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Consolidation of a “new” Speech-motor pattern : Preliminary Evidence
Poster Session C, Saturday, September 13, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm, Field House
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Fei Ting Woon1, Sayako Earle1; 1University of Delaware
Sleep plays a critical role in memory consolidation, particularly in learning complex motor sequences and integrating new linguistic information. The role of sleep in establishing a new speech-motor pattern is underexplored. This study investigates the effect of sleep on perception and production accuracy following training on non-native contrast (Danish vowels /y/-/ø/). The data collection for the fMRI study is completed but the analysis is still ongoing. The data collection for the perceptual identification task is ongoing. Forty native English speakers (18-24y, M =19.7, SD= 3.5) were randomly assigned to train in the evening (SLEEP group, n = 19) or in the morning (REST group, n= 21). Participants were trained in the perception of the vowel contrast through a two-alternative forced-choice task (200 trials), followed by a production training phase where participants imitated the target vowels (200 trials). After a 12-hour delay, participants completed an a T1 structural scan and fMRI scan while producing the learned speech sounds (32 trials for each vowel) prompted by a visual category label. Neuroimaging data were acquired using a 3-Tesla Siemens Prisma scanner. Perception accuracy was assessed both during training and at the end of the fMRI session, while production accuracy was assessed both during training and in the scanner. The outcome measures of perception is the percentage of correct responses in a perceptual identification task after the training and another one after the fMRI task. The primary measure of production accuracy will be a perceptual identification score from native Danish speakers who completed an online task to identify the training productions and in-scanner productions of our participants. Danish speakers are presented with the recordings of the learners’ productions and asked to identify if it was either /y/ or /ø/. We aim to recruit a total of 40 Danish participants. To date, 3 Danish participants have completed the rating task for productions during training, and 14 participants for the sounds produced in-scanner. A secondary production measure was the Euclidean distance calculated between participants' formant values (of F1, F2, F3) and our target token's values, where a smaller distance indicated greater production accuracy. Preliminary findings suggest that the SLEEP group exhibited greater retention of learned vowel contrasts in perception compared to the REST group. We did not observe a significant group-level difference in the secondary production measure. The fMRI analyses have indicated potential differences in hippocampal (REST>SLEEP), and cortical (REST<SLEEP) activations. Results from these ongoing analyses may contribute to our understanding of sleep’s role in second-language acquisition by demonstrating its benefits for both perceptual and motor aspects of speech learning. More broadly, the findings may provide insight into how memory consolidation mechanisms support linguistic learning and retention.
Topic Areas: Speech Motor Control, Speech Perception