Over the last decade, iterated learning studies have provided compelling evidence for the claim that linguistic structure can emerge from non‐structured input, through the process of transmission. However, it is unclear whether individuals differ in their tendency to add structure, an issue with implications for understanding who are the agents of change. Here, we identify and test two contrasting predictions: The first sees learning as a pre‐requisite for structure addition, and predicts a positive correlation between learning accuracy (...) and structure addition, whereas the second maintains that it is those learners who struggle with learning and reproducing their input who add structure to it. This prediction is hard to test in standard iterated learning paradigms since each learner is exposed to a different input, and since structure and accuracy are computed using the same test items. Here, we test these contrasting predictions in two experiments using a one‐generation artificial language learning paradigm designed to provide independent measures of learning accuracy and structure addition. Adults (N = 48 in each study) were exposed to a semi‐regular language (with probabilistic structure) and had to learn it: Learning was assessed using seen items, whereas structure addition was calculated over unseen items. In both studies, we find a strong positive correlation between individuals' ability to learn the language and their tendency to add structure to it: Better learners also produced more structured languages. These findings suggest a strong link between learning and generalization. We discuss the implications of these findings for iterated language models and theories of language change more generally. (shrink)

In order to study the influence of different entrepreneurial psychological leadership styles on organizational learning ability and organizational performance, and to provide theoretical basis for the improvement of organizational benefits of entrepreneurial enterprises in the future, 421 general managers, middle managers, and grass-roots managers of 350 small and medium-sized private enterprises in Beijing were surveyed by questionnaire in two forms: online and on site. Then, a hypothesis model of the relationship between different entrepreneurial psychological leadership styles and organizational (...) learning ability and organizational performance was constructed. The correlation between transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire psychological leadership style and organizational performance and organizational learning ability was analyzed using multiple regression models. AMOS 7.0 software was used to simulate and verify the model. The results show that transformational psychological leadership style is positively correlated with organizational learning ability, financial performance, and growth performance; transactional psychological leadership style is positively correlated with organizational financial performance, growth performance, and organizational learning ability; there is no correlation between laissez-faire psychological leadership style and organizational financial performance and growth performance, but there is a significant positive correlation between laissez-faire psychological leadership style and organizational learning ability. The covariance between the error terms of the internal and external potential variables of the model is positive, and the factor load value of each potential variable and the observed variable is between 0.5 and 1, which shows that transformational and transactional psychological leadership styles have more positive influence on organizational financial performance and learning ability than laissez-faire psychological leadership styles. The hypothesis model of the relationship between entrepreneurial psychological leadership style and organizational learning ability and organizational performance conforms to the adaptation criteria and is feasible. (shrink)

The youngest generation of students prefers a more active learning style. Sandwich teaching may suit their learning style by alternating between active individual learning and passive collective learning. Sandwich teaching has been rarely applied to the Community Nursing Course for nursing students, and its teaching effects on this course remain unclear. This study applied Sandwich teaching to the Community Nursing Course for Chinese nursing undergraduates and investigated its effects on students' critical thinking, self-learning ability, (...) course experience, and academic performance. This is a quasi-experimental study with 72 Chinese nursing undergraduates. Students receiving traditional teaching were enrolled in the control group, and those who received Sandwich teaching were recruited into the experimental group. Both groups received the 12-week, 90-min Community Nursing Course. Our main outcome variable, including students' critical thinking, self-learning ability, and course experience, was assessed by specific questionnaire. The paired t-tests were applied to compare the differences of the same group in the pre-test and the post-test, and the independent-sample t-tests were used to compare the differences between the two groups. We observed that nursing students' critical thinking ability and self-learning ability were significantly improved after receiving Sandwich teaching. Students' course experience of Sandwich teaching was significantly better than that of traditional teaching. The final exam score in the experimental group was not significantly higher than that in the control group. These results suggest that Sandwich teaching in Community Nursing Course improved Chinese nursing undergraduates' critical thinking, self-learning ability, and course experience, but failed in improving academic performance. (shrink)

