Integrating when and what information in the left parietal lobe allows language rule generalization
Fig 2
Hypothesized RT slopes for rule and no-rule blocks over repetitions of the incidental rule-learning task.
For each artificial language learned, participants were exposed to blocks with rules, in which the initial word determined the identity of the last word of the phrase, and no-rule blocks, in which the final word could not be predicted based on the first one. (A) Part 1: Reflecting statistical learning, rule blocks are expected to exhibit a greater gain in RTs across trials than no-rule blocks as a consequence of the ability to predict the upcoming occurrence or absence of the target word. The difference between rule and no-rule slopes (learning slope) is thus a measure of statistical learning indicating progressive rule learning in the early stages. (B) Part 2: If participants can benefit from previous learnings to orient attention to the initial element to consistently anticipate the final one, their RTs for rule blocks should plateau in later learning stages and show a sustained difference compared to no-rule blocks throughout (rule effect, that is, the mean difference in RT between rule and no-rule trials). (C) A plateau should also be observed for participants that generalize their attentional focus on initial and final elements to a new language with the same type of dependencies (that is, rule). RT, reaction time.