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An fMRI study on the learning of grammatically encoded spatial settings
Poster Session C, Thursday, October 1, 10:45 am - 12:45 pm, Wangari Maathai
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Diego Dardon1, Hyeonjeong Jeong; 1Miyagi University of Education, 2Tohoku University
Learning a second language requires mastery of various grammatical rules. Previous studies in grammatical rule learning have identified the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and adjacent motor areas as important for L2 grammar learning (Friederici & Opitz, 2003; Hauser et al., 2012). However, these studies focused on abstract formal rules, neglecting more typologically diverse rules that grammatically incorporate extralinguistic information. Recent evidence suggests that depending on rule type, brain areas outside the left IFG and motor regions may also be recruited for successful learning. For example, Dardon and colleagues found that when learning semantic-based nominal classification rules, activation in the left middle temporal lobe predicted successful learning (2025). This suggests that a broader neural network may be involved in L2 grammar learning depending on rule type. To continue testing this hypothesis, this study will focus on learning rules that grammatically encode spatial settings, specifically frames of reference (FoR). Forty participants will be scanned while learning a semi-artificial language consisting of 72 Japanese sentences in which nouns inflect according to four spatial categorical rules found in Ngajanji, a Dyirbal language dialect (Dixon, 1969). The categories will be: 1) uphill from the speaker (target noun inflects with -baji), 2) downhill from the speaker (target noun inflects with -dajo), 3) upriver from the speaker (target noun inflects with -babu), and 4) downriver from the speaker (target noun inflects with -dabu). The target grammatical rule will be nominal inflection corresponding to each category. There will be two learning phases. Participants will be told they are adventurers visiting a newly discovered village in a rainforest and are learning about both the culture and language through observation with their guide. During each learning phase, participants will listen to 18 randomized sentences describing daily life while viewing a first-person perspective image corresponding to each sentence. After each learning phase, participants will complete an offline grammatical judgment task as a behavioral measure of learning. For the behavioral analysis, a paired-samples t-test will compare test scores from the first and second test phases to confirm whether learning occurred. For the fMRI analysis, a whole-brain approach using the contrast of interest, [Learning Phase 1] – [Learning Phase 2], will identify activation associated with learning based on behavioral evidence. The statistical threshold for voxel-wise analysis will be p < 0.001 (uncorrected) for cluster formation and corrected to family-wise error (p < 0.05) using cluster size. An independent ROI analysis will then be performed using brain regions identified from the whole-brain analysis, and their parametric estimates will be correlated with behavioral test scores to further examine their role in learning. We predict that the [Learning Phase 1] – [Learning Phase 2] contrast will reveal activation associated with grammatical inflection, including the left inferior frontal gyrus (Nevat et al., 2017). More importantly, we also predict activation related to egocentric FoR processing, such as the right superior parietal lobule and right frontal gyrus (Moraresku & Vlcek, 2020). Furthermore, we expect activation related to egocentric frame of reference processing to predict successful rule learning.
Topic Areas: Morphology,