Implicit Encoding Research Articles

Implicit statistical learning in language processing: Word predictability is the key

Fundamental learning abilities related to the implicit encoding of sequential structure have been postulated to underlie language acquisition and processing. However, there is very little direct evidence to date supporting such a link between implicit statistical learning and language. In three experiments using novel methods of assessing implicit learning and language abilities, we show that sensitivity to sequential structure – as measured by improvements to immediate memory span for structurally-consistent input sequences – is significantly correlated with the ability to use knowledge of word predictability to aid speech perception under degraded listening conditions. Importantly, the association remained even after controlling for participant performance on other cognitive tasks, including short-term and working memory, intelligence, attention and inhibition, and vocabulary knowledge. Thus, the evidence suggests that implicit learning abilities are essential for acquiring long-term knowledge of the sequential structure of language – i.e., knowledge of word predictability – and that individual differences on such abilities impact speech perception in everyday situations. These findings provide a new theoretical rationale linking basic learning phenomena to specific aspects of spoken language processing in adults, and may furthermore indicate new fruitful directions for investigating both typical and atypical language development.

Diamond Hierarchies of Arbitrary Dimension

AbstractNested simplicial meshes generated by the simplicial bisection decomposition proposed by Maubach [Mau95] have been widely used in 2D and 3D as multi‐resolution models of terrains and three‐dimensional scalar fields, They are an alternative to octree representation since they allow generating crack‐free representations of the underlying field. On the other hand, this method generates conforming meshes only when all simplices sharing the bisection edge are subdivided concurrently. Thus, efficient representations have been proposed in 2D and 3D based on a clustering of the simplices sharing a common longest edge in what is called a diamond. These representations exploit the regularity of the vertex distribution and the diamond structure to yield an implicit encoding of the hierarchical and geometric relationships among the triangles and tetrahedra, respectively. Here, we analyze properties of d‐dimensional diamonds to better understand the hierarchical and geometric relationships among the simplices generated by Maubach's bisection scheme and derive closed‐form equations for the number of vertices, simplices, parents and children of each type of diamond. We exploit these properties to yield an implicit pointerless representation for d‐dimensional diamonds and reduce the number of required neighbor‐finding accesses from O(d!) to O(d).

Representing an Object by Interchanging What with Where

AbstractExploring representations is a fundamental step towards understanding vision. The visual system carries two types of information along separate pathways: One is about what it is and the other is about where it is. Initially, the what is represented by a pattern of activity that is distributed across millions of photoreceptors, whereas the where is 'implicitly' given as their retinotopic positions. Many computational theories of object recognition rely on such pixel-based representations, but they are insufficient to learn spatial information such as position and size due to the implicit encoding of the where information. Here we try transforming a retinal image of an object into its internal image via interchanging the what with the where, which means that patterns of intensity in internal image describe the spatial information rather than the object information. To be concrete, the retinal image of an object is deformed and turned over into a negative image, in which light areas appear dark and vice versa, and the object's spatial information is quantified with levels of intensity on borders of that image. Interestingly, the inner part excluding the borders of the internal image shows the position and scale invariance. In order to further understand how the internal image associates the what and where, we examined the internal image of a face which moves or is scaled on the retina. As a result, we found that the internal images form a linear vector space under the object translation and scaling. In conclusion, these results show that the what-where interchangeability might play an important role for organizing those two into internal representation of brain.

A comparison of bipolar II and borderline personality disorder patients: A review of the literature on functional neuroimaging

Background: Neuropsychological studies have reported verbal “mood congruent”memory abnormalities in depression. The neural correlates of the implicit encoding of negative verbal stimuli in depression have not been studied with fMRI before. In the present study we used an event related fMRI paradigm to compare left-frontal and temporal activation during an implicit verbal emotional encoding paradigm in patients with depression and healthy controls. The present pilot study is part of the larger neuroimaging-study within the The Netherlands Study on Depression andAnxiety (NESDA), involving 320patients. Methods: Eleven healthy subjects (HC) and eleven subjects with a primary diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), no other axis I or II disorder and a MADRS-score of more than 21 participated in the study. Ten minutes after presentation of the words, subjects performed a surprise recognition task. During implicit encoding en recognition, scanning was performed on a Philips Intera 3Tsystem). Data were analyzed with SPM5. For this report only negative and neutral words were considered. Results: There were no differences in performance or reaction times. With respect to imaging data, between groups the contrast “successfully encoded neutral words vs baseline” revealed increased activation in the left prefrontal cortex, medial temporal lobe and inferior frontal gyrus in MDD-subjects. Other contrast revealed no significant differences in activations between groups. Conclusion: In this pilot study depressive subjects showed an increased activation in the left prefrontal cortex, medial temporal lobe and inferior frontal gyrus while evaluating and implicitly encoding neutral words, even in the absence of any performance differences. Interestingly, we did not find an increased activation in these regions during the encoding of negative words. A possible interpretation is that depressive patients need more effort to evaluate and encode neutral stimuli, in contrast to the possibly less demanding “mood-congruent” evaluation and encoding of negative words.

