An ERP study on multiplication and its relationship to phonological processing in children and adults.

Associations between arithmetic and reading skills suggest that these important abilities may rely, at least in part, on shared neurocognitive processes. It has been argued that retrieval of arithmetic facts may rely on phonological processing; however, very few studies have explored this association using neural indices and whether it manifests similarly in children and adults. Here we examined event related potentials (ERPs) as an indirect neural correlate of arithmetic fact retrieval, and whether variability in ERP modulation is associated with individual differences in phonological processing (verbal working memory, rate of access, and phonological awareness).

The holistic forgetting of events and the (sometimes) fragmented forgetting of objects.

Episodic events are typically retrieved and forgotten holistically. If you recall one element (e.g.

Reliability of the serial reaction time task: If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.

Procedural memory is involved in the acquisition and control of skills and habits that underlie rule and procedural learning, including the acquisition of grammar and phonology. The serial reaction time task (SRTT), commonly used to assess procedural learning, has been shown to have poor stability (test-retest reliability). We investigated factors that may affect the stability of the SRTT in adults.

The reliability of the serial reaction time task: meta-analysis of test-retest correlations.

The Serial Reaction Time task, one of the most widely used tasks to index procedural memory, has been increasingly employed in individual differences research examining the role of procedural memory in language and other cognitive abilities. Yet, despite consistently producing robust procedural learning effects at the group level (i.e.

Limited Evidence of an Association Between Language, Literacy, and Procedural Learning in Typical and Atypical Development: A Meta-Analysis.

The ability to extract patterns from sensory input across time and space is thought to underlie the development and acquisition of language and literacy skills, particularly the subdomains marked by the learning of probabilistic knowledge. Thus, impairments in procedural learning are hypothesized to underlie neurodevelopmental disorders, such as dyslexia and developmental language disorder. In the present meta-analysis, comprising 2396 participants from 39 independent studies, the continuous relationship between language, literacy, and procedural learning on the Serial Reaction Time task (SRTT) was assessed across children and adults with typical development (TD), dyslexia, and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

Sleep health among people with severe mental ill health during the COVID-19 pandemic: Results from a linked UK population cohort study.

Objectives: Sleep problems are a transdiagnostic feature of nearly all psychiatric conditions, and a strong risk factor for initial and recurrent episodes. However, people with severe mental ill health (SMI) are often excluded from general population surveys, and as such the extent and associates of poor sleep in this population are less well understood. This study explores sleep health in an SMI sample during the COVID-19 pandemic, using multiple regression to identify risk factors, including daily routine, wellbeing and demographics.

Stronger Associations Between Sleep and Mental Health in Adults with Autism: A UK Biobank Study.

This study examined sleep and its cognitive and affective correlates in adults with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD), utilizing UK Biobank data. There were no group differences in subjective sleep duration [n = 220 ASD; n = 2200 general population (GP)]. Accelerometer measures of sleep duration or nighttime activity did not differ by group, but sleep efficiency was marginally lower in ASD (n = 83 ASD; n = 824 GP).

The role of prior lexical knowledge in children's and adults' incidental word learning from illustrated stories.

Children and adults benefit from a new word's phonological neighbors during explicit vocabulary instruction, suggesting that related prior knowledge can support new learning. This study examined the influence of lexical neighborhood structure during incidental word learning-limiting opportunities for strategically engaging prior knowledge-and tested the hypothesis that prior knowledge would provide additional support during subsequent consolidation. Children aged 8-10 years (Experiment 1) and adults (Experiment 2) were presented with 15 pseudowords embedded in a spoken story with illustrations, and were then tested on their recognition and recall of the new word-forms immediately, the next day, and one week later.

Timing storytime to maximize children's ability to retain new vocabulary.

Shared storybook reading is a key aid to vocabulary acquisition during childhood. However, word learning research has tended to use unnaturalistic (explicit) training regimes. Using a storybook paradigm, we examined whether children (particularly those with weaker vocabularies) are more likely to retain new words if they learn them closer to sleep.

