Embodied mental imagery improves memory.

According to embodied cognition theory, cognitive processes are grounded in sensory, motor, and emotional systems. This theory supports the idea that language comprehension and access to memory are based on sensorimotor mental simulations, which does indeed explain experimental results for visual imagery. These results show that word memorisation is improved when the individual actively simulates the visual characteristics of the object to be learned. Very few studies, however, have investigated the effectiveness of more embodied mental simulations, that is, simulating both the sensory and motor aspects of the object (i.e., motor imagery) from a first-person perspective. The recall performances of 83 adults were analysed in 4 different conditions: mental rehearsal, visual imagery, third-person motor imagery, and first-person motor imagery. Results revealed a memory efficiency gradient running from low-embodiment strategies (i.e., involving poor perceptual and/or motor simulation) to high-embodiment strategies (i.e., rich simulation in the sensory and motor systems involved in interactions with the object). However, the benefit of engaging in motor imagery, as opposed to purely visual imagery, was only observed when participants adopted the first-person perspective. Surprisingly, visual and motor imagery vividness seemed to play a negligible role in this effect of the sensorimotor grounding of mental imagery on memory efficiency.

An experimental study of word learning in minimally verbal children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: When children hear a novel word, they tend to associate it with a novel rather than a familiar object. The ability to map a novel word to its corresponding referent is thought to depend, at least in part, on language-learning strategies, such as mutual exclusivity and lexical contrast. Although the importance of word learning strategies has been broadly investigated in typically developing children as well as younger children with autism spectrum disorder, who are usually language delayed, there is a paucity of research on such strategies and their role in language learning in school-age children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder who have failed to develop fluent speech. In this study, we examined the ability of minimally verbal children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder to learn and retain novel words in an experimental task, as well as the cognitive, language, and social correlates of these abilities. We were primarily interested in the characteristics that differentiated between three subgroups of participants: those unable to use word learning strategies, particularly mutual exclusivity, to learn novel words; those able to learn novel words over several exposure trials but not able retain them; and those able to retain the words they learned. METHODS: Participants were 29 minimally verbal individuals with autism spectrum disorder from 5 to 17 years of age. Participants completed a computerized touchscreen novel-word-learning procedure followed by assessments of immediate retention and of delayed retention, two hours later. Participants were grouped according to whether they passed/failed at least 7 of 8 (binomial p<.035) novel word learning trials and 7 of 8 immediate or delayed retention trials, and were compared on measures of nonverbal IQ, receptive and expressive vocabulary, phonological processing, joint attention and symptom severity. RESULTS: Of 29 participants, 14 failed both learning and immediate retention, 8 passed learning but failed immediate retention, and 7 passed both learning and immediate retention. Group performance was highly similar for delayed retention. Language level, particularly expressive vocabulary, differentiated between participants who did and did not succeed in retention, even while controlling for differences in nonverbal IQ. CONCLUSIONS: The ability of minimally verbal school-age children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder to identify the referents of novel words was associated with nonverbal cognitive abilities. Retention of words was associated with concurrent expressive language abilities. IMPLICATIONS: Our findings of associations between the retention of novel words acquired in a lab-based experimental task and concurrent language ability warrants further investigation with larger samples and longitudinal research designs, which may support the incorporation of contrastive word learning strategies into language learning interventions for severely language-impaired individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Novel word retention in bilingual and monolingual speakers.

The goal of this research was to examine word retention in bilinguals and monolinguals. Long-term word retention is an essential part of vocabulary learning. Previous studies have documented that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in terms of retrieving newly-exposed words. Yet, little is known about whether or to what extent bilinguals are different from monolinguals in word retention. Participants were 30 English-speaking monolingual adults and 30 bilingual adults who speak Spanish as a home language and learned English as a second language during childhood. In a previous study (Kan et al., 2014), the participants were exposed to the target novel words in English, Spanish, and Cantonese. In this current study, word retention was measured a week after the fast mapping task. No exposures were given during the one-week interval. Results showed that bilinguals and monolinguals retain a similar number of words. However, participants produced more words in English than in either Spanish or Cantonese. Correlation analyses revealed that language knowledge plays a role in the relationships between fast mapping and word retention. Specifically, within- and across-language relationships between bilinguals' fast mapping and word retention were found in Spanish and English, by contrast, within-language relationships between monolinguals' fast mapping and word retention were found in English and across-language relationships between their fast mapping and word retention performance in English and Cantonese. Similarly, bilinguals differed from monolinguals in the relationships among the word retention scores in three languages. Significant correlations were found among bilinguals' retention scores. However, no such correlations were found among monolinguals' retention scores. The overall findings suggest that bilinguals' language experience and language knowledge most likely contribute to how they learn and retain new words.