While the effects of pattern learning on language processing are well known, the way in which pattern learning shapes exploratory behavior has long gone unnoticed. We report on the way in which individual differences in statistical pattern learning affect performance in the domain of language along multiple dimensions. Analyzing data from healthy monolingual adults' performance on a serial reaction time task and a self‐paced reading task, we show how individual differences in statistical pattern learning are reflected (...) in readers' knowledge of linguistic co‐occurrence patterns and in their exploration and exploitation of content‐specific and task‐general information. First, we investigated the extent to which an individual's pattern learning correlates with his or her sensitivity to systematic morphological and syntactic co‐occurrences, as evidenced while reading authentic sentences. We found that the stream of morphological and syntactic information has a more pronounced effect on the reading speed of, as we will label them, content‐sensitive learners in that the more probable the co‐occurrence pattern, the faster their reading of that pattern will be. Next, we investigated how differences in pattern learning are reflected in the ways in which individuals approach the reading task itself and adapt to it. Casting this relation in terms of exploration/exploitation strategies, known from Reinforcement Learning, we conclude that content‐sensitive learners are also more likely to initially probe (explore) a wider range of directly relevant patterns, which they can later use (exploit) to optimize their reading performance further. By affecting exploratory behavior, pattern learning influences the information that is gathered and becomes available for exploitation, thereby increasing the effect pattern learning has on language cognition. (shrink)

Purpose The importance of smartphones in enhancing students learning, research and development is well-established in many published studies. Nevertheless, due to numerous challenges, Nigerian students are yet to reap from the benefits of smartphones in terms of accessing vital information for learning and development. Therefore, this study aims to develop a framework that will enhance Nigerian students’ ability to use smartphones for learning. Design/methodology/approach The SERVQUAL Theory Framework is adapted to actualize the research aim. Moreover, a (...) qualitative research approach was used to interview 60 students from 3 public universities in Nigeria. Purposive sampling technique was used to select the interviewees, and the interview data were analysed using thematic content analysis. Findings The findings identified the critical constraints that deter Nigerian students from reaping the full potential of smartphones for learning. The constraints are categorized into three groups which include telecommunication companies’ hiccups, such as high cost of internet, poor network services and coverage; government obstacles, such as high tax policies, insufficient electricity supply and lack of basic infrastructure; and university barriers, such as unavailability of Wi-Fi connection for students, lack of equipped university libraries and poor management. Originality/value Thus, a holistic Framework for Enhancing Students Smartphones Learning Ability was established to provide fundamental recommendations to the Nigerian Government, telecommunication companies in Nigeria and Nigerian universities to tackle the pressing issues hindering Nigerian students from using their smartphones for learning. This will enhance the smartphone learning experience of Nigerian students. (shrink)

There is little empirical evidence showing a direct link between a capacity for statistical learning (SL) and proficiency with natural language. Moreover, discussion of the role of SL in language acquisition has seldom focused on literacy development. Our study addressed these issues by investigating the relationship between SL and reading ability in typically developing children and healthy adults. We tested SL using visually presented stimuli within a triplet learning paradigm and examined reading ability by administering the (...) Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT-4; Wilkinson & Robertson, 2006). A total of 38 typically developing children (mean age of 9;5 years, range 6;4–12;5) and 37 healthy adults (mean age of 21 years, range 18–34) were assessed. In children, SL was significantly related to reading ability. Importantly, this relationship was independent of grade and also age. The adult data, too, revealed that SL was significantly related to reading ability. A regression analysis of the combined child and adult data revealed that SL accounted for a unique amount of variance in reading ability, after age and attention had been taken into consideration. For the first time, this study provides empirical evidence that a capacity for more effective SL is related to higher reading ability in the general population. (shrink)

Andrew Davis; Ability and Learning, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 22, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 45–55, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1988.t.

Analyzing navigational abilities and related aspects in individuals with Down syndrome is of considerable interest because of its relevance to everyday life. This study investigates path learning, the conditions favoring it, and the cognitive abilities involved. A group of 30 adults with DS and 32 typically-developing children matched on receptive vocabulary were shown a 4 × 4 Floor Matrix and asked to repeat increasingly long sequences of steps by walking on the grid. The sequences were presented under two (...) class='Hi'>learning conditions, one called Oral instructions, the other Observation. Participants were also assessed on verbal and visuospatial cognitive measures. The results showed a similarly better performance in both groups when the Floor Matrix task was administered in the Observation as opposed to the Oral instructions condition. As for the relation with cognitive abilities, in the Floor Matrix task in the Oral instructions condition, individuals with DS showed an effect of both verbal and visuospatial abilities, which was only positive for verbal ability. The effect of verbal and visuospatial abilities was negligible in the TD group. In the Observation condition, performance was predicted by sequential working memory in both groups. Overall, these results shed light on path learning in individuals with DS, showing that they benefited from the Observation condition, and that the involvement of their cognitive abilities depended on the learning condition. (shrink)

