Silent Rehearsal Research Articles

Transformation of speech sequences in human sensorimotor circuits

After we listen to a series of words, we can silently replay them in our mind. Does this mental replay involve a reactivation of our original perceptual dynamics? We recorded electrocorticographic (ECoG) activity across the lateral cerebral cortex as people heard and then mentally rehearsed spoken sentences. For each region, we tested whether silent rehearsal of sentences involved reactivation of sentence-specific representations established during perception or transformation to a distinct representation. In sensorimotor and premotor cortex, we observed reliable and temporally precise responses to speech; these patterns transformed to distinct sentence-specific representations during mental rehearsal. In contrast, we observed less reliable and less temporally precise responses in prefrontal and temporoparietal cortex; these higher-order representations, which were sensitive to sentence semantics, were shared across perception and rehearsal of the same sentence. The mental rehearsal of natural speech involves the transformation of stimulus-locked speech representations in sensorimotor and premotor cortex, combined with diffuse reactivation of higher-order semantic representations.

Decreased Fronto-Limbic Activation and Disrupted Semantic-Cued List Learning in Major Depressive Disorder.

Individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) demonstrate poorer learning and memory skills relative to never-depressed comparisons (NDC). Previous studies report decreased volume and disrupted function of frontal lobes and hippocampi in MDD during memory challenge. However, it has been difficult to dissociate contributions of short-term memory and executive functioning to memory difficulties from those that might be attributable to long-term memory deficits. Adult males (MDD, n=19; NDC, n=22) and females (MDD, n=23; NDC, n=19) performed the Semantic List Learning Task (SLLT) during functional magnetic resonance imaging. The SLLT Encoding condition consists of 15 lists, each containing 14 words. After each list, a Distractor condition occurs, followed by cued Silent Rehearsal instructions. Post-scan recall and recognition were collected. Groups were compared using block (Encoding-Silent Rehearsal) and event-related (Words Recalled) models. MDD displayed lower recall relative to NDC. NDC displayed greater activation in several temporal, frontal, and parietal regions, for both Encoding-Silent Rehearsal and the Words Recalled analyses. Groups also differed in activation patterns in regions of the Papez circuit in planned analyses. The majority of activation differences were not related to performance, presence of medications, presence of comorbid anxiety disorder, or decreased gray matter volume in MDD. Adults with MDD exhibit memory difficulties during a task designed to reduce the contribution of individual variability from short-term memory and executive functioning processes, parallel with decreased activation in memory and executive functioning circuits. Ecologically valid long-term memory tasks are imperative for uncovering neural correlates of memory performance deficits in adults with MDD.

A new semantic list learning task to probe functioning of the Papez circuit

Introduction: List learning tasks are powerful clinical tools for studying memory, yet have been relatively underutilized within the functional imaging literature. This limits understanding of regions such as the Papez circuit that support memory performance in healthy, nondemented adults. Method: The current study characterized list learning performance in 40 adults who completed a semantic list learning task (SLLT) with a Brown–Peterson manipulation during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Cued recall with semantic cues and recognition memory were assessed after imaging. Internal reliability, convergent, and discriminant validity were evaluated. Results: Subjects averaged 38% accuracy in recall (62% for recognition), with primacy but no recency effects observed. Validity and reliability were demonstrated by showing that the SLLT was correlated with the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT), but not with executive functioning tests, and by high intraclass correlation coefficient across lists for recall (.91). fMRI measurements during encoding (vs. silent rehearsal) revealed significant activation in bilateral hippocampus, parahippocampus, and bilateral anterior and posterior cingulate cortex. Post hoc analyses showed increased activation in anterior and middle hippocampus, subgenual cingulate, and mammillary bodies specific to encoding. In addition, increasing age was positively associated with increased activation in a diffuse network, particularly frontal cortex and specific Papez regions for correctly recalled words. Gender differences were specific to left inferior and superior frontal cortex. Conclusions: This is a clinically relevant list learning task that can be used in studies of groups for which the Papez circuit is damaged or disrupted, in mixed or crossover studies at imaging and clinical sites.

