Visual statistical learning is related to natural language ability in adults: An ERP study

Abstract

Statistical learning (SL) is believed to enable language acquisition by allowing individuals to learn regularities within linguistic input. However, neural evidence supporting a direct relationship between SL and language ability is scarce. We investigated whether there are associations between event-related potential (ERP) correlates of SL and language abilities while controlling for the general level of selective attention. Seventeen adults completed tests of visual SL, receptive vocabulary, grammatical ability, and sentence completion. Response times and ERPs showed that SL is related to receptive vocabulary and grammatical ability. ERPs indicated that the relationship between SL and grammatical ability was independent of attention while the association between SL and receptive vocabulary depended on attention. The implications of these dissociative relationships in terms of underlying mechanisms of SL and language are discussed. These results further elucidate the cognitive nature of the links between SL mechanisms and language abilities.

Individual Differences in Language Acquisition and Processing

“…Specifically, SL is suggested to provide a potentially powerful mechanism with which children can acquire language from input without strong assumptions about innateness (although see [16]). More recently, the field has attempted to quantify IDs in SL, and has linked these to language proficiency in children and adults [105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112]132]. This work has shown some promise, with mostly medium-positive associations between SL and language typically reported [133].…”

“…IDs in SL have been linked to language proficiency across the lifespan, a relationship that has been attested across multiple domains of language, including vocabulary [105], grammatical [106], and literacy development in children [107]; and second language-learning adults [108]. The link is also attested in adults, and appears most strongly in tasks involving predictability; for instance, in predicting likely continuations of sentences in context [109] or in grammatical sequencing [110][111][112]. Similar effects have been observed in adult readers' use of orthographic cues for lexical access during reading [132].…”

Slow oscillation-spindle coupling predicts sequence-based language learning

“…As an additional control, the Stanford Sleepiness Scale (SSS) was administered at the beginning and end of the experiment to measure self-perceived sleepiness. A visual statistical learning task (for a detailed description, see Siegelman, Bogaerts, & Frost, 2016) was also administered, as statistical learning ability has been shown to predict individual differences in language learning ability (Daltrozzo et al, 2017).…”

“…As an exploratory analysis, we examined the relationship between statistical learning ability, task-evoked beta power and accuracy on the judgement tasks. This analysis was conducted to test the idea that statistical learning ability is a domain-general mechanism underlying language learning (Daltrozzo et al, 2017;Siegelman et al, 2016), and that language-related predictions during sentence processing are reflected in beta activity . In accord with prior literature, a beta regression indicated that statistical learning ability positively predicted proportion of correct responses (χ2(1) = 12.38, β = .01, pseudo R 2 = .29, p < .001).…”

Pre-stimulus beta-band activity is a signature of statistical learning

“…ERPs were also shown to differentiate between visual stimuli that carry high vs. low predictability for a subsequent target. Highly reliable predictors were shown to elicit either a larger centro-parietal late positivity (Daltrozzo et al, 2017) or a larger P300 component (Jost et al, 2015). More recently the predictability of visual stimuli was shown to modulate the low-frequency activity associated with stimulus presentation: in comparison to predictable second items of a learned pair, unexpected shapes elicited stronger activity in the alpha (7 -14 Hz) range (Zhou et al, 2019).…”