Cross-situational learning of sign-like gestures in children and adults: a behavioural and event-related potential study

Arianna Colombani; Varghese Peter; Qian Yin Mai; Amanda Saskida; Natalie Boll-Avetisyan; Outi Tuomainen; Mridula Sharma

doi:10.1080/23273798.2025.2539136

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Cross-situational learning of sign-like gestures in children and adults: a behavioural and event-related potential study

Journal article

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Peer reviewed

Cross-situational learning of sign-like gestures in children and adults: a behavioural and event-related potential study

Arianna Colombani, Varghese Peter, Qian Yin Mai, Amanda Saskida, Natalie Boll-Avetisyan, Outi Tuomainen and Mridula Sharma

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, Vol.40(10), pp.1324-1349

2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2025.2539136

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Abstract

Cognitive neuroscience

Applied and developmental psychology

Expanding knowledge

Pseudosigns

Statistical learning

Cross-situational learning

N400

LPC

semantic categorisation

associative learning

UniSC Diversity Area - Life Stages

Drawing on the innate human ability to detect regularities in the language input (statistical learning), this study applies a cross-situational learning paradigm to test the learning of unfamiliar sign-like gestures (in the form of pseudosigns) for familiar spoken words in children and adults. Twenty-five children (8–11 years) and 19 adults (18–35 years) were familiarised with 8 word-pseudosign pairs and tested on a recognition and a semantic categorisation task, with simultaneous EEG recording. Both groups demonstrated above-chance accuracy, indicating successful learning of word-pseudosign pairs and their meanings, with an advantage of adults over children. Both groups also showed an N400 followed by an LPC response during the recognition task. During categorisation, adults demonstrated an N400 response, whereas, in children, an N400 emerged only when the correctly identified trials were considered. These results suggest that pseudosigns are highly salient linguistic inputs, likely to be learned through statistical computations.

Details

Title: Cross-situational learning of sign-like gestures in children and adults: a behavioural and event-related potential study
Authors: Arianna Colombani (Corresponding Author) - University of Potsdam
Varghese Peter (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Health - Psychology
Qian Yin Mai - Macquarie University
Amanda Saskida - IRCCS Materno Infantile Burlo Garofolo
Natalie Boll-Avetisyan - University of Potsdam
Outi Tuomainen - University of Potsdam
Mridula Sharma - Macquarie University
Publication details: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, Vol.40(10), pp.1324-1349
Publisher: Routledge
Date published: 2025
DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2025.2539136
ISSN: 2327-3801
Copyright note: © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Data Availability: Stimuli, data frames, and analysis scripts are publicly available on this paper’s project page on the OSF platform at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/YU94Q
Grant note: This work was supported by an IDEALAB scholarship from the University of Potsdam and Macquarie University (CTiMQRES IDEALAB, [grant number 20223934]). Costs for participant reimbursement were covered by Macquarie University under the Beijing Higher Talent Foundation [grant number 5282500] to MS.
Organisation Unit: Healthy Ageing Research Cluster; School of Health - Psychology
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991148340002621
Output Type: Journal article

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Collaboration types: Domestic collaboration; International collaboration
Web Of Science research areas: Audiology & Speech-language Pathology; Behavioral Sciences; Linguistics; Psychology, Experimental