The comparison between motor imagery and verbal rehearsal on the learning of sequential movements

Mental practice refers to the cognitive rehearsal of a physical activity. It is widely used by athletes to enhance their performance and its efficiency to help train motor function in people with physical disabilities is now recognized. Mental practice is generally based on motor imagery (MI), i.e., the conscious simulation of a movement without its actual execution. It may also be based on verbal rehearsal (VR), i.e., the silent rehearsal of the labels associated with an action. In this study, the effect of MI training or VR on the learning and retention of a foot-sequence task was investigated. Thirty right-footed subjects, aged between 22 and 37 years old (mean: 27.4 ± 4.1 years) and randomly assigned to one of three groups, practiced a serial reaction time task involving a sequence of three dorsiflexions and three plantar flexions with the left foot. One group (n = 10) mentally practiced the sequence with MI for 5 weeks, another group (n = 10) mentally practiced the sequence with VR of the foot positions for the same duration, and a control group (n = 10) did not practice the sequence mentally. The time to perform the practiced sequence as well as an unpracticed sequence was recorded before training, immediately after training and 6 months after training (retention). The main results showed that the speed improvement after training was significantly greater in the MI group compared to the control group and tended to be greater in the VR group compared to the control group. The improvement in performance did not differ in the MI and VR groups. At retention, however, no difference in response times was found among the three groups, indicating that the effect of mental practice did not last over a long period without training. Interestingly, this pattern of results was similar for the practiced and non-practiced sequence. Overall, these results suggest that both MI training and VR help to improve motor performance and that mental practice may induce non-specific effects.

Contribution of pitch-accent information to lexical decision in Japanese

Word intelligibility, latency in shadowing, and brain activations when listening to spoken Japanese with incorrect pitch accents compared to normal, were investigated. Japanese is one of pitch-accent languages. In a pitch-accent language, “where” the pitch falls is important, whereas in Mandarin Chinese “how” pitch rises and falls is important. The word intelligibility scores were examined based on the adequacy rating of the accent types. Results reveal that under noisy conditions, the higher the adequacy of the accent type was rated, the higher the word intelligibility was. Under the clean condition, a significant negative correlation was shown between latency in shadowing and adequacy rating of accent types. In the event-related fMRI experiment, brain activities were investigated when listening to words with incorrect pitch accents (INCORRECT condition) and words with normal pitch accents (NORMAL condition). The contrast between INCORRECT and NORMAL revealed the significant activation in the bilateral inferior frontal, the bilateral precentral, and the left supplementary motor area, and right superior temporal gyrus. The result support the view that speech perception is a sensory-motor process, suggesting when a pitch accent of the stimulus was mismatch to the template, silent rehearsal might be repeated to make a lexical decision.

Brain activation to Japanese words spoken with incorrect pitch accent

In this study, brain activation when listening to spoken Japanese with incorrect pitch accents was investigated. In the event-related fMRI experiment, four kinds of stimuli were prepared. (1) NORMAL: Real words with a correct pitch accent. (2) INCORRECT: Real words with incorrect pitch accent. (3) PSEUDO: Pseudo-words, and (4) BASE: amplitude-modulated pseudo-speech noise. Fifteen normal right-handed participants were scanned by functional MRI while listening to these stimuli. Region of interest (ROI) analyses were performed. The contrast between INCORRECT and NORMAL revealed significant activation in the bilateral inferior frontal, the bilateral precentral, and the left supplementary motor area, and the right superior temporal gyrus. The result supports the view that speech perception is a sensory-motor process, and suggests that when the pitch accent of the stimulus does not match the template, silent rehearsal might be repeated to enable a lexical decision to be made.

The decay of pitch memory during rehearsal

The present study investigates the decay of pitch memory over time. In a delayed pitch comparison paradigm, participants had to memorize the pitch of a Shepard tone, with silent, overt, or without any rehearsal. During overt rehearsal, recordings of the rehearsing were effectuated. Performance was best for silent rehearsal and worst for overt rehearsal. The differences, although partially significant, were not marked. The voice pitch during overt rehearsal was compatible with a random walk model, providing a possible explanation of why rehearsal does not improve the retention of the pitch trace.

Atypical neural functions underlying phonological processing and silent rehearsal in children who stutter

Phonological processing was examined in school-age children who stutter (CWS) by assessing their performance and recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in a visual rhyming task. CWS had lower accuracy on rhyming judgments, but the cognitive processes that mediate the comparisons of the phonological representations of words, as indexed by the rhyming effect (RE) ERP, were similar for the stuttering and normally fluent groups. Thus the lower behavioral accuracy of rhyming judgments by the CWS could not be attributed to that particular stage of processing. Instead, the neural functions for processes preceding the RE, indexed by the N400 and CNV elicited by the primes and the N400 elicited by the targets, suggest atypical processing that may have resulted in less efficient, less accurate rhyming judgment for the CWS. Based on the present results, it seems likely that the neural processes related to phonological rehearsal and target word anticipation, as indexed by the CNV, are distinctive for CWS at this age. Further, it is likely that the relative contributions of the left and right hemispheres differ in CWS in the stage of processing when linguistic integration occurs, as indexed by the N400. Taken together, these results suggest that CWS may be less able to form and retain a stable neural representation of the prime onset and rime as they anticipate the target presentation, which may lead to lower rhyming judgment accuracy.

