Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour.
Department of Cognitive Neuropsychology.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2020 Jan;46(1):189-199. doi: 10.1037/xlm0000704. Epub 2019 Mar 18.
Learning new words entails, inter alia, encoding of novel sound patterns and transferring those patterns from short-term to long-term memory. We report a series of 5 experiments that investigated whether the memory systems engaged in word learning are specialized for speech and whether utilization of these systems results in a benefit for word learning. Sine-wave synthesis (SWS) was applied to spoken nonwords, and listeners were or were not informed (through instruction and familiarization) that the SWS stimuli were derived from actual utterances. This allowed us to manipulate whether listeners would process sound sequences as speech or as nonspeech. In a sound-picture association learning task, listeners who processed the SWS stimuli as speech consistently learned faster and remembered more associations than listeners who processed the same stimuli as nonspeech. The advantage of listening in "speech mode" was stable over the course of 7 days. These results provide causal evidence that access to a specialized, phonological short-term memory system is important for word learning. More generally, this study supports the notion that subsystems of auditory short-term memory are specialized for processing different types of acoustic information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
学习新单词需要将新的声音模式进行编码，并将这些模式从短期记忆转移到长期记忆。我们报告了一系列 5 项实验，这些实验研究了参与单词学习的记忆系统是否专门用于语音，以及利用这些系统是否会为单词学习带来益处。正弦波合成（SWS）被应用于口语中的非单词，并且听众是否（通过指导和熟悉）被告知 SWS 刺激物是来自实际话语。这使得我们可以操纵听众是否将声音序列处理为语音或非语音。在声音-图片联想学习任务中，将 SWS 刺激物处理为语音的听众比将相同刺激物处理为非语音的听众学习速度更快，记忆的联想也更多。在 7 天的过程中，“以语音模式”聆听的优势是稳定的。这些结果提供了因果证据，证明访问专门的语音短期记忆系统对于单词学习很重要。更一般地说，这项研究支持了这样一种观点，即听觉短期记忆的子系统专门用于处理不同类型的声学信息。（PsycINFO 数据库记录（c）2019 APA，保留所有权利）。