Trait-anxiety and repressors: Suppression of recall for aversive images

Two studies tested the hypothesis that thought suppression could be a trait-based cognitive bias, resulting in paradoxical memory advantage. High-anxious (high trait-anxiety, low defensiveness), low-anxious (low trait-anxiety, low defensiveness), and repressors (low trait-anxiety, high defensiveness) observed emotionally evocative slides. Study 1 ( N = 60) participants observed slides for (4 s) to facilitate elaboration or avoidance thereof. Study 2 participants ( N = 62) viewed slides for 52-ms with pre- and post-mask (i.e., implicit encoding). Explicit encoding resulted in a significant group × slide valence interaction for free recall, with repressors showing an advantage for negative slides, whereas high and low trait-anxious groups demonstrated no such difference. Because retrieval advantage was evidenced only for negative slides, and only in repressors, results suggest paradoxical memory rebound rather than mood-congruent memory. Moreover, similar results were not demonstrated following the implicit encoding condition, supporting the notion that avoidance occurs at the elaborative, rather than, encoding stage.

P.1.e.015 Event Related fMRI of successful implicit encoding of negative and neutral words in Major Depressive Disorder

P.1.e.015 Event Related fMRI of successful implicit encoding of negative and neutral words in Major Depressive Disorder

Introduction-States of Shame

Introduction—States of Shame1 Il faut que le colonisé soit bien étrange, en vérité, pour qu'il demeure si mystérieux après tant d'années de cohabitation ... ou il faut penser que le colonisateur a de fortes raisons de tenir à cette illisibilité. —Albert Memmi, Le racisme (1982) The feeling of shame relies upon a sense of empathy that assumes that we are all the same at the same time as it relies on a sense of identity that assumes we are not all the same. [...] The aporia of shame is that it resists the very self/other distinction on which it depends. There is a necessary contradiction at its base. —Desmond Manderson, "Unutterable Shame/Unuttered Guilt: Semantics, Aporia and the Possibility of Mabo" (1998)2 STATES OF SHAME have long been understood as a powerful affective resource. They seem able to alienate and estrange others, while, paradoxically , making intimacy possible. Shame itself does double duty for individuals and groups by uniting and differentiating simultaneously. It produces both the feeling of shared regard between and amongst subjects ("We all recognize this as shameful") and yet, in that same experience of affective belonging, shame just as powerfully marks out the behaviors or desires which earn exclusion from such regard and recognition ("You must be shameless!" or "Shame on you!"). And yet, even in shame's denial of recognition, the apostrophizing words "Shame on you!" function rhetorically to beckon the subject back, to dangle the enticement οι potential, if not actual, inclusion by communicating the fitting codes and conditions of belonging: to fit in, in this context, means recognizing the appropriate sense of shame. Hence, the tremendous rhetorical power that lies in the marshaling and instrumentalizing of shame: in totalizing and totalitarian denials of state recognition to a particular group; in the recent appeals to the supplemental "community strengthening " potential of scenes of public humiliation deemed capable of remedying the failures of legal sanctions here in the U.S.; or in the spate of public apologies by Heads of State and High Court rulings, apologies that seek to arouse feelings of collective shame for past denials of recognition, as in Australia's 1992 High Court majority ruling on the native title rights of indigenous Australians , in Mabo and Others v. The State of Queensland, which overthrew the colonialist doctrine of terra nullius (land belonging to nobody) by mobilizing national shame in the face of a shameful past.3 And when subjects internalize Vol. XXXIX, No. 4 3 L'Esprit Créateur shame's coding of authorized and unauthorized behaviors and desires, shame fuels itself very effectively. What necessarily begins with an explicit or implicit encoding of the terms of social regulation then self-regulates and takes on a life of its own. The contributors to this issue have all asked crucial questions about the ways writers understand, and have understood, the variables—as well as the constants—of states of shame according to their diverse subjects, objects, causes, effects, and contexts. Rather than departing from any definitional unity on states of shame, instead their contributions probe the diversity of expression of these emotional states to ask how different Francophone writers , philosophers, and filmmakers represent the "relational grammar" of states of shame, be they intrapsychic, intersubjective, transgenerational, intercultural , or intracultural relations to name but a few of the passages crossed or closed, through shame's relational grammar." David Carroll, for example, examines Jorge Semprun's response to the collective transgenerational shame of the "survivor's syndrome" (feeling ashamed to be alive) in the wake of the Holocaust; Luke Bouvier also analyzes a response to the transgenerational transmission of shame, but this time in Jules Vallès's individual counter-discourse of shame-lessness in his writings on childhood humiliation. Both of these articles prompt us to ask if there are forms of shame-lessness other than the static retaliatory response of a shamelessness trapped by the very same terms of the shame it repudiates. Given that shame is such an ambivalent emotion , and that emotions themselves are so multifarious in their openness to individual and cultural development, can a writing of the emotions-in this case, shame—offer a way of disrupting...

Neurophysiologic correlates of implicit face memory in intracranial visual evoked potentials

Visual evoked potentials were recorded in the amygdala, hippocampus, mid- and inferotemporal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, and lateral frontal cortex of seven epileptic patients while they were engaged in a difficult task requiring the discrimination between repeated and nonrepeated faces. The explicit recognition of previously seen faces was at chance levels, as measured by the accuracy of push-button responses. Nevertheless, all subjects showed clear-cut differential evoked responses to repeated versus nonrepeated faces, indicating implicit encoding of the distinction between the two types of stimuli. Differential responses were more frequent in neocortical recording sites (especially in the mid- and inferotemporal leads) than in limbic recording sites such as the amygdala and hippocampus. The authors conclude that implicit encoding processes are modulated by neocortical visual association areas of the temporal lobes.