Academic literature on the topic 'Visual-Verbal paired associate learning'

Previous studies have found that individuals with dyslexia perform poorly in paired associate learning (PAL) tasks, which were explained by a deficit in cross-modal association or verbal demand in alphabetic language. However, the nature of PAL deficits in non-alphabetic languages remains unclear. In this study, we conducted PAL and priming tasks in visual–visual, visual–verbal, verbal–visual, and verbal–verbal conditions to dissociate the cross-modal and verbal demands in Chinese children with dyslexia. In Experiment 1, children with dyslexia performed worse in verbal-involved PAL (visual–verbal, verbal–visual, and verbal–verbal) than the control children. Experiment 2 revealed that children with dyslexia performed better than the control children in the verbal–visual condition. Our results suggest that children with dyslexia have an intact ability to form cross-modal associations, which also implies that phonological deficits might be the key to PAL deficits in Chinese children with dyslexia.

Associate learning for visual nonverbal and auditory verbal items was examined in 21 children with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy (SDCP) and 28 healthy children using four paired associate tasks. SDCP children showed poorer performance than the comparison group for learning pairs that required visual nonverbal responses, regardless of the stimulus modality. Within the SDCP group, lesion severity was assessed in 17 of the children. Lesion severity was related to the level of performance on paired associate tasks requiring visual nonverbal responses; lesion severity did not reach statistical significance for tasks requiring auditory verbal responses. The study suggests: (1) periventricular white matter regions are important for the development of basic learning processes, such as associative learning, and (2) learning of visual nonverbal material is disproportionately affected following white matter injury early in life. (JINS, 1997, 3, 521–527.)

It is well-established that poor readers exhibit deficits in paired associate learning (PAL), and there is increasing evidence for a phonological locus of these deficits. However, it remains unclear whether poor performance stems from difficulties specific to the phonological output system or difficulties that affect both phonological input and output processes. Understanding these deficits is important not only in the context of PAL but also for informing broader theories of typical and atypical reading development. We developed a novel paradigm that allowed us to assess PAL in the presence and absence of phonological output demands. In total, 14 poor readers and 14 age-matched controls were first trained to criterion in verbal-visual PAL before being tested in the visual-verbal direction. The results showed that poor readers learned at the same rate as controls in verbal-visual PAL, even when the nonword stimuli were phonologically confusable. Yet, despite having reached the same criterion as controls in verbal-visual PAL, poor readers exhibited robust impairments for those same paired associates in visual-verbal PAL. The overall pattern of results is most consistent with the conclusion that PAL deficits reflect impairments to the phonological output system; however, results that may challenge this interpretation are also discussed.

One argument for distinguishing between hard (i.e., low-associate) and easy (i.e., high-associate) paired-associate learning is that hard associates provide a selective measure of episodic memory, whereas easy associates reflect both episodic and semantic memory. This study examined correlations between hard and easy verbal paired associates and episodic and semantic memory in a mixed clinical sample. When age and education were controlled, hard paired associates correlated as much with category fluency (i.e., semantic memory) as they did with immediate recall or retention (i.e., episodic memory). Correlations with hard and easy associates differed more on retention than on immediate recall. Letter fluency was essentially unrelated to either easy or hard associates. The study concludes that hard paired associate learning should not be presumed to selectively measure episodic memory.

ABSTRACT We report on a 22 year‐old woman with left temporal lobe epilepsy who had suffered complex partial seizures since childhood. At 19 years 10 months of age she underwent selective amygdalohippocampectomy, which resulted in a complete cessation of seizures. Preoperatively, the Logical Memory II section of the WMS‐R revealed poor logical memory function. Postoperatively, the patient's scores on several neuropsychological tests had deteriorated, namely, the Miyake Paired‐Associate Word Learning Test (related and unrelated pairs), several sections of the WMS‐R (Figural Memory, Logical memory I, Visual Reproduction II, Visual Paired Associates I, and Verbal Paired Associates I and II), and the BVRT‐R. In particular, her scores on the Visual Paired Associates I, Verbal Paired Associates I and II sections of the WMS‐R, and the BVRT‐R not only declined at one and three months post‐surgery, but also showed progressive deterioration at 16 and 18 months post‐surgery. It should be kept in mind that selective amygdalohippocampectomy can result in progressive postoperative, deterioration in some aspects of memory function.

