We cordially invite you to the next lecture of the BME Cognitive Seminar Series:

Date & Time: April 2, Monday, 12:00-13:00

Location: BME, XI., Egry József utca 1., T. ép 515.

Age-related changes in different forms of implicit learning: Is there a critical period?

Ágnes Lukács, Ferenc Kemény

Department of Cognitive Science, Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Abstract

It is a general view that skills like playing a musical instrument, mastering sports or a language are best acquired if learning starts early in childhood, and some have even proposed the existence of critical periods for learning such skills. The learning of such complex motor, cognitive and social skills is generally associated implicit statistical learning, defined as learning that takes place incidentally, without conscious intent to learn, and without explicit knowledge of the acquired representations. The study to be presented focuses on tracking age-related changes in different forms of implicit learning between 7 and 80 years using 3 paradigms: 1) the Serial Reaction Time Task (SRT) testing the learning of motor sequences, 2) Artificial Grammar Learning (AGL) testing the extraction of regularities from auditory sequences 3) and Probabilistic Category Learning in the Weather prediction task (PCL-WP), a non-sequential categorization task. Although these three tasks are standard paradigms of IL that have been extensively used in typical populations and in neuropsychological studies, systematic developmental tracking of performance throughout the lifespan are missing. Revisiting the issue of critical periods, the paper aims to take a step towards filling this gap.

-- 
Attila Keresztes

Junior Research Fellow
Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Dept. of Cognitive Science,
Egry József u. 1, Budapest
1111, Hungary
Tel: +36 1 4633525