Does hand dominance matter? Examining statistical learning in adults
Level of Education of Students Involved
Undergraduate
Faculty Sponsor
Dr. Abbie Thompson, PhD
College
Arts and Sciences
Discipline(s)
Psychology
Presentation Type
Poster Presentation
Symposium Date
Spring 4-25-2024
Abstract
Adults’ vocabulary and language acquisition are key areas that tell us information about the linguistic abilities of all ages. One mechanism that we believe is crucial for language development throughout the lifespan is statistical learning (SL). SL is considered a domain-general mechanism in which one can track and learn cooccurrences in the environment (Kirkham et al. 2002). Language is full of these cooccurrences. While SL is important for language acquisition, we still do not fully understand all the underpinnings that support it. One underpinning may be handedness, which is related to language abilities in adults (Knecht et al., 2000).
Undergraduate student participants (N=30) complete the Waterloo Handedness Questionnaire (Brown et al., 2006), which assesses handed preference for different tasks. Additionally, they complete the PPVT-5 as a vocabulary measure. Adults’ SL will be tested using the SL language and procedure from Gomez (2002) testing non-adjacent dependencies. Adult’s SL abilities are calculated using the number of correct strings they identify during the test.
We predict that the stronger the adult’s hand preference, the better they will score on the SL task, after controlling for general vocabulary ability. Multiple regression will be used, with handedness and vocabulary ability as predictors and SL as the outcome. This study will extend previous research and help elucidate some of the mechanisms that may play a role in language development.
Recommended Citation
Kom, Allison and McCann, Meghan, "Does hand dominance matter? Examining statistical learning in adults" (2024). Symposium on Undergraduate Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE). 1333.
https://scholar.valpo.edu/cus/1333
Biographical Information about Author(s)
Meghan McCann, a current junior, is a Psychology major with a Social Work Direct Practice minor. She plans to pursue higher education in School Psychology.
Allison Kom, a current senior, is a Psychology major with Applied Statistics and Sociology minors. She intends to pursue higher education in Industrial-Organizational Psychology.
Meghan and Allie are interested in language acquisition and learning, specifically related to handedness. They enjoy learning about developmental psychology and look forward to working on future projects in this field.
This work was completed in collaboration with the Language Acquisition and Learning Lab under the supervision of Dr. Abbie Thompson, Assistant professor of psychology.