PurposeThis study investigated whether the ability to utilize statistical regularities from fluent speech and map potential words to meaning at 18-months predicts vocabulary at 18- and again at 24-months.MethodEighteen-month-olds were exposed to an artificial language with statistical regularities within the speech stream, then participated in an object-label learning task. Learning was measured using a modified looking-while-listening eye-tracking design. Parents completed vocabulary questionnaires when their child was 18-and 24-months old.ResultsAbility to learn the object-label pairing for words after exposure (...) to the artificial language predicted productive vocabulary at 24-months and amount of vocabulary change from 18- to 24 months, independent of non-verbal cognitive ability, socio-economic status and/or object-label association performance.ConclusionEighteen-month-olds’ ability to use statistical information derived from fluent speech to identify words within the stream of speech and then to map the “words” to meaning directly predicts vocabulary size at 24-months and vocabulary change from 18 to 24 months. The findings support the hypothesis that statistical word segmentation is one of the important aspects of word learning and vocabulary acquisition in toddlers. (shrink)

Human language is a salient example of a neurocognitive system that is specialized to process complex dependencies between sensory events distributed in time, yet how this system evolved and specialized remains unclear. Artificial Grammar Learning (AGL) studies have generated a wealth of insights into how human adults and infants process different types of sequencing dependencies of varying complexity. The AGL paradigm has also been adopted to examine the sequence processing abilities of nonhuman animals. We critically evaluate this growing literature (...) in species ranging from mammals (primates and rats) to birds (pigeons, songbirds, and parrots) considering also cross‐species comparisons. The findings are contrasted with seminal studies in human infants that motivated the work in nonhuman animals. This synopsis identifies advances in knowledge and where uncertainty remains regarding the various strategies that nonhuman animals can adopt for processing sequencing dependencies. The paucity of evidence in the few species studied to date and the need for follow‐up experiments indicate that we do not yet understand the limits of animal sequence processing capacities and thereby the evolutionary pattern. This vibrant, yet still budding, field of research carries substantial promise for advancing knowledge on animal abilities, cognitive substrates, and language evolution. (shrink)

Previous studies suggest a relationship between second-language learning and voice recognition processes, but the nature of such relation remains poorly understood. The present study investigates whether phoneme learning relates to voice recognition. A group of bilinguals that varied in their discrimination of a second-language phoneme contrast participated in this study. We assessed participants’ voice recognition skills in their native language at the behavioral and brain electrophysiological levels during a voice-avatar learning paradigm. Second-language phoneme discrimination positively correlated with (...) behavioral and brain measures of voice recognition. At the electrophysiological level, correlations were present at two time windows and are interpreted within the dual-process model of recognition memory. The results are relevant to understanding the processes involved in language learning as they show a common variability for second-language phoneme and voice recognition processes. (shrink)

This study proposed a children’s digital art ability training system with artificial intelligence-assisted learning, which was designed to achieve the goal of improving children’s drawing ability. AI technology was introduced for outline recognition, hue color matching, and color ratio calculation to machine train students’ cognition of chromatics, and smart glasses were used to view actual augmented reality paintings to enhance the effectiveness of improving elementary school students’ imagination and painting performance through the diversified stimulation of colors. This (...) study adopted the quasi-experimental research method and designs the pre-test and post-test for different groups. The research subjects are the Grade 4 students of an elementary school in Taitung City, Taiwan. The test tools included an imagination test and an evaluation of painting performance ability. The test results of a total of 30 students before and after the experiment included the experimental group that received the children’s digital art ability training system with AI-assisted learning and 30 students in the control group that had not received the teaching were analyzed by covariance. These results were supplemented by the description and interpretation of student feedback, teachers’ reflection notes, and other qualitative data to understand the performance of the students in the experimental group in terms of imagination and painting performance. (shrink)

Pinyin is a phonological encoding system used to spell modern Chinese Mandarin due to the phonological opacity of Chinese characters. The present study examined the role of Pinyin spelling in the reading abilities of adolescents learning Chinese as a foreign language. A total of 158 Indonesian senior primary students were tested on Pinyin spelling, character production, listening comprehension, depth of vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension. Pinyin spelling skills were assessed by two measures, Pinyin Dictation and Pinyin Tagging. Path analysis (...) revealed that even after controlling for the effect of character production, Pinyin dictation performance influenced reading comprehension through the mediating effect of listening comprehension and the depth of vocabulary knowledge, and Pinyin tagging performance also influenced reading comprehension through the mediating effect of the depth of vocabulary knowledge. The results highlight the importance of Pinyin skills for Chinese reading abilities of CFL learners. As a reliable and explicit indicator of specifying Chinese phonological representations and processing, Pinyin spelling has a long-term and multifaceted influence on higher-level CFL abilities. (shrink)

