npj Science of Learning最新文献

Attending a lecture requires remaining focused for extended periods, which is particularly difficult in noisy environments or when lecture content is less engaging. Yet little is known about how these external (noise) and internal (interest) factors affect learners' neurophysiology. We measured brain activity (electroencephalogram; EEG) and physiological responses (skin conductance) during video-based learning, and assessed how neurophysiological responses were modulated by the presence of realistic background noise and by varying levels of interest throughout the lecture. Interest-level showed pronounced neurophysiological effects, with low-interest segments associated with reduced neural speech tracking, elevated alpha-power, reduced beta-power, and increased arousal, a pattern consistent with lower engagement and increased listening effort. Interestingly, background noise had comparatively limited effects on neurophysiological responses. These dissociated impacts of internal and external factors on speech processing during learning, emphasize the profound impact of content-engagement on neurophysiological measures associated with learner's attention, beyond the sensory burden of noise.

Social interaction can play a crucial role in how a second language (L2) is learned. In the current review, we examine theoretical frameworks and empirical studies demonstrating how social factors influence L2 learning, but we also identify gaps in the current literature. We propose using virtual reality (VR) as a methodology to fill these gaps with controlled, ecologically valid social simulations that can elucidate how social factors shape L2 learning.

Audio-visual (AV) associations are central to many aspects of behavior, including the initial steps of learning to read. The acquisition of AV pairings has been explored in individuals with varying literacy skills, including children with developmental dyslexia. Most previous studies examined performance in AV associative tasks looking at the pairings between linguistic auditory material and visual stimuli, thus confounding AV learning with phonological and/or verbal abilities. In the present study, we introduce an AV learning paradigm relying on non-linguistic auditory stimuli and novel visual shapes. We fit trial-by-trial performance and compare the response patterns of 52 Italian-speaking children with developmental dyslexia (DD) with those of age-matched (N = 54) and of younger, reading-matched (N = 51) typically-developing children. All groups showed increasing accuracy across trials, but children with DD learned less efficiently than their peers. These findings suggest that difficulties in forming AV associations through repeated exposure may underlie dyslexia, even when linguistic demands are minimized.

Children who are more curious learn more in school, but little is known about how to promote curiosity-driven behaviors. In a preregistered experiment, 103 children (54 boys, 49 girls, ages 5-7 years) were randomly assigned to a condition in which they were encouraged to ask questions, or to listen carefully, during eight one-on-one science lessons over 2 weeks. Children in the question-asking condition valued new science information significantly more than children in the listening condition (Wilcoxon r = 0.23). Children with less background knowledge, as measured by their baseline vocabulary and science achievement, showed greater curiosity and learning benefits from question-asking. These results suggest that practice with question-asking can boost some aspects of curiosity and learning in science domains.

Motor adaptation is essential for keeping our actions well-calibrated. However, the role of training context-specifically, the configuration of targets-in shaping motor adaptation remains poorly understood. We tested this by exposing participants to a visuomotor gain perturbation under two contexts: The Extent Group, which trained with targets at two amplitudes in a fixed angular direction, and the Angular Group, which trained with targets at equal amplitude in two angular directions. Strikingly, the groups differed in how they learned: the Angular Group relied predominantly on implicit adaptation, whereas the Extent Group relied more on explicit strategies. Additionally, the two groups differed in what they learned: the Angular Group acquired a translation rule, whereas the Extent Group captured the true gain rule. These findings underscore that training context determines both the processes engaged and the representations formed, underscoring its importance in shaping both how and what we learn.

Language and reading experience foster interpersonal alignment in communication, yet their impact on shared and idiosyncratic neural patterns in language comprehension remains underexplored. In this study, we investigate how individual differences in reading experience influence neural similarity across readers. We used a topicalized Author Recognition Test to profile participants' reading experience across diverse topics and used an fMRI task to measure neural activity while participants read narrative and expository texts. We found that greater print exposure was associated with enhanced alignment with others in bilateral semantic regions during narrative reading. In contrast, during expository comprehension, higher print exposure was related to more idiosyncratic patterns in the frontoparietal control network (FPN). Inter-subject representational similarity analysis further revealed shared brain-behavior patterns between distributed reading experience and activities in the default mode network (DMN). These findings highlight how accumulative reading experience is related to both shared and individualized neural dynamics during language comprehension.

Visual arts education has been linked to cognitive and neural benefits, yet the neural mechanisms associated with creativity remain unclear. This study examined how long-term engagement in design-related visual arts education relates to creative performance and brain function. Using a quasi-experimental design with propensity score matching, we compared design majors to matched non-design majors. Participants completed visual art creative tasks (product and book cover design) and divergent thinking tasks (AUT, TTCT-figural) during fNIRS recording. The design group outperformed peers across tasks and showed greater left dorsolateral prefrontal activation during early idea generation, while non-design peers relied more on sensory and motor regions. Functional connectivity revealed reduced coupling within task-relevant circuits, indicating greater neural efficiency. Dynamic network analysis showed design majors spent more time in efficient states and switched between states more flexibly. These findings suggest that design-related visual arts education may support creativity through efficient and flexible brain network engagement.

The effect of mindfulness training on working memory is unclear. The current study sought to confirm the impact of mindfulness training on working memory for facial stimuli and to reveal the cognitive mechanisms underlying this effect by using drift-diffusion modeling (DDM). Using a delayed match-to-sample task with facial stimuli, we measured memory performance across five emotional categories (happy, sad, fearful, angry, neutral). Sixty participants received five-week emotion-targeted mindfulness training versus 60 waitlist controls. Assessments pre-training, post-training, and at one-month follow-up revealed significantly improved memory accuracy for all emotions except fear, with the effects persisting for one month. More importantly, drift-diffusion modeling showed increased drift rates across emotional categories post-training. Furthermore, accuracy improvements strongly correlated with drift rate enhancements within each emotion category. These findings demonstrate that mindfulness training induces lasting improvements in both accuracy and processing efficiency of visual working memory, independent of facial emotions, clarifying its cognitive mechanisms.

Visual-to-auditory sensory substitution devices (SSDs) translate images to sounds. One SSD, The vOICe, translates a pixel's vertical position into pitch and horizontal position into time. This mapping is primarily based on technical considerations for preserving image content in human-audible sounds without presupposing intuitiveness, although some literature also invokes crossmodal correspondences in perception, such as pitch for elevation. We investigated these presuppositions and the efficacy of learning a traditional algorithm (i.e., pitch indicating elevation and time indicating azimuth) versus a reversed algorithm (i.e., pitch indicating azimuth and time indicating elevation), or an arbitrary single-tone control mapping (i.e., each visual stimulus was represented by a single non-systematic pitch-time pairing without structured spatial correspondences). Sixty sighted adults participated with random assignment to the Traditional, Reversed, or Control groups. They completed learning and evaluation sessions using simplified black-and-white visual stimuli. Both the Traditional and Reversed groups learned mappings within 30 minutes and demonstrated successful recognition of novel stimuli, outperforming the Control group but not differing between them. Structured mappings facilitate SSD learning. Mapping pixel position onto spectral-temporal acoustic axes appears flexible, rather than anchored to cross-modal correspondences. These findings reveal how SSDs may be rendered bespoke across user, stimuli, and functionality levels.