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Brain Plasticity and Language Learning across the Lifespan

Module description

This third-year module is a truly multidisciplinary course. It focuses on how the brain acquires and updates information across the lifespan, using language as an example and with references to general models of learning and consolidation in humans and animals. Starting with the notions of functional and structure neural plasticity, the course moves progressively towards understanding cellular and systems consolidations, before tackling proper key questions about language learning (including bilingualism) from birth to adulthood. Special attention is also given to the role of sleep as a promoting factor for consolidating memories. Aspects relating to language learning deficits, as well as remediation and reacquisition are also considered.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The core idea behind this module, i.e., that every mental event is likely to induce modifications of our cognitive system and its underlying brain structures, is key to approaches to child development and education of course, but also to life-long learning and re-education/remediation in a clinical setting. The theoretical notions approached during course therefore have direct implications for any aspect of applied psychology concerned with an intervention aiming to provoke a functional change in the subject, whether for educational or remediation purposes. Hence, although it is centred on theories and experimental demonstrations, this course should equip you with notions likely to be of crucial importance for your future development as a psychologist, and more generally speaking, as an agent of change.

Through attending this module, you will:

• thoroughly understand the notion of plasticity and its implications for understanding how experience continuously shape our brain;
• walk along the border of various disciplines: cognitive psychology, linguistics, biology and neuroscience;
• be taught by a researcher involved in the field;
• develop your ability to approach science directly within the text;
• learn to extract key information from research report under time pressure;
• refine your oral communication skills, through various group activities and coursework assessment;
• explore a corner of the literature on plasticity tailored to your own professional aspirations and/or scientific curiosity, under the guidance of the convener;
• at the end be ready to approach humans and animals as systems in constant change.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Acquire knowledge about the memory formation process relevant to language processing, as well as understand the notion that processing and learning are fundamentally linked
• 2. Describe the cognitive system as a moving structure that is constantly retuning itself as a function experience
• 3. Integrate key notions relating to learning and memory consolidation
• 4. Explain the possible ways in which sleep affects memory
• 5. Discuss the key dimensions relevant to designing language learning experiments

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 6. Acquire detailed, systematic and comprehensive knowledge within the discipline, with in-depth specialisation at the forefront of the discipline in certain areas, and demonstrate advanced critical understanding of this knowledge and of the limits and provisional nature of this knowledge
• 7. Review and critically evaluate published work at an advanced level and identify the strengths and weaknesses of this work, and at an advanced level structure this literature to present logical, coherent and sustained arguments to support conclusions at an advanced level
• 8. Address systematically complex problems at an advanced level which may be framed within unpredictable contexts, think critically, creatively and independently, and fully appreciate the complexities of the issues
• 9. Understand and apply essential principles in designing novel research, and critically evaluate and analyse empirical evidence, and assess the reliability of empirical evidence using a range of defined techniques at an advanced level
• 10. Illustrate the wider ethical issues relating to the subject and its application at an advanced level

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 11. Interact effectively and supportively within a learning group
• 12. Manage your own learning using the full range of resources of the discipline and with minimum guidance
• 13. Describe your own criteria of self-evaluation and challenge received opinion and reflect on your actions, and seek and make use of feedback
• 14. Select and manage information, and to undertake competently study tasks with minimum guidance
• 15. Take responsibility for your own work and criticise it
• 16. Engage effectively in debate in a professional manner and produce detailed and coherent written work; identify complex problems and apply appropriate knowledge and methods for their solution with confidence and flexibility
• 17. Act autonomously with minimal supervision or direction, within agreed guidelines
• 18. Manage time effectively to meet deadlines

Syllabus plan

Indicative topics covered week by week:

• Module format, content and assessment, and introduction to the notion of brain plasticity
• Cellular correlates of learning and structural plasticity: the brain as muscle
• Synaptic memory consolidation
• Systems consolidation
• Sleep and memory
• The perceptual foundations of language learning
• The notions of critical/optimal period in language acquisition
• Speech segmentation and word learning in infants
• Language development in toddlers
• Word learning in adults
• Brain plasticity and language remediation

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Two assessments are required for this module. Where you have been referred/deferred in the examination you will have the opportunity to take a second examination in the August/September re-assessment period. Where you have been referred/deferred in the video or podcast, you will be required to resubmit one by the final week over the term in which the module is delivered. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%; deferred marks are not capped.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

There is no core text for this module. The following books/articles provide a good overview of many of the issues discussed in each week:

Books/Special Issues:

• Gaskell, M.G., & Ellis, A.W. (2009). Word learning and lexical development across the lifespan. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Volume 364.
• Stickgold, R., & Walker, M.P. (2009). The Neuroscience of Sleep. London: Academic Press.

Review Articles/Chapters:

• Born, J., & Wilhelm, I. (2012). System consolidation of memory during sleep. Psychological Research, 76, 192-203.
• Werker, J.F., & Gervain, J. (2012). Speech perception and phonological development. In Zelazo, P.D. (Eds) The Oxford Handbook of Developmental Psychology. (pp. in press). Oxford: OUP.
• Werker, J.F., & Tees, R.C. (2005). Speech perception as a window for understanding plasticity and commitment in language systems of the brain. Developmental Psychobiology, 46, 233-251.
• Wixted, J.T., & Cai, D.J. (2013). Memory consolidation. In S. Kosslyn & K. Ochsner (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Neuroscience (Vol. 2, pp. 436-455). Oxford University Press, New York.

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE page: https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=9381 (Core readings will be made available)

Key words search

Memory consolidation, sleep, brain plasticity, language learning