Inferential Learning of new verbal meanings: an Event Related Synchronization Study

TABULLO, ÁNGEL; LOPES DA CUNHA, PAMELA; ZANUTTO, SILVANO; WAINSELBOIM, ALEJANDRO

Portland, Oregon

Congreso; 50th Annual Meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research.; 2010

Society for Psychophysiological Research

Acquisition of language in infants occurs by exposure to the linguistic context. Infants must map word meanings associating their perceptual experience with the linguistic input. This task appears to involve cross-situational (inferential) learning. In recent studies adults (Yu & Smith) and infants (Smith & Yu 2008) inferred new noun meanings by cross-situational pairings of images and auditory non-words. In the present work we studied if new verbal meanings could be inferred by cross-situational pairings of observed actions with a simultaneous description in an artificial language. 19 healthy right handed adults volunteered for the experiment. Training: 70 different visual scenes were presented on a computer screen (two geometrical figures, one static and the other performing one of 6 possible movements). A sentence in an artificial language describing the scene was audio-visually presented in simultaneous. Participants had to learn the words that denoted each of the movements. Testing: 80 new scenes, in 40 of them the sentence presented an incorrect “verb”. Subjects decided whether the sentence was correct or not by pressing two keys. EEG recording (test phase) allowed analyzing rhythmic cortical activity. Increases in alpha power were observed in Pz within 300-900 ms post verb presentation for both correct and incorrect sentences (higher in incorrect sentences). Theta power decreases were observed from 300-1200 ms in incorrect sentences only. The observed differences seem to be related to the detection of semantic mismatch between observed action and linguistic label.