Doctoral Dissertation Research: Role of Prior Knowledge in Consolidation of Novel Phonotactic Patterns for Speech Production

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。学习一门新的语言为跨文化交流提供了无数的机会，这对于在当今全球网络化的信息经济中保持竞争力至关重要。但是语言学习是困难的，尤其是对成年人来说，他们必须把新的语言经验和他们已经掌握的语言知识结合起来。之前的研究已经发现，基于睡眠的巩固——睡眠对记忆的改善——对这种整合至关重要。事实上，我们必须在新的语音策略——关于声音如何在音节和单词中排序的语言特定概括——在语音处理中根深蒂固之前睡觉（具体地说，在我们说话时无意识地塑造我们所犯的错误）。这个项目询问先验知识在这个过程中扮演什么角色：了解类似的语音策略是否可以提高基于睡眠的巩固学习新语音策略的有效性？这项研究的发现可以为课程设计和干预措施提供信息，使语言学习更有效，也可以揭示我们的大脑在学习时是如何变化的。该项目还包括培训一名本科生作为研究助理，并涉及语言学习的推广，以告知更多的公众。本项目旨在通过分析在多天的绕口令实验中出现的错误，阐明先验知识在巩固二阶音标化对语音生成的作用，这些实验操纵了新的二阶音标化与先前学习的音标化的结构相似性。结构相似性是根据每个概括（开头-元音，元音-尾）所涉及的音节位置来操作的。我们考虑了两种先验知识的来源：参与者的母语和使用实验绕口令任务的预训练。活动监测仪估计慢波睡眠时间，用于将本研究中观察到的巩固效应与其他认知和语言领域的研究中观察到的巩固效应联系起来。为了控制开始-元音和元音-词尾概括之间的时间顺序差异，采用非语言按键任务测试了学习开始-中间和中间-结束模式的差异。该项目还包括培训一名本科生作为研究助理，并涉及语言学习的推广，以告知更多的公众。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Learning a new language opens up a myriad of opportunities for cross-cultural communication, which is critical to remaining competitive in today's globally networked information economy. But language learning is difficult, especially for adults, who must integrate new language experience with the language knowledge they already have. Previous research has found that sleep-based consolidation - an improvement in what you can recall as a result of sleep - is critical to this integration. In fact, we must sleep before novel phonotactics - language-specific generalizations about how sounds can be ordered within syllables and words - become ingrained in speech processing (specifically, unconsciously shaping the errors we make while speaking). This project asks what role prior knowledge plays in this process: Can knowing similar phonotactics boost the effectiveness of sleep-based consolidation for learning novel phonotactics? The findings of this research can inform the design of curricula and interventions to make language learning more effective, and can also shed light on how our brain changes as we learn. The project also includes the training of an undergraduate student as a research assistant and involves outreach about language learning to inform the larger public.This project aims to clarify the role of prior knowledge in consolidating second-order phonotactic generalizations for speech production, by analyzing errors made in multi-day tongue-twister experiments that manipulate the structural similarity of novel second-order phonotactic generalizations with respect to previously-learned phonotactic generalizations. Structural similarity is operationalized in terms of syllabic positions involved in each generalization (onset-vowel, vowel-coda). Two sources of prior knowledge are considered: participants' native language and pre-training using the experimental tongue-twister task. Activity monitors estimating time spent in slow-wave sleep are used to link consolidation effects observed in this study to those observed in studies in other cognitive and linguistic domains. To control for temporal-order differences between onset-vowel vs. vowel-coda generalizations, a non-linguistic button-pressing task tests for the absence of differences in learning start-middle vs. middle-end patterns. The project also includes the training of an undergraduate student as a research assistant and involves outreach about language learning to inform the larger public.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.