Effect Of Long-term Experience Research Articles

Long-term written language experience affects grammaticality judgements and usage but not priming of spoken sentences.

“Book language” offers a richer linguistic experience than typical conversational speech in terms of its syntactic properties. Here, we investigated the role of long-term syntactic experience on syntactic knowledge and processing. In a preregistered study with 161 adult native Dutch speakers with varying levels of literacy, we assessed the contribution of individual differences in written language experience to offline and online syntactic processes. Offline syntactic knowledge was assessed as accuracy in an auditory grammaticality judgement task in which we tested violations of four Dutch grammatical norms. Online syntactic processing was indexed by syntactic priming of the Dutch dative alternation, using a comprehension-to-production priming paradigm with auditory presentation. Controlling for the contribution of nonverbal intelligence quotient (IQ), verbal working memory, and processing speed, we observed a robust effect of literacy experience on the detection of grammatical norm violations in spoken sentences, suggesting that exposure to the syntactic complexity and diversity of written language has specific benefits for general (modality-independent) syntactic knowledge. We replicated previous results by finding robust comprehension-to-production structural priming, both with and without lexical overlap between prime and target. Although literacy experience affected the usage of syntactic alternates in our large sample, it did not modulate their priming. We conclude that amount of experience with written language increases explicit awareness of grammatical norm violations and changes the usage of (prepositional-object [PO] vs. double-object [DO]) dative spoken sentences but has no detectable effect on their implicit syntactic priming in proficient language users. These findings constrain theories about the effect of long-term experience on syntactic processing.

Perception of Affordances in Soccer: Kicking for Power Versus Kicking for Precision

ABSTRACT Purpose: We investigated youth soccer players’ perception of affordances for different types of kicks. Method: In the Power task, players judged the maximum distance they could kick the ball. In the Precision task, players judged how close to a designated target line they could kick the ball. Following judgments, players performed each task. Both judgments and performance were assessed immediately before and immediately after players competed in a regulation soccer match, thereby permitting us to assess possible effects of long-term experience on perceptual sensitivity to short-term changes in ability. We compared players from two league groups: U16 (mean age = 15.45 years, SD = 0.52 years) versus U18 (mean age = 17.55 years, SD = 0.52 years). Results: As expected, for the Power task actual kicking ability was greater for the U18 group (p < .05). In statistically significant interactions, we found that judgments of Power kicking ability differed before versus after match play, but only for the U16 group. We found no statistically significant effects for the Precision task. Conclusions: We identified interactions between long-term and short-term soccer experience which revealed that the effects of long-term experience on affordance perception were not general. Two additional years of playing experience (in the U18 group, relative to the U16 group) did not lead to an overall improvement in the perception of kicking-related affordances. Rather, variation in long-term experience was associated with changes in affordance perception which were situation-specific, being manifested only after playing a soccer match, and not before.

New Window for Motor Learning Research: Variables in Human Factors

New Window for Motor Learning Research: Variables in Human Factors

Consistent and cumulative effects of syntactic experience in children’s sentence production: Evidence for error-based implicit learning

Error-based implicit learning models (e.g., Chang, Dell, & Bock, 2006) propose that a single learning mechanism underlies immediate and long-term effects of experience on children’s syntax. We test two key predictions of these models: That individual experiences of infrequent structures should yield both immediate and long-term facilitation, and that such learning should be consistent in individual speakers across time. Children (and adults) described transitive events in two picture-matching games, held a week apart. In both sessions, the experimenter’s immediately preceding syntax (active vs. passive) dynamically influenced children’s (and adults’) syntactic choices in an individually consistent manner. Moreover, children showed long-term facilitation, through an increased likelihood to produce passives in Session 2, with speakers who were most likely to immediately repeat passives in Session 1 being most likely to produce passives in Session 2. Our results are consistent with an error-based syntactic learning mechanism that operates across the lifespan.

