Date of Thesis

Spring 2025

Description

Statistical learning (SL) extends across multiple stimulus domains and modalities, including vision, audition, and touch. However, it remains to be seen whether SL is supported by a modality-general or modality-specific mechanism(s). Prior work examined this by varying the rate of presentation across modalities, finding evidence of modality-specific constraints on learning (Emberson, Conway & Christiansen, 2011). In a prior experiment, I extended this work by testing the effect of presentation rate in standardized audio and visual SL tasks. The results of this project provided evidence against modality constraints to SL, suggesting instead that the mechanism is modality-general in nature. However, SL’s developmental trajectories in school age children are highly debated and minimally researched, begging the question of whether modality constraints on statistical learning exist at any point during development. Utilizing a gamified version, The Alien Language Game, of the task used in my prior experiment, I was able to examine the mechanism’s performance in the visual and auditory domains at two rates of presentation in children 7- to 12- years-old. Performance in the auditory domain was significantly better than that of the visual domain, with performance in visual task at both rates of presentation at or below chance, suggesting the SL mechanism is better equipped to track temporal dependencies of auditory stimuli. However, performance at the slower rate of presentation in both the auditory and visual domains improved with age. Thus, my results provide evidence that differ from previous predictions of modality constraints on SL (see Emberson et al., 2011), suggesting the developmental trajectory of visual and auditory SL is different than previously predicted.

Keywords

Statistical Learning, Developmental Trajectory

Access Type

Honors Thesis

Degree Type

Bachelor of Arts

Major

Psychology

Second Major

Languages, Cultures & Linguistics

First Advisor

Dr. Aaron D. Mitchel

Second Advisor

Dr. Heidi M. Lorimor

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