Toshimune Kambara (JSPS, Keio University)

Abstract:

Previous research has operationally
defined 'word learning' as establishing an association between a single word
form and a single referent (e.g. Breitenstein et al., 2005). However, this
definition is not sufficient to describe word learning in real life contexts.
In real life, learning a word meaning also involves extracting the
sensory-motor features (prototype) common to the referents, which allows
generalization of the word to novel referents. In this functional magnetic
resonance (fMRI) study, we investigated the brain changes through the learning
process in which learners first learn associations of word forms and their
corresponding single referents, and then learn additional referents
incrementally to create representations of prototypes sufficient enough to
allow generalization to new referents. In this short talk, I will present the
brief overview of this experiment, including the tentative results.