To date, few studies have focused on the behavioural differences between the learning of multisensory auditory-visual and intra-modal associations. More specifically, the relative benefits of novel auditory-visual and verbal-visual associations for learning have not been directly compared. In Experiment 1, 20 adult volunteers completed three paired associate learning tasks: non-verbal novel auditory-visual (novel-AV), verbal-visual (verbal-AV; using pseudowords), and visual-visual (shape-VV). Participants were directed to make a motor response to matching novel and arbitrarily related stimulus pairs. Feedback was provided to facilitate trial and error learning. The results of Signal Detection Theory analyses suggested a multisensory enhancement of learning, with significantly higher discriminability measures (d-prime) in both the novel-AV and verbal-AV tasks than the shape-VV task. Motor reaction times were also significantly faster during the verbal-AV task than during the non-verbal learning tasks. Experiment 2 (n = 12) used a forced-choice discrimination paradigm to assess whether a difference in unisensory stimulus discriminability could account for the learning trends in Experiment 1. Participants were significantly slower at discriminating unisensory pseudowords than the novel sounds and visual shapes, which was notable given that these stimuli produced superior learning. Together the findings suggest that verbal information has an added enhancing effect on multisensory associative learning in adults

An examination of test manuals and published research indicates that widely used memory tests (e.g., Verbal Paired Associates and Word List tests of the Wechsler Memory Scale, Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, and California Verbal Learning Test) are afflicted by severe ceiling effects. In the present study, the true extent of memory ability in healthy young adults was tested by giving 208 college undergraduates verbal paired-associate and verbal learning tests of various lengths; the findings demonstrate that healthy adults can remember much more than is suggested by the normative data for the memory tests just mentioned. The findings highlight the adverse effects of low ceilings in memory assessment and underscore the severe consequences of ceiling effects on score distributions, means, standard deviations, and all variability-dependent indices, such as reliability, validity, and correlations with other tests. The article discusses the optimal test lengths for verbal paired-associate and verbal list-learning tests, shows how to identify ceiling-afflicted data in published research, and explains how proper attention to this phenomenon can improve future research and clinical practice.

L'objectif de cette recherche était de jeter les bases de la création d'outils de détection précoce des difficultés de lecture chez les enfants allophone nouvellement arrivés (EANA) en âge de fréquenter l'école primaire. Nous avons recruté 179 enfants EANA et 259 enfants français, appariés sur la durée de fréquentation de l'école primaire qui ont passé une série de tests cognitivo-linguistiques. Les scores de décodage des scores des enfants EANA étaient inférieurs à ceux des enfants français et présentaient une grande hétérogénéité. Ceux qui avaient commencé à apprendre à lire dans une autre langue, surtout s'il s'agissait d'une orthographe latine, obtenaient des scores plus élevés que les autres. Les plus jeunes avaient des scores plus faibles que les enfants plus âgés. Le fait que les enfants aient été scolarisés avant leur arrivée en France et la famille linguistique des langues parlées (autres que le français) ne présentaient pas d'effet sur les compétences en décodage. Ensuite, nous avons observé que les principaux prédicteurs cognitivo-linguistiques de la lecture (conscience phonologique, dénomination rapide automatisée, mémoire phonologique à court terme et vocabulaire) expliquaient une grande partie de la variance des scores de décodage chez les enfants EANA. Conformément à la littérature antérieure sur l'évaluation du langage oral des apprenants de langues secondes, nous avons souligné l'importance de gérer la distance typologique entre les langues premières et le français, ainsi que le degré d'exposition au français. Dans ce sens, nous avons examiné le pouvoir prédictif d'un test d'apprentissage de paires associées visuelle-verbale (PAL) qui ne devrait pas être biaisé par la quantité d'exposition au français et pour lequel il était possible de créer des items indépendants des propriétés typologiques du français. Les scores de PAL visuelle-verbale était fortement corrélés aux compétences de décodage et présentaient une contribution unique comparable aux autres prédicteurs cognitivo-linguistiques chez les enfants EANA. Chez les enfants français, ils présentaient une corrélation simple modérée avec les compétences de décodage et une faible contribution unique au-delà des autres prédicteurs. Nous avons examiné les mécanismes qui expliquent la relation entre la PAL visuelle-verbale et les compétences de décodage en effectuant une revue systématique de la littérature. La littérature antérieure a montré que les mécanismes d'apprentissage verbal de la PAL visuelle-verbale étaient au cœur de sa relation avec les compétences de décodage, du moins dans les orthographes alphabétiques, et que l'apprentissage d'association cross-modale pouvait également être impliqué, bien que les résultats soient incohérents. Nous avons testé ces composantes dans le sous-échantillon contrôle français de notre première étude et avons montré que l'apprentissage verbal expliquait mieux la relation entre la PAL visuelle-verbale et les compétences de décodage. Selon la littérature, cette relation pourrait être plus forte avec la lecture de mots complexes (mots avec des graphèmes contextuels ou bien des mots irréguliers) qu'avec la lecture de mots simples. Nous avons donc mené une deuxième étude auprès de 186 enfants de première année, mais nous n'avons pas pu confirmer cette hypothèse. Cela suggère, soit qu'il n'y a pas de relation causale entre la PAL visuelle-verbale et les compétences de décodage, soit que l'apprentissage verbal est important pour le décodage en général, quelle que soit la complexité des graphèmes ou la régularité des mots. De futures études longitudinales contrôlant tous les prédicteurs cognitivo-linguistiques sont nécessaires pour dénouer ces résultats inconsistents et déterminer si la PAL visuelle-verbale peut représenter un outil sensible pour détecter les enfants à risque d'échec en lecture, en particulier chez les enfants EANA
The strategic aim of this research was to lay the foundations for the creation of tools for the early detection of reading difficulties in newcomer non-francophone children (EANA) of primary school age. To this end, we recruited 179 EANA children and 259 French children. The two groups were matched on the duration of attendance at primary school. They completed a series of cognitive and linguistic tests, and parents answered questionnaires on languages spoken and previous schooling. We observed that EANA children's decoding scores were lower than those of French children and showed considerable heterogeneity. Children who had started to learn to read in another language, especially if it was a Latin orthography, obtained higher scores than others. Younger children had lower scores than older children, probably due to greater experience of reading in their first language. Whether the children had attended school before arriving in France and the language family of the languages spoken (other than French) had no effect on word reading skills. Then, we observed that the main cognitive-linguistic predictors (phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, phonological short-term memory and vocabulary) explained much of the variance in decoding skills among EANA children. In line with previous literature on oral language assessment of second language learners, we stressed the importance of managing the typological distance between first languages and French, as well as the degree of exposure to French. With this in mind, we examined the predictive power of a visual-verbal paired associate learning task (PAL), arguing that it should not be biased by the amount of exposure to French, and that it is possible to create items that are independent of the typological properties of French. Visual-verbal PAL scores were strongly correlated with decoding skills and showed a unique contribution comparable to other cognitive and linguistic predictors in EANA children. In French children, they showed a moderate simple correlation with decoding skills and a low unique contribution. We further investigated the mechanisms that explain the relationship between visual-verbal PAL and decoding skills by conducting a systematic review. Previous literature has shown that the verbal learning mechanisms of visual-verbal PAL are central to its relationship with decoding skills, at least in alphabetic orthographies, and that cross-modal association learning may also be involved, although the results are inconsistent. We tested these components in the French subsample of our first study and showed that verbal learning best explained the relationship between visual-verbal PAL and decoding skills. According to the literature, this relationship may be stronger with the reading of complex words (words with contextual graphemes and irregular words) than with the reading of simple words. We therefore conducted a second study of 186 first-grade children as part of a second data collection but were unable to confirm this hypothesis. This suggests either that there is no causal relationship between visual-verbal PAL and decoding skills, or that verbal learning is important for word and nonword decoding in general, regardless of grapheme complexity or word regularity. Future longitudinal studies controlling for all cognitive-linguistic predictors of decoding skills are needed to determine whether visual-verbal PAL has a causal contribution to decoding skills in French and may represent a sensitive tool for detecting children at risk of reading failure (particularly among EANA children) in combination with other measures

