The Effect of Disturbance on the Neural Mechanisms of Learning Word Formation Rules in a Novel Language

Individuals learn the meaning of words mainly through feedback from others at early stages, but confusing feedback may cause disturbances in establishing lexical form-to-meaning mappings. To date, little is known about how these mappings are preciously established as language learning experiences and proficiency increase. To this end, we asked participants to perform a picture-word matching task under disturbance and non-disturbance conditions during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Brain imaging revealed that in the non-disturbance condition, more brain network connections emerged during early (naïve) learning than later (expert) learning. However, in the disturbance condition, more connections were found during expert learning compared to naïve learning. Correspondingly, the behavioral results showed that as learning experiences increase in the disturbance condition, so do accuracy rates. Together, these findings indicate that with increased experience in mapping lexical forms to meanings, individuals appear to become less sensitive to disturbances by engaging multiple brain areas.