Search

A current issue in psycholinguistic research is whether the language difficulties exhibited by children with developmental language disorder [DLD, previously labeled specific language impairment (SLI)] are due to deficits in their abilities to pick up patterns in the sensory environment, an ability known as statistical learning (SL), and the extent to which explicit learning mechanisms can be used to compensate for those deficits. Studies designed to test the compensatory role of explicit learning mechanisms in children with DLD are, however, scarce, and the few conducted so far have led to inconsistent results. This work aimed to provide new insights into the role that explicit learning mechanisms might play on implicit learning deficits in children with DLD by resorting to a new approach. This approach involved not only the collection of event-related potentials (ERPs), while preschool children with DLD [relative to typical language developmental (TLD) controls] were exposed to a continuous auditory stream made of the repetition of three-syllable nonsense words but, importantly, the collection of ERPs when the same children performed analogous versions of the same auditory SL task first under incidental (implicit) and afterward under intentional (explicit) conditions. In each of these tasks, the level of predictability of the three-syllable nonsense words embedded in the speech streams was also manipulated (high vs. low) to mimic natural languages closely. At the end of both tasks' exposure phase, children performed a two-alternative forced-choice (2-AFC) task from which behavioral evidence of SL was obtained. Results from the 2-AFC tasks failed to show reliable signs of SL in both groups of children. The ERPs data showed, however, significant modulations in the N100 and N400 components, taken as neural signatures of word segmentation in the brain, even though a detailed analysis of the neural responses revealed that only children from the TLD group seem to have taken advantage of the previous knowledge to enhance SL functioning. These results suggest that children with DLD showed deficits both in implicit and explicit learning mechanisms, casting doubts on the efficiency of the interventions relying on explicit instructions to help children with DLD to overcome their language difficulties., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The reviewer AV declared a shared affiliation with the author ML to the handling editor at the time of review., (Copyright © 2022 Soares, Gutiérrez-Domínguez, Oliveira, Lages, Guerra, Pereira, Tomé and Lousada.)

From an early age, exposure to a spoken language has allowed us to implicitly capture the structure underlying the succession of speech sounds in that language and to segment it into meaningful units (words). Statistical learning (SL), the ability to pick up patterns in the sensory environment without intention or reinforcement, is thus assumed to play a central role in the acquisition of the rule-governed aspects of language, including the discovery of word boundaries in the continuous acoustic stream. Although extensive evidence has been gathered from artificial languages experiments showing that children and adults are able to track the regularities embedded in the auditory input, as the probability of one syllable to follow another syllable in the speech stream, the developmental trajectory of this ability remains controversial. In this work, we have collected Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) while 5-year-old children and young adults (university students) were exposed to a speech stream made of the repetition of eight three-syllable nonsense words presenting different levels of predictability (high vs. low) to mimic closely what occurs in natural languages and to get new insights into the changes that the mechanisms underlying auditory statistical learning (aSL) might undergo through the development. The participants performed the aSL task first under implicit and, subsequently, under explicit conditions to further analyze if children take advantage of previous knowledge of the to-be-learned regularities to enhance SL, as observed with the adult participants. These findings would also contribute to extend our knowledge of the mechanisms available to assist SL at each developmental stage. Although behavioral signs of learning, even under explicit conditions, were only observed for the adult participants, ERP data showed evidence of online segmentation in the brain in both groups, as indexed by modulations in the N100 and N400 components. A detailed analysis of the neural data suggests, however, that adults and children rely on different mechanisms to assist the extraction of word-like units from the continuous speech stream, hence supporting the view that SL with auditory linguistic materials changes through development., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Soares, Gutiérrez-Domínguez, Lages, Oliveira, Vasconcelos and Jiménez.)

Statistical learning (SL), the process of extracting regularities from the environment, is a fundamental skill of our cognitive system to structure the world regularly and predictably. SL has been studied using mainly behavioral tasks under implicit conditions and with triplets presenting the same level of difficulty, i.e., a mean transitional probability (TP) of 1.00. Yet, the neural mechanisms underlying SL under other learning conditions remain largely unknown. Here, we investigated the neurofunctional correlates of SL using triplets (i.e., three-syllable nonsense words) with a mean TP of 1.00 ( easy "words" ) and 0.50 ( hard "words" ) in an SL task performed under incidental (implicit) and intentional (explicit) conditions, to determine whether the same core mechanisms were recruited to assist learning. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants listened firstly to a continuous auditory stream made of the concatenation of four easy and four hard "words" under implicit instructions, and subsequently to another auditory stream made of the concatenation of four easy and four hard "words" drawn from another artificial language under explicit instructions. The stream in each of the SL tasks was presented in two consecutive blocks of ~3.5-min each (~7-min in total) to further examine how ERP components might change over time. Behavioral measures of SL were collected after the familiarization phase of each SL task by asking participants to perform a two-alternative forced-choice (2-AFC) task. Results from the 2-AFC tasks revealed a moderate but reliable level of SL, with no differences between conditions. ERPs were, nevertheless, sensitive to the effect of TPs, showing larger amplitudes of N400 for easy "words," as well as to the effect of instructions, with a reduced N250 for "words" presented under explicit conditions. Also, significant differences in the N100 were found as a result of the interaction between TPs, instructions, and the amount of exposure to the auditory stream. Taken together, our findings suggest that triplets' predictability impacts the emergence of "words" representations in the brain both for statistical regularities extracted under incidental and intentional instructions, although the prior knowledge of the "words" seems to favor the recruitment of different SL mechanisms., (Copyright © 2020 Soares, Gutiérrez-Domínguez, Vasconcelos, Oliveira, Tomé and Jiménez.)

Recent years have seen an increasing number of studies on relationship extradyadic behaviors (Pinto and Arantes, 2016; Pazhoohi et al., 2017; Silva et al., 2017; Fisher, 2018). However, much is still to learn about the impact of these extradyadic behaviors on subsequent relationships that an individual may have. Our main goal was to study the association between past extradyadic behaviors - inflicted and suffered - and current relationship quality, sexual desire and attractiveness. Specifically, we aimed to: (i) Understand if past extradyadic behaviors are related to current relationship quality, sexual desire, and self-perceived and partner's attractiveness; (ii) Identify possible gender differences in these variables. For that, 364 participants (251 females and 113 males) were recruited through personal and institutional e-mails, online social networks (e.g., Facebook), and the website of the Evolutionary Psychology Group from the University of Minho. All participants completed a demographic and relationship questionnaire, followed by questions related to extradyadic behaviors and self-perceived attractiveness, the Perceived Relationship Quality Components (PRQC) Inventory, the Sex Drive Scale (SDQ), and the Importance of Partner's Physical Attractiveness Scale (IPPAS). For those currently involved in a relationship, results suggested that extradyadic behaviors (both suffered or inflicted) are linked with current low relationship quality and high sexual desire in the present. In addition, individuals who perceived themselves as being more attractive tended to have a higher sexual desire and higher relationship quality. Overall, men reported higher levels of extradyadic behaviors and sexual desire, gave more importance to physical attractiveness, and perceived their current relationship as having less quality than women. These results add to the literature by focusing on different variables that play an important role in romantic relationships, and have important implications., (Copyright © 2020 Arantes, Barros and Oliveira.)