幼児の直後・最終自由再生に及ぼすオフ時間中のリハーサル方略の効果

The present experiment examined effects of rehearsal strategies during off-time on initial free recall (IFR) and final free recall (FFR) performance in young children (aged three and five). Performance in pictorial memory was found superior to the auditory one in IFR and FFR. The five-year-old children's performance proved superior to the three-year-old in IFR and FFR. There were significant effects of OFF-TIME in IFR and FFR, while significant serial position effect was seen on pictorial and auditory in all age conditions in IFR. Significant between-rehearsal groups difference in final parts of serial position showed in IFR, but not in FFR. Pronounce rehearsal group's performance was superior to association rehearsal and silent rehearsal groups' both in IFR and FFR. Significant primary effects were seen in pictorial and auditory in all rehearsal groups in all age conditions in IFR and FFR, though significant recent effects were noticed in pictorial and auditory in all rehearsal in IFR, except in FFR.

Eyeblink Frequency, Rehearsal Activity, and Sympathetic Arousal

Previous studies have suggested that the endogenous eyeblink rate (EBR) is inhibited by visual attention and increased by sympathetic arousal as well as by verbalization. As for the latter variable, it has been suggested that verbalization increases EBR by spreading of electric activity in efferent adjacent vocal and eye-motor pathways. The present study was designed in order to examine whether subvocal ("rehearsal") activity also elicits an increase in EBR. Subjects saw slides depicting either verbal or pictorial information. Subsequently, they were asked to rehearse this information silently. Spontaneous electrodermal fluctuations (SFs) were monitored throughout the experiment. The results clearly show that slide presentation ("information uptake") is accompanied by decrease in EBR, while silent rehearsal of information is accompanied by increase in EBR. Furthermore, this increase in EBR was found to correlate positively with SFs. Thus, results confirm the modulatory influences of visual attention, arousal and (sub)vocal activity on EBR. Furthermore, they suggest an explanation for the relationship that has been found between depressive mood and increased EBR. That is, heightened EBR in depression may reflect subvocal activity ("rumination").

Rehearsal and preparation for speech in stutterers: a psychophysiological study.

ABSTRACTTwelve stutterers and twelve non‐stutterers each read out loud following three types of rehearsal: overt rehearsal of the material, silent rehearsal, or inappropriate overt rehearsal (counting backwards). Silent rehearsal impaired performance (fluency) compared to the other conditions. Heart rate measures (HR) and electro‐myography (EMG) did not differentiate stutterers from non‐stutterers, except that EMG immediately before speech was significantly elevated after silent rehearsal for stutterers. The data suggest that silent rehearsal may be accompanied by excessively high muscle tone, and impair rather than facilitate fluency.

Effect of imaging sentences on concurrent unimanual performance

In Experiment 1, 96 right-handers tapped on a telegraph key while concurrently imaging, overtly rehearsing, or silently rehearsing concrete sentences in a between-subjects design. A strategy control problem for men precluded an interpretation of their data but in women, significantly better recall with imagery than rehearsal was accompanied by comparable right-lateralized manual interference in imagery and overt rehearsal and aymmetrical decrement in silent rehearsal. In Experiment 2, overtly rehearsing high imagery sentences produced a trend toward more right-left manual asymmetry in 45 right-handers relative to rehearsing low imagery sentences. The outcomes of these two preliminary studies point toward a role for the left hemisphere in sentence imagery beyond its contribution to sentence processing per se.

Rehearsal and preparation for speech in stutterers: A psychophysiological study

Twelve stutterers and twelve non-stutterers each read out loud following three types of rehearsal: overt rehearsal of the material, silent rehearsal, or inappropriate overt rehearsal (counting backwards). Silent rehearsal impaired performance (fluency) compared to the other conditions. Heart rate measures (HR) and electro-myography (EMG) did not differentiate stutterers from non-stutterers, except that EMG immediately before speech was significantly elevated after silent rehearsal for stutterers. the data suggest that silent rehearsal may be accompanied by excessively high muscle tone, and impair rather than facilitate fluency.

