Adults

Both children and adults can use sophisticated pragmatic inferences to acquire word meanings. An intriguing hypothesis is that words …

A symposium talk on typically developing children’s neural plasticity during statistical learning.

A talk on typically developing children’s neural plasticity during statistical learning.

A poster on typically developing children’s neural plasticity during statistical learning.

How do different modalities and domains of statistical learning skills grow and change across development in different populations, and what brain systems and connectivities underpin this? In this collection of projects, we use online statistical learning in the MRI to tease apart the developmental time-course of statistical learning in neurotypical individuals and determine how it differs in autistic children. We critically examine hypotheses of invariance, change, and domain-general vs language-specific mechanisms in statistical learning, and chart out the neural underpinnings of behavioral differences and connections to language development across our groups. Major contributions: Explore the neural development of statistical learning in neurotypical children and adults using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques, particularly MVPA; delineate how variations in structural connectivity in autistic and neurotypical children relate to statistical learning outcomes

What cognitive mechanisms may underpin implicit sign language learning in hearing, Deaf, and CODA adults? Here, we study everything from motor learning to working memory, statistical learning to vocabulary mapping, to determine the factors that most significantly modulate one’s ability to extract and map novel signs from context. Major contributions: Supervise assessment programming, piloting, and refining, created full project pipeline; lead recruitment and administration, particularly of more challenging populations such as Deaf individuals and CODAs.

How does the need to make pragmatic inferences to map words impact novel word meaning memory? In this collection of projects, we examine how the cognitive and neural basis of theory of mind modulate word learning outcomes in neurotypical and autistic adults and children, and how and why this may differ between individuals and groups. Major contributions: Empirically demonstrate stronger retention of pragmatically inferred over directly mapped words in neurotypical adults, older typically developing children, and a sub-group of autistic children, and a lack of it in younger typically developing children and a subgroup of autistic children; explore a significant modulating effect of theory of mind skills via both behavioral correlations and priming; conceptualize, design, program, and pilot neuro-imaging extensions of this project in neurotypical and autistic adults using fMRI (BOLD activation, MVPA, and functional connectivity) and EEG (pseudo-hyperscanning)