Sleep-Associated Changes in the Mental Representation of Spoken Words

The integration of a newly learned spoken word form with existing knowledge in the mental lexicon is characterized by the word form's ability to compete with similar-sounding entries during auditory word recognition. Here we show that although the mere acquisition of a spoken form is swift, its...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science 2007-01, Vol.18 (1), p.35-39
Main Authors: Dumay, Nicolas, Gaskell, M. Gareth
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Brain - physiology
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Data acquisition
Dissociation
Fatigue
Female
Humans
Knowledge representation
Language
Learning
Learning rate
Male
Memory
Mental Fatigue - epidemiology
Mental Fatigue - psychology
Mental lexicon
Mental representation
Neuroscience
Phonemes
Psychology
Psychophysiology
Research Reports
Sleep
Speech
Spoken language
Verbal Behavior
Vocabulary
Vowels
Wakefulness
Word recognition
Words
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Summary:The integration of a newly learned spoken word form with existing knowledge in the mental lexicon is characterized by the word form's ability to compete with similar-sounding entries during auditory word recognition. Here we show that although the mere acquisition of a spoken form is swift, its engagement in lexical competition requires an incubation-like period that is crucially associated with sleep. Words learned at 8 p.m. do not induce (inhibitory) competition effects immediately, but do so after a 12-hr interval including a night's sleep, and continue to induce such effects after 24 hr. In contrast, words learned at 8 a.m. do not show such effects immediately or after 12 hr of wakefulness, but show the effects only after 24 hr, after sleep has occurred. This time-course dissociation is best accommodated by connectionist and neural models of learning in which sleep provides an opportunity for hippocampal information to be fed into long-term neocortical memory.
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01845.x