Cargando…

Children’s Learning of Non-adjacent Dependencies Using a Web-Based Computer Game Setting

Infants show impressive speech decoding abilities and detect acoustic regularities that highlight the syntactic relations of a language, often coded via non-adjacent dependencies (NADs, e.g., is singing). It has been claimed that infants learn NADs implicitly and associatively through passive listen...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Marimon, Mireia, Hofmann, Andrea, Veríssimo, João, Männel, Claudia, Friederici, Angela D., Höhle, Barbara, Wartenburger, Isabell
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8595475/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34803816
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.734877
_version_ 1784600205243449344
author Marimon, Mireia
Hofmann, Andrea
Veríssimo, João
Männel, Claudia
Friederici, Angela D.
Höhle, Barbara
Wartenburger, Isabell
author_facet Marimon, Mireia
Hofmann, Andrea
Veríssimo, João
Männel, Claudia
Friederici, Angela D.
Höhle, Barbara
Wartenburger, Isabell
author_sort Marimon, Mireia
collection PubMed
description Infants show impressive speech decoding abilities and detect acoustic regularities that highlight the syntactic relations of a language, often coded via non-adjacent dependencies (NADs, e.g., is singing). It has been claimed that infants learn NADs implicitly and associatively through passive listening and that there is a shift from effortless associative learning to a more controlled learning of NADs after the age of 2 years, potentially driven by the maturation of the prefrontal cortex. To investigate if older children are able to learn NADs, Lammertink et al. (2019) recently developed a word-monitoring serial reaction time (SRT) task and could show that 6–11-year-old children learned the NADs, as their reaction times (RTs) increased then they were presented with violated NADs. In the current study we adapted their experimental paradigm and tested NAD learning in a younger group of 52 children between the age of 4–8 years in a remote, web-based, game-like setting (whack-a-mole). Children were exposed to Italian phrases containing NADs and had to monitor the occurrence of a target syllable, which was the second element of the NAD. After exposure, children did a “Stem Completion” task in which they were presented with the first element of the NAD and had to choose the second element of the NAD to complete the stimuli. Our findings show that, despite large variability in the data, children aged 4–8 years are sensitive to NADs; they show the expected differences in r RTs in the SRT task and could transfer the NAD-rule in the Stem Completion task. We discuss these results with respect to the development of NAD dependency learning in childhood and the practical impact and limitations of collecting these data in a web-based setting.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-8595475
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2021
publisher Frontiers Media S.A.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-85954752021-11-18 Children’s Learning of Non-adjacent Dependencies Using a Web-Based Computer Game Setting Marimon, Mireia Hofmann, Andrea Veríssimo, João Männel, Claudia Friederici, Angela D. Höhle, Barbara Wartenburger, Isabell Front Psychol Psychology Infants show impressive speech decoding abilities and detect acoustic regularities that highlight the syntactic relations of a language, often coded via non-adjacent dependencies (NADs, e.g., is singing). It has been claimed that infants learn NADs implicitly and associatively through passive listening and that there is a shift from effortless associative learning to a more controlled learning of NADs after the age of 2 years, potentially driven by the maturation of the prefrontal cortex. To investigate if older children are able to learn NADs, Lammertink et al. (2019) recently developed a word-monitoring serial reaction time (SRT) task and could show that 6–11-year-old children learned the NADs, as their reaction times (RTs) increased then they were presented with violated NADs. In the current study we adapted their experimental paradigm and tested NAD learning in a younger group of 52 children between the age of 4–8 years in a remote, web-based, game-like setting (whack-a-mole). Children were exposed to Italian phrases containing NADs and had to monitor the occurrence of a target syllable, which was the second element of the NAD. After exposure, children did a “Stem Completion” task in which they were presented with the first element of the NAD and had to choose the second element of the NAD to complete the stimuli. Our findings show that, despite large variability in the data, children aged 4–8 years are sensitive to NADs; they show the expected differences in r RTs in the SRT task and could transfer the NAD-rule in the Stem Completion task. We discuss these results with respect to the development of NAD dependency learning in childhood and the practical impact and limitations of collecting these data in a web-based setting. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-11-03 /pmc/articles/PMC8595475/ /pubmed/34803816 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.734877 Text en Copyright © 2021 Marimon, Hofmann, Veríssimo, Männel, Friederici, Höhle and Wartenburger. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Marimon, Mireia
Hofmann, Andrea
Veríssimo, João
Männel, Claudia
Friederici, Angela D.
Höhle, Barbara
Wartenburger, Isabell
Children’s Learning of Non-adjacent Dependencies Using a Web-Based Computer Game Setting
title Children’s Learning of Non-adjacent Dependencies Using a Web-Based Computer Game Setting
title_full Children’s Learning of Non-adjacent Dependencies Using a Web-Based Computer Game Setting
title_fullStr Children’s Learning of Non-adjacent Dependencies Using a Web-Based Computer Game Setting
title_full_unstemmed Children’s Learning of Non-adjacent Dependencies Using a Web-Based Computer Game Setting
title_short Children’s Learning of Non-adjacent Dependencies Using a Web-Based Computer Game Setting
title_sort children’s learning of non-adjacent dependencies using a web-based computer game setting
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8595475/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34803816
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.734877
work_keys_str_mv AT marimonmireia childrenslearningofnonadjacentdependenciesusingawebbasedcomputergamesetting
AT hofmannandrea childrenslearningofnonadjacentdependenciesusingawebbasedcomputergamesetting
AT verissimojoao childrenslearningofnonadjacentdependenciesusingawebbasedcomputergamesetting
AT mannelclaudia childrenslearningofnonadjacentdependenciesusingawebbasedcomputergamesetting
AT friedericiangelad childrenslearningofnonadjacentdependenciesusingawebbasedcomputergamesetting
AT hohlebarbara childrenslearningofnonadjacentdependenciesusingawebbasedcomputergamesetting
AT wartenburgerisabell childrenslearningofnonadjacentdependenciesusingawebbasedcomputergamesetting