The Neurocognitive Basis of Learning and Its Changes at Different Stages of Development
Principal Investigators: ELISABET SERVICE1, RIITTA SALMELIN2, MATTI LAINE3
Researchers: Minna Vihla2, Annica Hultén3
1University of Helsinki, Finland, 2Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, 3Åbo Akademi University, Finland
Educational decisions that involve millions of euros are made based on a feeling of knowing how children differ from adults in learning performance. For instance, in the United Kingdom, on the basis of general belief and results from immigrant learning –a very different situation from school learning, it was decided that second-language learning should be concentrated to the earliest school years. In fact, behavioural research has produced a wealth of data showing that children are inferior learners compared to young adults in most tasks. We do not know the exact reason for this. What we do know, however, is that children have an advantage in some tasks in the long (although not the short) run. For instance, the learning of complex motor skills and new languages should begin early for the best results.
The common explanation for the advantage that children have for language learning in immersion situations has been put forward in terms of a critical period for nativelike language development. Generally, this critical (or sensitive) period is considered to be definitely over after adolescence.
In the present study, we explore the hypothesis that human learning is based on multiple memory systems and that the balance between these memory systems changes during development, causing qualitative changes in learning. Because the neural substrates of these different memory systems are partly known in adults we can use this knowledge to compare the involvement of different types of memory in the same task when it is carried out by adults and children.
We will explore brain activation in three different learning tasks: in the learning of new word labels for things, in the learning to recognise faces and in the learning of new grammatical structures. Our learning tasks load differently on two major types of memory: declarative memory, supporting conscious recollection, and nondeclarative memory, forming the bases of skill learning, perceptual learning and conditioning. Memorisation of words loads mainly on declarative memory, face recognition has components of both declarative memory and nondeclarative priming, and grammar learning is assumed to rely on nondeclarative procedural learning.
We will use magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record brain activity during these tasks in children and adults. We will be particularly interested in observing if the balance of activation in areas frequently associated with declarative memory (prefrontal cortex, hippocampus) and procedural memory for cognitive skills (the caudate nucleus in the basal ganglia, cerebellum) changes from childhood to adulthood.
Contact: elisabet.service(at)helsinki.fi, tel. +358 9 1912 9477