The effect of left hemisphere stroke on statistical language learning

Human learners are known to capitalize on the statistical regularities in their environment in order to acquire both linguistic and non-linguistics patterns. Neuroimaging studies in healthy young adults associate this kind of learning with the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG), left arcuate fasciculus, and bilateral striatum.  However, a strong causal relationship between damage to these left hemisphere language areas and behavioral impairments in learning has not been established. I will present results from a recent experiment suggesting that patients with damage to these areas show clear behavioral impairments in this kind of learning.  Then, I will present results from a follow-up experiment to address which aspects of this learning process are impaired by damage to these areas. Specifically, is the learning process (e.g. the computation of these statistics) itself impaired, or are impairments limited to the patients’ ability to demonstrate the outcome of this learning (e.g. the recognition of previously learned statistical regularities)?

Location:
3401 Walnut Street, Room 401B of the Warren Center for Network and Data Sciences

Time:
1:30pm, Snacks provided!