Statistical Learning and the Effect of Starting Small in Developmental Dyslexia

Purpose Impairments in statistical learning abilities of individuals with developmental dyslexia (DD) have been demonstrated in word segmentation and in visual artificial grammar learning (AGL) tasks, but so far, little attention has been devoted to the AGL abilities of this population in the acoustic verbal domain. This study aimed to test whether adolescents with dyslexia have difficulties in extracting abstract patterns from auditory sequences of nonsense syllables based on a finite state grammar relative to typically developing (TD) peers. We also tested whether incremental presentation of stimuli of different lengths (starting small) has a facilitating effect on learning complex structures in dyslexia (and in TD) as opposed to presenting strings in random order. Method Thirty-one adolescents with DD and 31 age-matched control participants completed an AGL task. Participants passively listened to acoustic sequences of nonsense syllables generated by an artificial grammar in the training phase. In the test phase, they were presented with pairs of novel grammatical and nongrammatical sequences and were required to decide which member of a sequence pair was more similar to the material heard during training. Results Performance levels and the proportion of learners were smaller in participants with DD than in the control group. While the starting small effect was nominally present both in performance levels and in the number of learners in participants with DD, but not in the group with TD, the presentation of strings in incremental order did not statistically improve learning performance in either group. Conclusion Our results suggest that (a) statistical learning of abstract sequences in the acoustic domain is less efficient in people with dyslexia than in TD controls and (b) while incremental presentation of stimuli of different length did not improve learning in our study, the observed pattern of results suggests that the effects of different training designs should be explored further in developmental disorders.

Chatting While Walking Does Not Interfere with Topographical Working Memory

In the present study, we employed the dual task technique to explore the role of language in topographical working memory when landmarks are present along the path. We performed three experiments to mainly test the effects of language but also motor, spatial motor and spatial environment interferences on topographical working memory. We aimed to clarify both the role of language in navigational working memory per se and the extent to which spatial language interferes with the main task more than the other types of interference. Specifically, in the three experiments we investigated the differences due to different verbal interference sources (i.e., articulatory suppression of nonsense syllables; right and left, up and bottom; and north, south, east and west). The main hypothesis was that the use of spatial language affected more landmark-based topographical working memory than both the verbalization of nonsense syllables and other types of interference. Results show no effect of spatial language, only spatial environmental interference affected the navigational working memory performance. In general, this might depend on the scarce role of spatial language in online navigational working memory tasks. Specifically, language is more important for learning and retrieval of the cognitive map. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

Word Processing Is Faster than Picture Processing in Alzheimer’s Disease

Objective. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by a slow progressive impairment of episodic memory. Many studies have shown that AD exhibits deterioration of semantic memory during the course of disease progression. We previously reported that AD patients exhibited severe access disorders in the semantic memory system, using the Momentary Presentation Task (20 or 300 ms). In this study, we studied access disorder in patients with AD by the use of object difference (pictures vs words) methods. Methods. 56 patients with probable AD (NINCDS-ADRDA, mean age 79.0 years) and 11 healthy controls (HC) (mean age 67.0 years) were studied. Ten pictures and 10 corresponding Japanese Hiragana words were presented arbitrarily for 20 and 300 ms on the monitor screen which were correctly named at the usual confrontation setting (i.e., semantic memory preserved). They were asked to name the pictures or to read the words or nonsense syllables aloud. Results. The AD group showed significantly lower scores than the HC group, especially for the 20 ms condition. For the type of stimuli, the AD patients had better performances for words > pictures > nonsense syllables, although no differences for the HC group. The effect of AD severity was noted, moderate > severe stage. Conclusions. Our results suggested that the processing speed in AD patients may have reduced, even if the semantic memory were preserved. These data indicated that the difference in the processing speeds by the type of stimuli (pictures, words, and nonsense syllables) may be a character of AD patients.

