Investigating Fast Mapping Task Components: No Evidence for the Role of Semantic Referent nor Semantic Inference in Healthy Adults
Fast mapping (FM) is an incidental learning process that is hypothesized to allow rapid, cortical-based memory formation, independent of the normal, hippocampally dependent episodic memory system. It is believed to underlie the rapid vocabulary learning in infants that occurs separately from intenti...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2019-03-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00394/full |
| _version_ | 1818148673483177984 |
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| author | Elisa Cooper Andrea Greve Richard N. Henson |
| author_facet | Elisa Cooper Andrea Greve Richard N. Henson |
| author_sort | Elisa Cooper |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Fast mapping (FM) is an incidental learning process that is hypothesized to allow rapid, cortical-based memory formation, independent of the normal, hippocampally dependent episodic memory system. It is believed to underlie the rapid vocabulary learning in infants that occurs separately from intentional memorisation strategies. Interest in adult FM learning was stimulated by a report in which adults with amnesia following hippocampal damage showed a normal ability to learn new object-name associations after an incidental FM task, despite their impaired memory under a conventional intentional memorization task. This remarkable finding has important implications for memory rehabilitation, and has led to a number of neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies in other patients and controls. Given this growing interest in adult FM, we conducted four behavioural experiments with healthy adults (N = 24 young or older adults in Experiments 1–3 using within-participant designs; N = 195 young adults in Experiment 4 using a between-participant design) that attempted to dissect which component(s) of the FM task are important for memory. Two key components of the FM task have been claimed to support FM learning: (1) provision of a known semantic referent and (2) requirement that the new association be inferred. Experiment 1 provided no evidence that removing the semantic referent impaired memory performance, while Experiment 2 provided no evidence that removing the semantic inference impaired performance. Experiment 3 was a replication of Experiment 2 with older participants, based on the hypothesis (from studies of amnesic individuals) that FM would be more effective following the hippocampal atrophy typical of increasing age, but again found no evidence that semantic inference is beneficial. Given potential concerns about contamination between tasks when each participant performed multiple variants of the FM task, we ran a final between-participant design in which each participant only ever did one condition. Despite 80% power and despite being able to detect better memory following intentional memorization in the explicit encoding (EE) control condition than in each of the FM conditions, we again found no evidence of differences between any FM conditions. We conclude that there is no evidence that the components hypothesized to be critical for FM are relevant to healthy adults. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-11T12:54:53Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-c682abf3403d4b3791ca9c290f764b67 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-11T12:54:53Z |
| publishDate | 2019-03-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-c682abf3403d4b3791ca9c290f764b672022-12-22T01:06:36ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782019-03-011010.3389/fpsyg.2019.00394422983Investigating Fast Mapping Task Components: No Evidence for the Role of Semantic Referent nor Semantic Inference in Healthy AdultsElisa CooperAndrea GreveRichard N. HensonFast mapping (FM) is an incidental learning process that is hypothesized to allow rapid, cortical-based memory formation, independent of the normal, hippocampally dependent episodic memory system. It is believed to underlie the rapid vocabulary learning in infants that occurs separately from intentional memorisation strategies. Interest in adult FM learning was stimulated by a report in which adults with amnesia following hippocampal damage showed a normal ability to learn new object-name associations after an incidental FM task, despite their impaired memory under a conventional intentional memorization task. This remarkable finding has important implications for memory rehabilitation, and has led to a number of neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies in other patients and controls. Given this growing interest in adult FM, we conducted four behavioural experiments with healthy adults (N = 24 young or older adults in Experiments 1–3 using within-participant designs; N = 195 young adults in Experiment 4 using a between-participant design) that attempted to dissect which component(s) of the FM task are important for memory. Two key components of the FM task have been claimed to support FM learning: (1) provision of a known semantic referent and (2) requirement that the new association be inferred. Experiment 1 provided no evidence that removing the semantic referent impaired memory performance, while Experiment 2 provided no evidence that removing the semantic inference impaired performance. Experiment 3 was a replication of Experiment 2 with older participants, based on the hypothesis (from studies of amnesic individuals) that FM would be more effective following the hippocampal atrophy typical of increasing age, but again found no evidence that semantic inference is beneficial. Given potential concerns about contamination between tasks when each participant performed multiple variants of the FM task, we ran a final between-participant design in which each participant only ever did one condition. Despite 80% power and despite being able to detect better memory following intentional memorization in the explicit encoding (EE) control condition than in each of the FM conditions, we again found no evidence of differences between any FM conditions. We conclude that there is no evidence that the components hypothesized to be critical for FM are relevant to healthy adults.https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00394/fullfast mappingepisodic encodinghippocampuslearningmemory |
| spellingShingle | Elisa Cooper Andrea Greve Richard N. Henson Investigating Fast Mapping Task Components: No Evidence for the Role of Semantic Referent nor Semantic Inference in Healthy Adults Frontiers in Psychology fast mapping episodic encoding hippocampus learning memory |
| title | Investigating Fast Mapping Task Components: No Evidence for the Role of Semantic Referent nor Semantic Inference in Healthy Adults |
| title_full | Investigating Fast Mapping Task Components: No Evidence for the Role of Semantic Referent nor Semantic Inference in Healthy Adults |
| title_fullStr | Investigating Fast Mapping Task Components: No Evidence for the Role of Semantic Referent nor Semantic Inference in Healthy Adults |
| title_full_unstemmed | Investigating Fast Mapping Task Components: No Evidence for the Role of Semantic Referent nor Semantic Inference in Healthy Adults |
| title_short | Investigating Fast Mapping Task Components: No Evidence for the Role of Semantic Referent nor Semantic Inference in Healthy Adults |
| title_sort | investigating fast mapping task components no evidence for the role of semantic referent nor semantic inference in healthy adults |
| topic | fast mapping episodic encoding hippocampus learning memory |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00394/full |
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