| 摘要: | 統計學習能力為影響生物生存的一種重要能力，可以幫助生物從環境裡眾多訊息當中快速且正確的提取必要的資訊，經過歸納分析，使之用於適應生存。因此，越來越多的研究開始關注這種學習能力。先前的研究已經發現若訊息之間存在著一定的關連性，人類可以透過統計學習能力來抓取含有複雜規則的資訊，且個體對於這樣的過程並不一定有清楚的自我察覺。當外在訊息透過感官通道將訊號傳入大腦，會先轉換為內在表徵而讓大腦能進行組織與處理，而接著便透過統計學習將這些資訊進行分析而擷取出其中的關連性，最後表現於學習者擷取規則的能力。學習者在處理不同的感官資訊時，這一連串的過程皆可能存在能力的差異，因此同一個學習者在處理不同的感官刺激或是不同類型的規則時，也可能存在統計能力表現的差異性。但是，先前的研究大多著重於學習相鄰性規則的研究，然而環境中許多訊息是包含非相鄰性規則的，因此本研究在參考以往相鄰性統計學習能力測驗以及人工文法學習測驗設計的基礎上，設計了一套新的非相鄰性統計學習測驗。這系列測驗包含了聽覺與視覺的不同版本，來探討在不同感官通道下相鄰性和非相鄰性統計學習能力之間的異同。除此之外，其他測量一般認知能力的測驗，包括智力測驗、口語工作記憶測驗、視覺空間工作記憶測驗與執行功能測驗也被應用在本研究中作為考量的因素，來確認統計學習能力的獨立性。不僅如此，本實驗更關注個體差異在統計學習能力不同方面的表現，因此本實驗以受試者內設計為主，去觀察各項統計學習能力之間的關係。研究發現學習者不僅能很快學習到相鄰性規則，而且也能夠很快學習到非相鄰性的規則。再者，結果顯示受試者之統計學習能力的表現是會受到不同感官刺激所影響，同一受試者在學習相鄰性規則時，其聽覺與視覺的表現並不一致，但在學習非相鄰規則時，聽覺與視覺的表現具有高度相關。這些證據也進一步支持了目前統計學習能力理論模型中的感官特定性。;Statistical learning is an important ability in the human life, which can help us extract necessary information from the environment effectively and further transfer the information to be specific rules for living. Therefore, an increasing number of studies have paid much attention on this aspect of research to explore the nature of statistical learning ability. Previous studies have shown that when there are certain relationships embedded in the information, human beings could learn the complex and innate rules from the information by using statistical learning ability. Moreover, the process underlying such learning has been proposed to be largely implicit and unconscious to participants. When the information is perceived by the brain through different sensory modalities, it is firstly transferred to form inner representations, and then is organized and processed by the brain for the extraction of the input information. Such process to extract the specific rules without awareness has been claimed to rely on individual ability of statistical learning. Besides, there is significant individual difference during processing different sensory inputs. Therefore, the specificity of statistical learning ability within the same learners cannot be ignored. It seems that even the same learners process different sensory materials or learn different kinds of rules, the performance based on the statistical learning ability is still different. However, most of the previous studies mainly focused on statistical learning of the dependency of adjacent items, while few studies explored the statistical learning ability of dependency of non-adjacent items, which is also frequent in the information in the real world. Given such background, the present study attempted to design new statistical learning tests to measure the non-adjacent statistical learning ability based on the previous tests of adjacent statistical learning and artificial-grammar learning. This series of tests not only include the visual version but also the auditory version to compare the levels of statistical learning ability when processing adjacent and non-adjacent materials in different modalities. Besides, other tests of general cognitive abilities, including an IQ test, a verbal working memory test, a visual spatial working memory test and an executive function test, have also been applied to observe these cognitive abilities across different learners, and to explore whether the statistical learning ability is independent of the other cognitive functions. The main aims of this study is to explore 1) the individual difference of the different aspects of statistical learning ability and 2) the relationship between the different statistical learning abilities learning different types of rules or from different modalities within the same group of participants. The results showed that the learners could not only learn the adjacent rules but also the non-adjacent rules with enough inputs. Moreover, the performance of statistical learning was affected by different sensory inputs, as reflected by uncorrelated performance in the visual and auditory modalities, especially when the rule to be learned was dependency among adjacent items. Interestingly, the performance of statistical learning in the visual and auditory modalities was correlated significantly when the rule to be learned as dependency among non-adjacent items. In sum, the findings in the present study further support the current theoretical model in demonstrating modality specificity in statistical learning ability. |
