Implicit learning in aphasia: Evidence from serial reaction time and artificial grammar tasks

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Implicit learning in aphasia: Evidence from serial reaction time and artificial grammar tasks Julia Schuchard1* and Cynthia Thompson1 1 Northwestern University, Communication Sciences and Disorders, United States Introduction. Implicit learning involves extracting patterns through repeated exposure to stimuli. Little is known about this learning process in individuals with aphasia, although evidence suggests that implicit learning mechanisms remain intact in aphasia (Goschke et al., 2001; Schuchard & Thompson, 2014). The purpose of the present research was to test implicit learning in aphasia in two experiments. Method. Nine individuals with stroke-induced agrammatic aphasia and 21 age-matched healthy adults served as participants for both experiments. Experiment 1 examined nonverbal sequence learning, which required participants to perform a visuomotor serial reaction time task by pressing buttons corresponding to the location of an asterisk that appeared on a computer monitor. Unknown to participants, the location of the asterisk followed a repeating sequence until the final block of the experiment, in which the locations were randomized. Experiment 2 tested grammar learning. Participants were exposed to pseudowords ordered in short sentences according to the rules of an artificial phrase structure grammar (Saffran, 2002). On the first day of the study, all aphasic participants and twelve of the healthy participants received grammar training by listening to grammatical sentences in the artificial language for 30 minutes, followed by completion of a grammaticality judgment test. These participants returned the next day, during which they completed the grammaticality judgment test again, participated in a second session of training (i.e., listening to sentences), and completed a final administration of the judgment test. Untrained healthy control participants completed the three tests but did not receive the two training sessions. Results. Results from the serial reaction time task showed a significant increase in reaction time during the final randomized block compared to the preceding sequenced block, indicating implicit learning of the sequence, for both aphasic and age-matched control groups. Similarly, results from the first grammaticality judgment test indicate learning under implicit conditions in both the aphasic and the trained healthy group. However, the trained healthy group also performed significantly above chance on the second day of the study, whereas the aphasic group did not, with the greatest difference between the two groups observed at the final test. Discussion. These findings suggest that individuals with agrammatic aphasia are able to take advantage of implicit learning processes, at least initially, but that overnight consolidation and accumulation of learning over multiple days may be compromised. Figure 1 Acknowledgements This research was supported by the National Institute On Deafness And Other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number F31DC013204 and by the Northwestern University Graduate Research Grant. References Goschke, T., Friederici, A. D., Kotz, S. A., & van Kampen, A. (2001). Procedural learning in Broca's aphasia: Dissociation between the implicit acquisition of spatio-motor and phoneme sequences. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 13(3), 370–388. Saffran, J. R. (2002). Constraints on statistical language learning. Journal of Memory and Language, 47(1), 172–196. Schuchard, J., & Thompson, C.K. (2014). Implicit and explicit learning in individuals with agrammatic aphasia. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 43(3), 209-224. Keywords: agrammatic aphasia, implicit learning, serial reaction time, artificial grammar, consolidation Conference: Academy of Aphasia -- 52nd Annual Meeting, Miami, FL, United States, 5 Oct - 7 Oct, 2014. Presentation Type: Platform or poster presentation Topic: Student award eligible Citation: Schuchard J and Thompson C (2014). Implicit learning in aphasia: Evidence from serial reaction time and artificial grammar tasks . Front. Psychol. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia -- 52nd Annual Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2014.64.00027 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 23 Apr 2014; Published Online: 04 Aug 2014. * Correspondence: Ms. Julia Schuchard, Northwestern University, Communication Sciences and Disorders, Evanston, IL, 60208, United States, jrschuchard@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. 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