Abstract This study aimed to test whether audio-visual learning is mediated by modulation in sensory cortices (i.e. visual or auditory cortex). During fMRI scanning, subjects were exposed to repeated presentations of three tones and three visual stimuli. In 50% of presentations, one tone was paired with a face, and another one with a moving noise pattern. The third sound was not paired with any visual stimulus and was the target in an incidental detection task. Over time, activation in extrastriate visual cortex (V4) and the fusiform face area (FFA) increased in response to the sound that predicted the face, but not in response to the other two sounds.

The present chapter describes the role of gestures in instructional design from a cognitive load theory perspective, addressing in particular how this might benefit aging adults. Healthy older adults have to cope with several cognitive changes related to their working memory, such as a decline in: 1) the ability to deal with interference, 2) cognitive speed in response to unimodal stimuli (e.g. visual information), and 3) the ability to associate and integrate information elements. Cognitive load theory, with its focus on adapting learning formats to the limitations of working memory, provides a promising framework to address learning in older adults. Research inspired by cognitive load theory has shown that attentional cueing can reduce interference during learning, presenting instructions in a multimodal format can make more efficient use of WM stores (both auditory and visual), and the manner of presentation of information can aid integrative learning. Interestingly, studies using gestures in instruction show that gestures accompanying verbal information improve learning in similar ways. However, not much research has been done in applying the instructional guidelines of cognitive load theory and the use of gestures to older adults’ learning. In the present chapter, the authors will discuss possibilities of gestures to improve multimedia learning in older adults using some important guidelines proposed by cognitive load theory.

Abstract In most mammals, pairing a flavored food with gastrointestinal malaise results in the subsequent avoidance and reduction of consumption of that food (e.g., Garcia & Kimeldorf, 1957). Although there is substantial evidence that such flavor aversion learning shares many features with other examples of associative learning, most researchers agree that it reflects a privileged system with impressive capabilities and unique specializations. For example, in rats, flavor aversions may be learned even when the flavor and illness experiences are separated by hours, and illness-induced aversions are much more readily acquired to flavor cues than to auditory, visual, or olfactory stimuli. Nevertheless, research conducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s suggested that these exteroceptive cues may gain access to this privileged system in rats through associative learning. We found that pairing auditory, visual, and olfactory cues with flavored foods endowed those cues with the ability to substitute for their flavor referents not only in the control of action but also in the acquisition of new learning about those flavors. For example, Holland (1981) found that rats would acquire an aversion to a flavored food if they were made ill after presentations of an auditory cue that, days before, had been paired with that food.