Your new post is loading...
Psychologists found that when we learn the names of unfamiliar objects, brain regions involved in learning actively predict the objects the names correspond to. The brain tests these predictions just as scientists would test a scientific theory.
The team found that the hippocampus – a brain region that is affected in Alzheimer’s disease and some developmental language disorders – plays a key role learning the names of objects via a “propose-but-verify” strategy. Using this strategy learners actively predict which of the words they hear correspond to each of the objects they see.
Twenty-three adults looked at scenes with multiple objects whilst listening to words in an MRI scanner. The MRI scanner allows psychologists to see which brain regions are active while participants carry out tests of memory and attention.
The words and objects were made up so that they were completely new to the study participants. Because multiple unknown words and objects were presented simultaneously, it was never immediately obvious which words corresponded to which object. The correspondences could only be learned across several minutes. However, by covertly proposing name-object correspondences and testing those proposals across many scenes, all of the adults were able to learn the words for all 18 previously unfamiliar objects.
The MRI scans revealed that the hippocampus was central to this propose-but-verify mechanism. Specifically, it helped adults remember the word object correspondences over time.
Via Miloš Bajčetić
