Pavlidou , E. 1, 2 , Mencl, W. E. 2 , Buis, B. 2 , Cort, B. 2 , Springfield, J. 2 , Harris, S. R. 2 & Pugh, K. 2
1 The University of Edinburg
2 Haskins Laboratories
Using a 3T MRI scanner, we acquired functional images (fMRI) for a set (N=16) of typically developing children while they performed an AGLtask. Anatomical, resting state and diffusion tensor imaging data were acquired from each child. During the task, children completed four runs of a passive learning phase and two runs of an active testing phase. Each run of the learning phase was comprised of three blocks; in each block stimuli were made up of unfamiliar shapes (i.e. an ?alien language?). The blocks alternated between structured (i.e. alien language items)and unstructured(random Greek letters). The testing runs (event-related design) contained novel spatially presented items: only half of the items followed the rules of the alien language. Children were asked to indicate which items followed the rules using a button press.Standard regression analysis was used to identify activations in response to the structured and unstructured items, and identify areas that respond differentially to the learned items: children showed increased activation for structured items suggesting creation of new representations of those items (i.e. learning).We will discuss this set of data in the light of open theoretical questions about the natureof implicit statistical learning (i.e. domain general vs. domain specific) and its neural signature.The European Commission via the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Outgoing Fellowships scheme funds this work.