Is Incubation a Silent Rehearsal of Mundane Responses?*

The Journal of Creative BehaviorVolume 13, Issue 1 p. 36-38 Is Incubation a Silent Rehearsal of Mundane Responses?* DANIEL S. P. SCHUBERT M.D., Corresponding Author DANIEL S. P. SCHUBERT M.D. Department of PsychiatryCleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, 3395 Scranton Road, Cleveland, Ohio 44109.Search for more papers by this author DANIEL S. P. SCHUBERT M.D., Corresponding Author DANIEL S. P. SCHUBERT M.D. Department of PsychiatryCleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, 3395 Scranton Road, Cleveland, Ohio 44109.Search for more papers by this author First published: March 1979 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2162-6057.1979.tb00187.xCitations: 1 † Supported in part by NIMH Training Grant 1 TO 1 MH 14852 and NIH Internal Medicine Training Grant PE-1518801. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume13, Issue1March 1979Pages 36-38 RelatedInformation

Effects of varying latencies in the stimulus-response paradigm of speech therapy.

Effects of varying latencies upon articulatory productions in the stimulus-response paradigm were studied. Zero latency was compared to latency equal to stimuli and to latency with silent rehearsal of muscular movements. 30 children with misarticulated /r/ from kindergarten, first, and second grades participated as Ss in each of 3 latency conditions. Stimulus /ra/ was recorded on tape to provide 30 stimulations per S. Tape I contained stimuli with no latency; Tape II had stimuli with latency; and Tape III contained stimuli with latency and conditioning for muscular practice. Responses 1, 10, 20, and 30 of each S were judged. Only the responses following zero latency yielded significantly improved reponses after 30 stimulus-response trials. No significant differences were found among conditions after 30 trials. When change scores between Trials 1 and 30 were compared, the zero-latency condition was significantly better than the latency condition. When individuals were studied, however, some improved under a given condition whereas others did not or may even have regressed. It appears desirable to continue to use the stimulus-response method with latencies adapted to the individual S.

The Effect of Rehearsal on Frequency of Stuttering

Twelve stutterers recited 10-syllable sentences from memory after conditions of silent rehearsal, lipped rehearsal, whispered rehearsal, aloud rehearsal, and no rehearsal. Frequency of stuttering was judged from tape recordings. Results showed that oral recitations following aloud rehearsal had fewer stutterings than under any other conditions.

Independence of the modality effect and amount of silent rehearsal in immediate serial recall

After an acoustic as compared with a visual presentation, the immediate serial recall of nine-digit lists exhibits a selective reduction in errors over the last few serial positions. The present study shows that this decrement is independent of the amount of silent, intrapresentation rehearsal. This finding supports the view that information residing in a precategorical acoustic storage system (immediately after an acoustic presentation) is transferred passively to a more persistent form of storage. Both an active theory, in which the transfer is mediated by rehearsal, and an auditory information storage theory are inconsistent with the finding; however, suitable modifications of these theories might account for the finding should the additional complexity be justified by subsequent findings.

Precategorical acoustic storage (PAS)

A system for precategorical storage of acoustic information is described. Material in this store is subject to overwriting and to decay with time. Precategorical Acoustic Storage (PAS) receives information only from the ears; it is not affected by silent rehearsal or by visual stimulation, and is explicitly distinguished from storage in terms of articulation. Two experiments are reported in which these properties of PAS are tested. Postulation of PAS permits an account of serial position functions for visual and auditory presentation in immediate memory, a distinction between “recency” and “flnality” effects, the differential effects of a redundant prefix and a redundant suffix, effects of vocalization at presentation and at recall, and the relation between memory confusions and speech perception. Implications for a general theory of human memory are discussed.

The Temporal Position of Reviews

As the reader who has followed the literature pertaining to review well knows, it has seemed logical to many authorities that the first review exercises should appear soon after learning and be comparatively frequent, with less frequent appearances being required as time goes on. This teach ing has been deduced from the negatively accelerated character of the Eb binghaus curve of forgetting. In attempting to appraise it, it is fitting to inquire what the object of review is. If it is to maintain at any cost a given functional level of attained knowledge, probably no one will question the soundness of the teaching. If the issue is that of the most economical method of securing lasting benefits from learning through the expediency of review, the problem is whether it is more economical in the long run to maintain a given func tional level of knowledge or to regain it. Or, to put the question more directly, does a number of repetitions, employed as review, add more to the permanency of knowledge when indulged in soon after learning, before very much is forgotten, than at a more remote date, after much has been forgotten ? It may serve to clarify the issue to note that there are, in effect, two general kinds of review, or two general methods of reviewing: (1) recall or symbolical review, as in silent or oral rehearsal, written reproduction? verbatim or in substance, and response to various forms of objective tests, (2) reimpression, as in rereading, where the original performance is re peated, in whole or in part. There is no a priori reason why the two kinds of review should be affected alike by variations in experimental or class room procedure. In fact, the published research, as recounted in brief sub sequently, shows that the varying of temporal positions affects these two kinds of review differently. 618