BUILDING A SYSTEM OF ANALYZING VIETNAMESE SYLLABLE STRUCTURE USING SDSS MODEL

The report presents an approach to building a Vietnamese syllable structure analysis system using Semantic Defined Syllable Structure (SDSS). This approach allows to process combinatorial explosion problems, to eliminate nonsense syllabary options by using semanticconstrained text rules. The report also proposesthe way of performing and managing SDSS laws for Vietnamese based on the characteristics of this language. The approach is completely feasible with the test results in high accuracy by eliminating the nonsense syllables, contributing to solving effective text analysis problems in Vietnamese processing .

Probing recursion

The experimental probing of recursion in human performance is fraught with non-trivial problems. Here, a number of case studies from the literature are analysed that contrast with the approach set out in chapter 5, and it is proposed that they give little information about the underlying mental processes at play within each of these domains. Among the questions discussed are whether experimental participants employ recursive rules in parsing artificial strings of nonsense syllables, the role of self-embedded structures in reasoning and general cognition, and the reputed connection between structural features of a visuospatial object and the corresponding recursive rules needed to represent or generate it. What a recursive process would actually look like and how one could go about probing its presence in human behaviour is then re-emphasized.

The Impact of Music in Memory

A lot of research has been done on the effects of music and sounds on performance in many areas of study. However, there have been mixed results about what kind of effects music can have. Musical pleasure was able to influence task performance, and the shape of this effect depended on group and individual factor (Gold B., et al. 2013). According to Fassbender (2012), music does have an effect on memory, music during a study or learning phase hindered memory but increased mood and sports performance. The objective of this experiment is to find if music can help memorize different tests like nonsense syllables, numbers and poems with rhyme. Students were from different faculties, N=74 (75% females) between age 17-22, participating in this experiment. Experiment had 4 different tests, self-created according to the experiment of nonsense syllables from (Ebinghaus 1885). First test had 50 nonsense syllables to lead to the next phase of experiment. Students were separated in 3 groups with almost the same numbers of correct nonsense syllables from the first test. First group was taking the tests without music at all and in silent, second group was doing the test with lyrics music and the third group with relaxing music. All three groups had 5 minutes for each 3 different tests to memorize 50 other nonsense syllables (including 3 same syllables), 12 lines from poems and 50 different order of numbers, then to write down how much they memorized. The music was the same during memorizing phase and was repeated during writing phase with same volume and with headphones on. Result showed that there are significant differences memorizing lines from poems and the same syllables between students without music and them with music. T-test for each group also showed the significant differences between these two groups. Regression analyses explain 33% of variance factors for memorizing the lines and 50% of variance factors for memorizing the same syllables, groups have the most impact on regression. Conclusions of this research are that music affects memory negatively resulting that students are able to memorize better without music. This research also concludes that silent is a key factor to recognize the same nonsense syllables. When it comes to memorizing better keep the music down!

AUTOMATIC WRITING AND GRAMMELOT IN CLAUDE VIVIER'S LANGUE INVENTÉE

French-Canadian composer Claude Vivier (1948–1983) is one of the few composers, perhaps the only one, to use an invented language throughout his entire compositional career. Vivier's use of what he called his langue inventée (‘invented language’) spanned the first vocal work in his catalogue – Ojikawa (1968) – to his final work, Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (1983), completed only shortly before his murder in March 1983. Despite the pervasiveness of this technique – in fact, it is the only technique that remains a constant across all of Vivier's stylistic periods – relatively little attention has been given to the langue inventée in scholarship. This article presents a description of Vivier's langue inventée in three parts, beginning with a general introduction. The second part presents the langue inventée as a product of automatic writing and engages directly with Vivier's sketches to propose a method that Vivier likely used to write much of his langue inventée text. The final section of the article presents Vivier's langue inventée as a form of grammelot – a term revived by playwright, actor and director Dario Fo (1926–), which is associated with the dialect theatre of the Commedia dell'arte tradition. This article aims to demonstrate that Vivier's langue inventée is not a just a string of unintelligible nonsense syllables, but rather a very purposeful grammelot, freely composed in a two-stage approach to automatic writing, that reaches beyond linguistic semantics.