The Influence Of Schema On Learning And Consolidation Of Novel Words

The process involved in word learning and factors affecting the consolidation of novel words have been concerned by many researchers.In recent years,researchers have found that novel words can be quickly consolidated,while prior knowledge may be an important factor leading to rapid consolidation.In the field of memory,a large number of studies have found that schema related information can be remembered better than schema independent information,but the mechanism of schema facilitation is not clear.Therefore,an important issue is whether and how schema can promote the learning and consolidation of novel words.In this study,we examine the function of schema by manipulating the relationship between the concept of novel words and the familiar theme.Under schema condition,three familiar concepts(such as blackboard,schoolbag,chalk)and one unfamiliar concept(an unfamiliar teaching tool)form a theme,and the unfamiliar concept was named by a novel word;under no schema condition,three familiar concepts and one unfamiliar concept selected from four different themes were learned together.In addition,in order to test the effect of schema on the consolidation of novel words,we set up two learning-test intervals: learning half of novel words on the first day,learning the other half of novel words on the second day,and then testing on the second day.Testing tasks include lexical classification,semantic relatedness judgement,old/new picture recognition,word meaning recognition and recall tasks.At the same time,EEG responses induced by novel words in lexical classification and semantic relatedness judgement tasks are recorded,so as to investigate the role of schema in novel word learning and consolidation.In order to explore the mechanism of schema effect,we also tested whether the semantic relationship between familiar words encoded in the learning stage was affected by schema/no schema learning condition.Furthermore,it has beenfound that active processing of the relationship between schema and new information is crucial to the emergence of schema effect.Therefore,in Experiment 1,the participants were required to pay attention to and judge the schematic relationship among one novel word and three known words in the learning stage,whereas,in Experiment 2,participants were only required to remember individual pictures and words and press an indicated button after encoding four items.The main findings are as follows:(1)In the semantic relatedness judgement task,Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 both found the LPC semantic priming effect,that is,the LPC amplitude evoked by the related word pair was greater than that evoked by the unrelated word pair.But N400 semantic priming effect was only found in Experiment 1,showing related targets induced smaller N400 than unrelated targets.Moreover,on the posterior brain area,the N400 effect appeared under schema condition rather than no schema condition.The results show that only in Experiment1,schema can facilitate consolidation of novel words by integrating novel words into existing semantic network.(2)In the old/new pictures recognition task,the accuracy of interference pictures(a picture that does not appear in the learning stage but belongs to the same schema as a novel word)was found to be lower than that of unrelated pictures in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2,while only in Experiment 1,the accuracy of interference pictures under schema condition was lower than that under no schema condition.This shows that schema is more likely to produce false memory while enhancing related memory.(3)In the recall task,both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 indicated that the number of novel words learned on the first day was higher than the number of novel words learned on the second day,reflecting the offline consolidation effect.However,only in Experiment 1,the accuracy under schema condition was higher than that under no schema condition.In the recognition task,only Experiment 1 showed that the reaction time of novel words learned under schema condition was faster than that under no schema condition.These two tasks indicate that schema can promote the memory of novel words.Due to the schema effect found in Experiment 1,we conducted a post-test on the subjects of Experiment 1 3-6 months later,and found that in the task of recall and recognition,the accuracy of novel words learned underschema condition on the first day was higher than that under no schema condition,and there was no significant difference between different learning conditions on the second day.It shows that the schema effect of new words can be maintained for a long time after 24 hours(including sleep)offline consolidation.(4)The task of judging the semantic relationship between familiar words in the learning stage showed that only in Experiment 1,the response faster under schema condition,and the second familiar words in each word pairs induced smaller N400 than those under no schema condition.This result suggests that coding under schema condition enhances the connection between words,which may be the mechanism of schema effect on the memory and integration of novel words.In summary,this study found that the learning and consolidation of novel words under schema condition was better than that under no schema condition,but such schema effect only appeared in Experiment 1.In other words,it is important for the emergence of schema effect by guiding the participants to pay attention to the relationship between novel words and schema.