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

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。学习一门新语言为跨文化交流打开了无数机会，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。但语言学习是困难的，特别是对成年人来说，他们必须将新的语言体验与已有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--改善你因睡眠而能回忆起的东西--对这种整合至关重要。事实上，我们必须在新奇的音韵学在语音处理中根深蒂固(具体地说，无意识地塑造我们在说话时犯下的错误)之前睡觉。这个项目询问先验知识在这个过程中扮演了什么角色：知道相似的音标能提高基于睡眠的巩固学习新音标的有效性吗？这项研究的发现可以为设计课程和干预措施提供参考，以使语言学习更有效，也可以揭示我们的大脑在学习过程中如何变化。该项目还包括一名本科生作为研究助理的培训，并涉及到语言学习的推广，以告知更广泛的公众。该项目旨在通过分析在多天的绕口令实验中所犯的错误，阐明先前知识在巩固语音产生的二阶音向性概括中的作用，这些错误操纵了新的二级音向性概括相对于先前学习的音向性概括的结构相似性。结构相似性是根据每个泛化中涉及的音节位置(首音-元音、元音-尾音)来操作的。研究考虑了两个先验知识来源：参与者的母语和使用实验性绕口令任务进行的预培训。估计慢波睡眠时间的活动监测器被用来将这项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结果联系起来。为了控制元音和元音尾音泛化之间的时间顺序差异，非语言按键任务测试了学习开始-中间和中间-结束模式是否存在差异。该项目还包括培训一名本科生作为研究助理，并涉及向更广泛的公众宣传语言学习。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.