Prior knowledge benefits older adults' tonal consolidation through talker generalization

Abstract

Recent research indicated that post-training sleep facilitates memory consolidation and talker generalization in young adults' tone learning. For instance, a nap study showed the newly learned tonal contrast that relates to prior knowledge consolidated more rapidly than that does not after daytime naps. Notably, older adults' declarative memory consolidation is impaired with age-related changes in sleep architecture. The current study examines whether prior (contour-tone) knowledge benefits Mandarin-speaking older adults' Cantonese tone learning. Mandarin employs pitch contours (falling versus rising) to cue tones in signaling word identity. Besides pitch contours, Cantonese also utilizes pitch heights (higher versus lower) in level tones to encode word meanings. In the pilot phase (60 Mandarin-speaking older adults will be recruited with data collection ongoing), participants were trained to learn Cantonese contour-level and level-level contrasts in the evening or the morning. A novel word-object identification task was used in the training, followed by three tone identification tasks: a posttest immediately after training, a 12-h delayed posttest (a trained talker), and another delayed posttest (a novel talker). Aligned with the nap study, preliminary results suggested overnight sleep might enhance seniors' tone-related memory by promoting generalization across talkers in learning contour-level contrast owing to their prior contour-tone knowledge.