The Formation and Retrieval of Holistic Event Memories Across Development.

Event memories consist of associations between their constituent elements, leading to their holistic retrieval via the process of pattern completion. This holistic retrieval can occur, under specific conditions, when each within-event association is encoded in a separate temporal context: adults are able to integrate the information into a single coherent representation. In this study, we sought to replicate the holistic retrieval of simultaneously encoded event elements in children, and examine whether children can similarly integrate across separated encoding contexts.

Make or break it: boundary conditions for integrating multiple elements in episodic memory.

Event memories are characterized by the holistic retrieval of their constituent elements. Studies show that memory for individual event elements (e.g.

Sleep-dependent consolidation in children with comprehension and vocabulary weaknesses: it'll be alright on the night?

Background: Vocabulary is crucial for an array of life outcomes and is frequently impaired in developmental disorders. Notably, 'poor comprehenders' (children with reading comprehension deficits but intact word reading) often have vocabulary deficits, but underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Prior research suggests intact encoding but difficulties consolidating new word knowledge.

Atypicalities in sleep and semantic consolidation in autism.

Sleep is known to support the neocortical consolidation of declarative memory, including the acquisition of new language. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often characterized by both sleep and language learning difficulties, but few studies have explored a potential connection between the two. Here, 54 children with and without ASD (matched on age, nonverbal ability and vocabulary) were taught nine rare animal names (e.

Offline consolidation supersedes prior knowledge benefits in children's (but not adults') word learning.

Prior linguistic knowledge is proposed to support the acquisition and consolidation of new words. Adults typically have larger vocabularies to support word learning than children, but the developing brain shows enhanced neural processes that are associated with offline memory consolidation. This study investigated contributions of prior knowledge to initial word acquisition and consolidation at different points in development, by teaching children and adults novel words (e.

Consolidation of vocabulary is associated with sleep in typically developing children, but not in children with dyslexia.

Sleep is known to play an active role in consolidating new vocabulary in adults; however, the mechanisms by which sleep promotes vocabulary consolidation in childhood are less well understood. Furthermore, there has been no investigation into whether previously reported differences in sleep architecture might account for variability in vocabulary consolidation in children with dyslexia. Twenty-three children with dyslexia and 29 age-matched typically developing peers were exposed to 16 novel spoken words.

A sequence learning impairment in dyslexia? It depends on the task.

Language acquisition is argued to be dependent upon an individuals' sensitivity to serial-order regularities in the environment (sequential learning), and impairments in reading and spelling in dyslexia have recently been attributed to a deficit in sequential learning. The present study examined the learning and consolidation of sequential knowledge in 30 adults with dyslexia and 29 typical adults matched on age and nonverbal ability using two tasks previously reported to be sensitive to a sequence learning deficit. Both groups showed evidence of sequential learning and consolidation on a serial response time (SRT) task (i.

The effect of coloured overlays and lenses on reading: a systematic review of the literature.

Purpose: There are many anecdotal claims and research reports that coloured lenses and overlays improve reading performance. Here we present the results of a systematic review of this literature and examine the quality of the evidence.

Methods: We systematically reviewed the literature concerning the effect of coloured lenses or overlays on reading performance by searching the PsychInfo, Medline and Embase databases.

Consolidation of vocabulary is associated with sleep in children.

Although the acquisition of a novel word is apparently rapid, adult research suggests that integration of novel and existing knowledge (measured by engagement in lexical competition) requires sleep-associated consolidation. We present the first investigation of whether a similar time-course dissociation characterizes word learning across development. Consistent with previous research but counter to adults, 7-12-year-olds showed sleep-associated consolidation effects in declarative but not procedural memory.

Enhanced recognition and recall of new words in 7- and 12-year-olds following a period of offline consolidation.

Recent studies of adults have found evidence for consolidation effects in the acquisition of novel words, but little is known about whether such effects are found developmentally. In two experiments, we familiarized children with novel nonwords (e.g.