{"pk":24392,"title":"Modeling infant cortical tracking of statistical learning in simple recurrent networks","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Consider a classic statistical learning (SL) paradigm, where participants hear an uninterrupted stream of syllables in seemingly random order. In fact, the sequence is generated by repeating 4 word-like patterns, each comprised of 3 syllables. After brief exposure, adults and infants can discriminate ‘words' from the sequence from other syllable sequences (‘nonwords' that did not occur in exposure). If syllables have a fixed duration (e.g., 333.3 ms), syllable rate is fixed (e.g., 3/s or 3hz) and so is word rate (e.g., 1hz). If EEG is acquired during exposure, neural phase-locking is observed, initially to the syllable rate, and gradually to the word rate. This has been interpreted as a neural index of word learning. We tested whether two models that can simulate human SL behavior could simulate neural entrainment (Simple Recurrent Net- works [SRNs] or multi-layer perceptrons [MLPs, feedforward neural networks]). Both models could, although SRNs provided a better fit to correlations observed between entrainment and behavior. We also discovered that raw input sequences (even for a single syllable) have rhythmic properties that generate apparent ‘entrainment' when treated like EEG signals – without learning. We discuss theoretical implications for SL and challenges for interpreting phase-locked entrainment.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Cognitive Neuroscience; Language development; Statistical learning; Computational neuroscience; Electroencephalography (EEG)"}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2fh04209","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Qihui","middle_name":"","last_name":"Xu","name_suffix":"","institution":"Ohio State University","department":""},{"first_name":"Guro Stensby","middle_name":"","last_name":"Sjuls","name_suffix":"","institution":"Norwegian University of Science and Technology","department":""},{"first_name":"Marina","middle_name":"","last_name":"Kalashnikova","name_suffix":"","institution":"Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language","department":""},{"first_name":"James","middle_name":"","last_name":"Magnuson","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Connecticut","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2024-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/24392/galley/13989/download/"},{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/24392/galley/21371/download/"}]}