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A large body of evidence suggests that people spontaneously and implicitly learn about regularities present in the visual input. Although theorized as critical for reading, this ability has been demonstrated mostly with pseudo-fonts or highly atypical artificial words. We tested whether local statistical regularities are extracted from materials that more closely resemble one’s native language. In two experiments, Italian speakers saw a set of letter strings modelled on the Italian lexicon and guessed which of these strings were words in a fictitious language and which were foils. Unknown to participants, words could be distinguished from foils based on their average bigram frequency. Surprisingly, in both experiments, we found no evidence that participants relied on this regularity. Instead, lexical decisions were guided by minimal bigram frequency, a cue rooted in participants’ native language. We discuss the implications of these findings for accounts of statistical learning and visual word processing.

Purpose: This study examined procedural and declarative learning and consolidation abilities in adults with developmental language disorder (DLD) relative to their typical language (TD) peers.Method: A total of 100 young adults (age 18–24 years) with (n = 21) and without (n = 79) DLD participated across two sites. Performance measures on a recognition memory task and a serial reaction time task were used to assess declarative and procedural memory, respectively. Performance was measured shortly after learning (8 a.m.) and again after a 12-hr, overnight delay (8 a.m.).Results: Linear mixed-effects modeling was used to examine the effects of time and group membership on task performance. For the serial reaction time task, there were significant effects of group (TD > DLD) and time (Day 1 > Day 2), but no interaction between them. For the recognition memory task, there was a significant interaction between group and time, driven by overnight gains in the TD group, combined with stable performance across days by those with DLD.Conclusions: In procedural memory, adults with DLD demonstrate a learning deficit relative to adults without DLD, but appear to have comparable retention of learned information. In declarative memory, adults with DLD demonstrate a deficit in the overnight enhancement of memory retrieval, despite typical-like learning exhibited when tested shortly after encoding.Supplemental Material S1. Participant performance on additional instruments; relationships between experimental measures of memory and language-related functions. Earle, F. S., & Ullman, M. T. (2021). Deficits of learning in procedural memory and consolidation in declarative memory in adults with developmental language disorder. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00292

Bilingualism affects the structure of the brain in adults, as evidenced by experience-dependent grey and white matter changes in brain structures implicated in language learning, processing, and control. However, limited evidence exists on how bilingualism may influence brain development. We examined the developmental patterns of both grey and white matter structures in a cross-sectional study of a large sample (n = 711 for grey matter, n = 637 for white matter) of bilingual and monolingual participants, aged 3–21 years. Metrics of grey matter (thickness, volume, and surface area) and white matter (fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity) were examined across 41 cortical and subcortical brain structures and 20 tracts, respectively. We used generalized additive modelling to analyze whether, how, and where the developmental trajectories of bilinguals and monolinguals might differ. Bilingual and monolingual participants manifested distinct developmental trajectories in both grey and white matter structures. As compared to monolinguals, bilinguals showed: (a) more grey matter (less developmental loss) starting during late childhood and adolescence, mainly in frontal and parietal regions (particularly in the inferior frontal gyrus pars opercularis, superior frontal cortex, inferior and superior parietal cortex, and precuneus); and (b) higher white matter integrity (greater developmental increase) starting during mid-late adolescence, specifically in striatal–inferior frontal fibers. The data suggest that there may be a developmental basis to the well-documented structural differences in the brain between bilingual and monolingual adults. Sitio web de la revista (Consulta: 26-04-2021)

Supplemental material, QJE-STD-18-051.R1-Supplemental_Material for Working memory in older adults declines with age, but is modulated by sex and education by Christos Pliatsikas, João Veríssimo, Laura Babcock, Mariel Y Pullman, Dana A Glei, Maxine Weinstein, Noreen Goldman and Michael T Ullman in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

Highlights • Declarative memory was assessed in children with and without language impairment. • A subgroup of language impaired children without working memory problems did not have declarative memory impairments. • Verbal declarative memory impairments are likely to be due to poor working memory. • Declarative memory deficits are not universal nor a core impairment in children with language impairments., This study examined verbal declarative memory functioning in SLI and its relationship to working memory. Encoding, recall, and recognition of verbal information was examined in children with SLI who had below average working memory (SLILow WM), children with SLI who had average working memory (SLIAvg. WM) and, a group of non-language impaired children with average working memory (TDAvg. WM). The SLILow WM group was significantly worse than both the SLIAvg. WM and TDAvg. WM groups at encoding verbal information and at retrieving verbal information following a delay. In contrast, the SLIAvg. WM group showed no verbal declarative memory deficits. The study demonstrates that verbal declarative memory deficits in SLI only occur when verbal working memory is impaired. Thus SLI declarative memory is largely intact and deficits are likely to be related to working memory impairments.

Meta-analysis and meta-regression were used to evaluate whether evidence to date demonstrates deficits in procedural memory in individuals with specific language impairment (SLI), and to examine reasons for inconsistencies of findings across studies. The Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (PDH) proposes that SLI is largely explained by abnormal functioning of the frontal-basal ganglia circuits that support procedural memory. It has also been suggested that declarative memory can compensate for at least some of the problems observed in individuals with SLI. A number of studies have used Serial Reaction Time (SRT) tasks to investigate procedural learning in SLI. In this report, results from eight studies that collectively examined 186 participants with SLI and 203 typically-developing peers were submitted to a meta-analysis. The average mean effect size was .328 (CI95: .071, .584) and was significant. This suggests SLI is associated with impairments of procedural learning as measured by the SRT task. Differences among individual study effect sizes, examined with meta-regression, indicated that smaller effect sizes were found in studies with older participants, and in studies that had a larger number of trials on the SRT task. The contributions of age and SRT task characteristics to learning are discussed with respect to impaired and compensatory neural mechanisms in SLI.