The article, unsurprisingly, seems a bit misleading, though they did mention the differences from the mechanisms of producing speech, and underscored the point about plasticity. Reference to that language teacher was random, must've been a paid product placement by the Telegraph? Also, no love from them for co-author Friedemann Pulvermüller? Sheesh. I just linked to them in some comments about subtrees and semantics/syntax in the brain.
Edit: Here's a link:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid138550 (note the first linked paper is by the same authors, they're on a roll; they often write papers together)
Rapid Cortical Plasticity Underlying Novel Word Learning
Abstract: Humans are unique in developing large lexicons as their communication tool. To achieve this, they are able to learn new words rapidly. However, neural bases of this rapid learning, which may be an expression of a more general cognitive mechanism, are not yet understood. To address this, we exposed our subjects to familiar words and novel spoken stimuli in a short passive perceptual learning session and compared automatic brain responses to these items throughout the learning exposure. Initially, we found enhanced activity for known words, indexing the ignition of their underlying memory traces. However, just after 14 min of learning exposure, the novel items exhibited a significant increase in response magnitude matching in size with that to real words. This activation increase, as we would like to propose, reflects rapid mapping of new word forms onto neural representations. Similar to familiar words, the neural activity subserving rapid learning of new word forms was generated in the left-perisylvian language cortex, especially anterior superior-temporal areas. This first report of a neural correlate of rapid learning suggests that our brain may effectively form new neuronal circuits online as it gets exposed to novel patterns in the sensory input. Understanding such fast learning is key to the neurobiological explanation of the human language faculty and learning mechanisms in general.
From the
Introduction: “In childhood, a large vocabulary of words is learnt rapidly with multiple words acquired daily; similar processes can take place later in life in second language acquisition. Dubbed “fast mapping” (Carey and Bartlett, 1978), rapid word learning has been explored in numerous behavioral studies over the recent decades (Heibeck and Markman, 1987; Gershkoff-Stowe and Hahn, 2007)... Even more interestingly, while some experiments prompted suggestions of a unique human word-learning mechanism (Waxman and Booth, 2000), others have argued that rapid word learning may efficiently exploit general neurobiological learning mechanisms that are not necessarily language-specific (Markson and Bloom, 1997; Bloom, 2002) and may even be shared with other species (Kaminski et al., 2004). ”
From the
Discussion: “This is, to our knowledge, the first report of a cortical correlate of learning emerging within minutes of passive perceptual exposure to a new spoken pseudo-word. The data, showing an increase in brain response as an immediate result of learning, suggest that that our brain may be capable of forming new neuronal circuits for linguistic events rapidly as it gets exposed to novel patterns of human speech. Understanding such fast learning is key to the neurobiological explanation of the human language faculty, as only humans are capable of acquiring large word vocabularies rapidly.
The brain structures engaged by such rapid passive word-form learning are part of those also effective in the processing of meaningful words, specifically anterior superior-temporal cortex included in the “what” stream of auditory processing (Rauschecker and Scott, 2009). Fast learning can be explained by general neurobiological principles, most notably by Hebbian synaptic strengthening following correlated neuronal activity (Pulvermüller, 1999). This suggestion is therefore well in line with claims that rapid learning is not specific to language function or even to human species (Markson and Bloom, 1997; Kaminski et al., 2004) and may, as such, be an expression of a more general neurobiological learning mechanism. The extremely efficient application of this mechanism to the learning of vocabularies of thousands of words is, of course, a human feature that is potentially facilitated by neuroanatomical advantages in the form of efficient connections within left temporofrontal perisylvian networks (Catani et al., 2005; Saur et al., 2008).
Fast storage of novel word forms, which is long known from behavioral data (Carey and Bartlett, 1978), is also implied by everyday observations, e.g., in the context of a language lesson or when being exposed to new specialist terms, newly-learnt words can be used almost immediately, without a need to wait for long-term consolidation to take place. What we document here specifically is a potential neurophysiological correlate of the learning of novel word forms via repetitive perceptual exposure, along with the relevant neocortical structures and their activation time course. Importantly, a certain level of caution is necessary in parallelizing everyday language learning in infants or adults with our present results, which are obtained with meaningless pseudo-words in passive presentation and in a somewhat artificial experimental context, aimed at optimizing the signal-to-noise ratio of neurophysiological responses. While the current paradigm, which was based on previous behavioral and neurophysiological findings, appears to be an efficient tool for observing fast changes in cortical activation patterns, future research should further explore the exact influence of learning regime (e.g., passive vs active), stimulus psycholinguistic properties (e.g., semantic meaning) and ecological validity of task contexts on emergent memory circuits in the brain.”
Edit 2: Bonus from the same authors:
Can language-action links explain language laterality?: An ERP study of perceptual and articulatory learning of novel pseudowords
Abstract: “We here investigate whether the well-known laterality of spoken language to the dominant left hemisphere could be explained by the learning of sensorimotor links between a word’s articulatory program and its corresponding sound structure... we hypothesised that learning of acoustic-articulatory coincidences produces laterality, whereas perceptual learning does not... a perceptual learning condition, where they carefully listened to repeatedly presented novel items, and, crucially, in an articulatory learning condition, where each item had to be repeated immediately, so that articulatory and auditory speech-evoked cortical activations coincided... both perceptual and articulatory learning were found to lead to an increase of pseudoword-elicited event-related potentials (ERPs), thus reflecting the formation of new memory circuits. Importantly, after articulatory learning, pseudoword-elicited ERPs were more strongly left-lateralised than after perceptual learning... These results support a new explanation of the laterality of spoken language based on the neuroanatomy of sensorimotor links and Hebbian learning principles.”
Edit 3: To re-summarize my impression after reading the methods and supplementary materials in more detail: audio was less than half a second, and results were seen immediately (rather than averaging over total trials, they looked at subsets of 16 trials at a time, as well as first and final 40 trials). Increase was immediately significant and it was the last 40 where the strongest occurred; once we factor in stuff like articulatory aspects (e.g. second abstract on articulatory learning and ERPs) and semantics, etc. (re: discussion points excerpted above and previous papers linked), I think it's clear we're looking less at numbers indicative of a possible method and more at neural evidence of plasticity in rapid perceptual learning in the short-term; that is, the paper isn't saying that if you listen to a word 160 times in 14 minutes you've ‘learned’ it. I suppose my point is that this is more useful (to me) as more refined, inspiring evidence of processes of perceptual learning to be combined with idea of multimodality and such regarding initial SRSing/encoding.
