Poster E4, Thursday, August 22, 2019, 3:45 – 5:30 pm, Restaurant Hall
Rule learning and sleep: An fNIRS study of non-adjacent rule learning by 6-month-olds
Anna Martinez-Alvarez1, Judit Gervain1;1CNRS-Université Paris Descartes
What is the role of sleep in infant language learning? At 6 months, infants sleep between 12 and 15 hours a day. Although the effects of sleep on adult learning and memory are starting to be understood (Diekelmann & Born, 2010), little is known about how sleep impacts learning in infancy. To address this issue, we test how infants learn non-adjacent linguistic regularities before and after sleep. Previous research suggests that infants can learn such regularities at 10 months (Martinez-Alvarez et al. 2018). In the current study, we test the hypothesis that sleep may help infants consolidate learning and when tested after sleep, infants younger than 10 months may also be able to learn. Three groups of 6-month-olds are presented with sequences following an AXB rule (e.g. “pedibu”, “pegabu”) and otherwise similar random controls (e.g. “dibupe”, “bugape”). Infants’ brain activity (hemodynamic response) is measured in the temporal, parietal, and frontal cortices using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). All participants are tested twice: before and after overnight sleep (Group 1), a nap (Group 2) or in the absence of sleep (control, Group 3). Data collection is still ongoing, but preliminary analyses of the pre-sleep session of Group 1 (n=10) shows larger activation (oxyHb) for the rule than for the random condition in bilateral temporal and frontal areas, similarly to the bilateral fronto-temporal activation previously found in 8-10-month-olds (Martinez-Alvarez et al. 2018), suggesting that even before sleep, infants as young as 6 months of age may be able to learn non-adjacent dependencies. We are currently in the process of completing the overnight group and acquiring data in the other two groups. Direct comparisons between the pre- and post-sleep results in all groups, as well as comparisons across groups, will be conducted once the three groups are completed.
Themes: Development, Morphology
Method: Functional Imaging