Perception of music and speech is based on similar auditory skills, and it is often suggested that those with enhanced music perception skills may perceive and learn novel words more easily. The current study tested whether music perception abilities are associated with novel word learning in an ambiguous learning scenario. Using a cross-situational word learning (CSWL) task, nonmusician adults were exposed to word-object pairings between eight novel words and visual referents. Novel words were either non-minimal pairs differing (...) in all sounds or minimal pairs differing in their initial consonant or vowel. In order to be successful in this task, learners need to be able to correctly encode the phonological details of the novel words and have sufficient auditory working memory to remember the correct word-object pairings. Using the Mistuning Perception Test (MPT) and the Melodic Discrimination Test (MDT), we measured learners’ pitch perception and auditory working memory. We predicted that those with higher MPT and MDT values would perform better in the CSWL task and in particular for novel words with high phonological overlap (i.e., minimal pairs). We found that higher musical perception skills led to higher accuracy for non-minimal pairs and minimal pairs differing in their initial consonant. Interestingly, this was not the case for vowel minimal pairs. We discuss the results in relation to theories of second language word learning such as the Second Language Perception model (L2LP). (shrink)

Cardinal number knowledge-understanding “two” refers to sets of two entities-is a critical piece of knowledge that predicts later mathematics achievement. Recent studies have shown that domain-general and domain-specific skills can influence children’s cardinal number learning. However, there has not yet been research investigating the influence of domain-specific quantifier knowledge on children’s cardinal number learning. The present study aimed to investigate the influence of domain-general and domain-specific skills on Mandarin Chinese-speaking children’s cardinal number learning after controlling for a (...) number of family background factors. Particular interest was paid to the question whether domain-specific quantifier knowledge was associated with cardinal number development. Specifically, we investigated 2–5-year-old Mandarin Chinese-speaking children’s understanding of cardinal number words as well as their general language, intelligence, approximate number system acuity, and knowledge of quantifiers. Children’s age, gender, parental education, and family income were also assessed and used as covariates. We found that domain-general abilities, including general language and intelligence, did not account for significant additional variance of cardinal number knowledge after controlling for the aforementioned covariates. We also found that domain-specific quantifier knowledge did not account for significant additional variance of cardinal number knowledge, whereas domain-specific ANS acuity accounted for significant additional variance of cardinal number knowledge, after controlling for the aforementioned covariates. In sum, the results suggest that domain-specific numerical skills seem to be more important for children’s development of cardinal number words than the more proximal domain-general abilities such as language abilities and intelligence. The results also highlight the significance of ANS acuity on children’s cardinal number word development. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of the educational system, including students’ learning styles, which are heavily dependent on self-regulated studying strategies and motivation. The purpose of this study was to discover whether Central European students, in this case the Slovak and Czech students, were able to perform self-regulated learning during online learning under the COVID-19 pandemic to achieve their learning goals and improve academic performance, as well as to propose a few practical recommendations how (...) to develop and maintain students’ self-regulation learning in this new online environment. The methodology was based on a questionnaire survey conducted among 268 students at two Central European universities in February and March 2021. The findings indicate that Central European students seemed to be able to perform their online self-study, especially in regard to personal competencies, meaningfulness and motivation. They reported higher awareness of their strengths and weaknesses in learning, time management, and/or the usefulness of making an effort to study. However, the findings reveal an urgent need for more work to be done in the area of metacognitive strategies, such as reflective and critical thinking, analyzing and evaluating. In this respect, the teacher’s role is replaceable since s/he serves as a facilitator and promotes these metacognitive strategies by providing students with constructive feedback, monitoring their learning, reviewing their progress, and/or providing opportunities to reflect on their learning. There were not any striking differences between the Czech and Slovak students. Nevertheless, Slovak students seemed to be more self-disciplined and goal-oriented in their learning. (shrink)

Introduction: Falls are the leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries among older adults. Studies showed that older adults can reduce the risk of falls after participation in an unexpected perturbation-based balance training, a relatively novel approach that challenged reactive balance control. This study aims to investigate the effect of the practice schedule on reactive balance function and its transfer to proactive balance function. Our primary hypothesis is that improvements in reactive balance control following block PBBT will be not inferior (...) to the improvements following random PBBT.Methods and Analysis: This is a double-blind randomized controlled trial. Fifty community-dwelling older adults will be recruited and randomly allocated to a random PBBT group or a block PBBT group. The random PBBT group will receive eight training sessions over 4 weeks that include unexpected machine-induced perturbations of balance during hands-free treadmill walking. The block PBBT group will be trained by the same perturbation treadmill system, but only one direction will be trained in each training session, and the direction of the external perturbations will be announced. Both PBBT groups will receive a similar perturbation intensity during training, the same training period, and the same concurrent cognitive tasks during training. The generalization and transfer of learning effects will be measured by assessing the reactive and proactive balance control during standing and walking before and after 1 month of PBBT, for example, step and multiple steps and fall thresholds, Berg balance test, and fear of falls. The dependent variable will be rank transformed prior to conducting the analysis of covariance to allow for nonparametric analysis.Discussion: This research will explore which of the balance retraining paradigms is more effective to improve reactive balance and proactive balance control in older adults over 1 month. The research will address key issues concerning balance retraining: older adults’ neuromotor capacities to optimize training responses and their applicability to real-life challenges.Clinical Trial Registration: Helsinki research ethics approval has been received. (shrink)