Long Term Effects of Experience During Youth: Evidence from Consumption in China

We test for the long-term effects of experience during youth on consumption in nontraditional taste-forming categories. A unique dataset that tracks individuals over twenty years from 1992-2011, residing in nine Chinese provinces that vary widely in both income levels and rate of economic growth, helps us identify cohort and intra-cohort “prosperity-inyouth” (PIY) effects on consumption. We first demonstrate that non-traditional category consumption increases strongly among cohorts that entered adulthood during China’s boom years. We then show evidence of the intra-cohort PIY effect, controlling for individual level experience by leveraging the heterogeneity in the timing and rate of growth in prosperity across Chinese provinces. We find that the PIY effect has two dimensions - a direct effect of one’s own prosperity and an indirect effect of the prosperity of one’s province during youth. The indirect effects suggest that norms and aspirations created by the consumption of nontraditional categories by the surrounding rich during one’s youth have significant impact on long-term consumption - almost the same magnitude as the direct effect. We conduct a large number of robustness checks; in particular, we rule out potential supply side and attitude based explanations for the PIY effect. Our results imply that segmentation and consumption forecasts based on birth cohorts and experience of prosperity can be effective for taste forming non-traditional products in emerging markets.

PTU-106 Identifying true immune-tolerant disease in children and young adults with chb using quantified hepatitis b surface antigen levels

<b>Introduction</b>: Endobronchial ultrasound (EBUS) is the standard procedure for mediastinal staging in lung cancer with good accuracy in expert centres. The initial learning curve is well known but not the effect of long term experience on diagnostic yield. <b>Methods</b>: Analysis of all EBUS done at our institution for staging of LC from 3/2007 to 9/2013. Data, including procedure time were prospectively registered. Stadium IV diseases or N1/2 diseases without surgical confirmation were excluded. All investigations were done under conscious sedation and with rapid on-site cytology. <b>Results</b>: 261 patients (mean age 66±10 years) were evaluated. 152 patients (58%) finally had N2/3 disease. 10/261 patients (3.8%) had a false negative EBUS. Sensitivity, specificity and negative predictive value (NPV) of EBUS were 93%, 100% and 92%, respectively. Sensitivity and NPV increased over time from 92% and 91% in the first 130 investigations to 95% and 93% afterward. Six of ten patients with false negative EBUS had a false negative PET/CT too, four had only a micrometastasis. Seven patients were evaluated after neoadjuvant treatment, four were true negative, two true positive and one false positive (micrometastasis). Median procedure time for EBUS was 26 minutes (1^st/3^st 17/40 minutes) with median two evaluated lymph nodes (range 1-7). <b>Conclusion</b>: EBUS has a very good accuracy for the evaluation of the N2/3 disease in lung cancer. Over time, sensitivity and NPV steadily increased from 92% and 91% to 95% and 93% with improving results beyond 130 procedures. EBUS can easily and safely be performed under conscious sedation within reasonable time.

Interaction of long-term acoustic experience and local context information on the perceptual accommodation of talker variability

How do listeners recover speech content from acoustic signals, given the immense variability between talkers? In this study, two experiments were conducted on Cantonese level tones, comparing the perception of multi-talker speech stimuli in isolation and within a speech context. Without prior knowledge of a talker’s pitch range, listeners resort to the population-average pitch range as a default reference for perception. This effect is attested by the significant correlation between the distance from population-average pitch range and identification accuracy in the isolation condition (r = -0.24, p &amp;lt; 0.01). The closer a talker’s pitch range is to the population-average, the higher the identification accuracy is. The population-average reference is gender-specific, showing separate accommodation scales for female and male talkers. Such default reference is presumably built from one’s long-term acoustic experience, reflecting the dense distribution of talkers in a community whose pitch is close to the population-average. Above the effect of long-term experience, the presence of a speech context allows listeners to tune to talker-specific pitch range, boosting the identification accuracy from 43% (in isolation) to 86%. Our findings demonstrate that listeners have built-in knowledge of population-average pitch and can shift from the default reference to talker-specific reference with the facilitation of context information.

Epigenetic control of neurobehavioural plasticity: the role of neurotrophins.

Nerve growth factor (NGF) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) are two neurotrophins involved in the differentiation, growth and maintenance of selected peripheral and central populations of neuronal cells, during development and at adulthood. Furthermore, neuronal activity enhances expression and action of these neurotrophins, modifying synaptic transmission and connectivity. Neurotrophin production has been shown to be experience-dependent. In particular, during early developmental phases, experiences such as maternal deprivation or exposure to an enriched environment markedly affect NGF and BDNF levels. At adulthood, psychosocial stress has been shown to markedly alter NGF and BDNF levels, both in plasma and selected brain areas, including the hypothalamus and hippocampus. These results have been extended to humans, showing that NGF levels are enhanced by emotional stress induced by parachute jumping. Overall, these findings suggest a role of neurotrophins as factors mediating both short- and long-term effects of experience on brain structure and function.

Long-Term Effects of Experience on Judgments of Loudness

Long-Term Effects of Experience on Judgments of Loudness