and dyslexia. We conclude that such comparisons contribute to characterizing the cognitive/brain differences underlying normal development and aging. They also have potential for revealing early markers of cognitive decline in pathological aging, and for suggesting possible avenues for rehabilitation and intervention.
Critical periods in language acquisition and language attrition
CNRS
Paris, FranceDo the neural circuits that subserve language acquisition lose plasticity as they become tuned to the maternal language? One way to look at this issue is to examine age effects in second language acquisition. Another is to study language attrition, that is the loss of language caused by disuse. We will report on studies of Korean adoptees adopted by French families. We found that they are unable to recognize Korean sentences among samples from several languages, and that they cannot identify common Korean words. Moreover, they have similar pattern of brain activation (measured with fMRI) whether they listen to Korean or to languages they have never been exposed to. We will report results on several other tasks, including phoneme discrimination and identification tasks involving Korean consonants, where the performance of adoptees differed markedly from that of native Korean speakers but was similar to that of native French speakers. Language attrition in children seems therefore quite extensive. This can be contrasted with studies on language attrition in adults showing a much more limited loss.
Making long-lasting memory for motor and linguistic skills: children are not better than adults (but rather different)?
University of Haifa
Haifa, IsraelForthcoming.
Retention and consolidation of second language grammar: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials
University of Illinois, Chicago, and Georgetown University
Chicago, Illinois and Washington, DCResearch examining second language (L2) grammatical processing in highly proficient speakers has revealed a native-like LAN-P600 ERP pattern. In a recent study this pattern was found in subjects who were implicitly-trained to speak and comprehend an artificial language, but not in explicitly-trained subjects (Morgan-Short et al., 2007). The current study compared behavioral and ERP measures of syntactic and morphosyntactic processing at the end-of-training of this study with those measures 3-6 months after training (i.e., within-subjects). After this period, the implicitly-trained group retained all behavioral gains on grammatical processing, as well as the LAN-P600 response for the syntactic condition and the P600 response for the morphosyntactic condition. The explicitly-trained group also retained all behavioral gains on grammatical processing. Surprisingly, they also showed a P600 for both syntactic and morphosyntactic structures, as well as an N400 for morphosyntactic structures. These results suggest that implicit training can not only lead to a native-like neurocognitive pattern of grammatical processing, but that this pattern may be retained over the course of months or longer. Interestingly, the data suggest that although explicit training does not initially lead to native-like neurocognitive grammatical processing, aspects of such processing can emerge over time, even (or perhaps only) with no training during this intervening period, perhaps due to a process of consolidation. The data are consistent with the view that L2-learners can not only acquire but also retain aspects of grammar (evidenced by the LAN) in procedural memory, and that this may depend on type of training or exposure to the language.