To construct their first lexicon, infants must determine the relationship between native phonological variation and the meanings of words. This process is arguably more complex for bilingual learners who are often confronted with phonological conflict: phonological variation that is lexically relevant in one language may be lexically irrelevant in the other. In a series of four experiments, the present study investigated English-Mandarin bilingual infants’ abilities to negotiate phonological conflict introduced by learning both a tone and a non-tone language. In (...) a novel word learning task, bilingual children were tested on their sensitivity to tone variation in English and Mandarin contexts. Their abilities to interpret tone variation in a language-dependent manner were compared to those of monolingual Mandarin learning infants. Results demonstrated that at 12 to 13 months, bilingual infants demonstrated the ability to bind tone to word meanings in Mandarin, but to disregard tone variation when learning new words in English. In contrast, monolingual learners of Mandarin did not show evidence of integrating tones into word meanings in Mandarin at the same age even though they were learning a tone language. However, a tone discrimination paradigm confirmed that monolingual Mandarin learning infants were able to tell these tones apart at 12 to 13 months under a different set of conditions. Later, at 17 to 18 months, monolingual Mandarin learners were able to bind tone variation to word meanings when learning new words. Our findings are discussed in terms of cognitive adaptations associated with bilingualism that may ease the negotiation of phonological conflict and facilitate precocious uptake of certain properties of each language. (shrink)

This article develops Thomson’s post-Heideggerian view that ontological education is centrally concerned with disclosing being creatively and responsibly. To disclose being creatively and responsibly is to realize the meaning of being, developing our historical understanding of what being means along with our consequent understanding of what it means for us to be, both communally and in the many facets of our own individual lives. As ontological educators, we disclose our own being by becoming who we are, which we do best (...) by learning-in-public, that is, by ‘teaching learning’. In the teaching and learning that belong together in ontological education, we come into our own by helping others to come into their own as well. Thomson explains and develops the crucially meaningful difference between creatively and responsibly disclosing inchoate meanings, on the one hand, and technologically imposing pre-existing plans and ideas, on the other. Responding to five recent essays on Heidegger allows Thomson to elaborate a non-nihilistic way of understanding education, teaching, learning, and being in our late-modern age of increasing technology. This article thereby articulates and embodies some of the important educational possibilities opened up by a more genuinely meaningful postmodern understanding of being. (shrink)

The ability to reason and problem‐solve in novel situations, as measured by the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM), is highly predictive of both cognitive task performance and real‐world outcomes. Here we provide evidence that RAPM performance depends on the ability to reallocate attention in response to self‐generated feedback about progress. We propose that such an ability is underpinned by the basal ganglia nuclei, which are critically tied to both reward processing and cognitive control. This hypothesis was implemented (...) in a neurocomputational model of the RAPM task, which was used to derive novel predictions at the behavioral and neural levels. These predictions were then verified in one neuroimaging and two behavioral experiments. Furthermore, an effective connectivity analysis of the neuroimaging data confirmed a role for the basal ganglia in modulating attention. Taken together, these results suggest that individual differences in a neural circuit related to reward processing underpin human fluid reasoning abilities. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 11, November 2019, Page 71-73.

Parallel language activation in bilinguals leads to competition between languages. Experience managing this interference may aid novel language learning by improving the ability to suppress competition from known languages. To investigate the effect of bilingualism on the ability to control native-language interference, monolinguals and bilinguals were taught an artificial language designed to elicit between-language competition. Partial activation of interlingual competitors was assessed with eye-tracking and mouse-tracking during a word recognition task in the novel language. Eye-tracking results showed (...) that monolinguals looked at competitors more than bilinguals, and for a longer duration of time. Mouse-tracking results showed that monolinguals’ mouse movements were attracted to native-language competitors, whereas bilinguals overcame competitor interference by increasing the activation of target items. Results suggest that bilinguals manage cross-linguistic interference more effectively than monolinguals. We conclude that language interference can affect lexical retrieval, but bilingualism may reduce this interference by facilitating access to a newly learned language. (shrink)