Amy Finn

University of Toronto, Psychology, Faculty Member

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Post-Doc

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Maturational changes in cognitive and neural function pose one of the most powerful constraints on human learning, but we are only beginning to understand how and why. I use a variety of behavioral and neuroimaging (MRI, fRMI, DTI, TMS) techniques in children and adults to investigate the relationship between brain development, cognitive development, and learning abilities. To fully characterize the influence of development on learning, I study domain-general aspects of development (focusing heavily on mnemonic systems) and investigate learning across domains, including language acquisition, skill learning, and educational achievement.
Supervisors: John Gabrieli, Carla L. Hudson Kam, and Mark D'Esposito

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Papers by Amy Finn

Running head: THE EFFECT OF SONORITY ON WORD SEGMENTATION The Effect of Sonority on Word Segmentation: Evidence for the use of a Phonological Universal

Children’s family income is associated with cognitive function and volume of anterior not posterior hippocampus

Nature Communications

Children from lower income backgrounds tend to have poorer memory and language abilities than the... more Children from lower income backgrounds tend to have poorer memory and language abilities than their wealthier peers. It has been proposed that these cognitive gaps reflect the effects of income-related stress on hippocampal structure, but the empirical evidence for this relationship has not been clear. Here, we examine how family income gaps in cognition relate to the anterior hippocampus, given its high sensitivity to stress, versus the posterior hippocampus. We find that anterior (but not posterior) hippocampal volumes positively correlate with family income up to an annual income of~$75,000. Income-related differences in the anterior (but not posterior) hippocampus also predicted the strength of the gaps in memory and language. These findings add anatomical specificity to current theories by suggesting a stronger relationship between family income and anterior than posterior hippocampal volumes and offer a potential mechanism through which children from different income homes differ cognitively.

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Evidence of stable individual differences in implicit learning

Cognition

There is a fundamental psychological and neuropsychological distinction between explicit and impl... more There is a fundamental psychological and neuropsychological distinction between explicit and implicit memory, and it has been proposed that whereas there are stable trait individual differences in explicit memory ability, there are not such differences across people for implicit learning. There is, however, little evidence about whether or not there are stable trait differences in implicit learning. Here we performed a test-retest reliability study with healthy young adults in which they performed four implicit learning tasks (artificial grammar learning, probabilistic classification, serial response, and implicit category learning) twice, about a week apart. We found medium (by Cohen&#39;s guidelines) test-retest reliability for three of the tasks: probabilistic classification, serial response, and implicit category learning, suggesting that differences in implicit learning ability are more stable than originally thought. In addition, implicit learning on all tasks was unrelated to explicit measures: we did not find any correlation between implicit learning measures and independent measures of IQ, working memory, or explicit learning ability. These findings indicate that implicit learning, like explicit learning, varies reliably across individuals.

Dimensions of childhood adversity have distinct associations with neural systems underlying executive functioning

Childhood adversity is associated with increased risk for psychopathology. Neurodevelopmental pat... more Childhood adversity is associated with increased risk for psychopathology. Neurodevelopmental pathways underlying this risk remain poorly understood. A recent conceptual model posits that childhood adversity can be deconstructed into at least two underlying dimensions, deprivation and threat, that are associated with distinct neurocognitive consequences. This model argues that deprivation (i.e., a lack of cognitive stimulation and learning opportunities) is associated with poor executive function (EF), whereas threat is not. We examine this hypothesis in two studies measuring EF at multiple levels: performance on EF tasks, neural recruitment during EF, and problems with EF in daily life. In Study 1, deprivation (low parental education and child neglect) was associated with greater parent-reported problems with EF in adolescents (N ¼ 169; 13–17 years) after adjustment for levels of threat (community violence and abuse), which were unrelated to EF. In Study 2, low parental education was associated with poor working memory (WM) performance and inefficient neural recruitment in the parietal and prefrontal cortex during high WM load among adolescents (N ¼ 51, 13–20 years) after adjusting for abuse, which was unrelated to WM task performance and neural recruitment during WM. These findings constitute strong preliminary evidence for a novel model of the neurodevelopmental consequences of childhood adversity.

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Native-language N400 and P600 predict dissociable language-learning abilities in adults

by Amy Finn and Zhenghan Qi

A B S T R A C T Language learning aptitude during adulthood varies markedly across individuals. A... more A B S T R A C T Language learning aptitude during adulthood varies markedly across individuals. An individual's native-language ability has been associated with success in learning a new language as an adult. However, little is known about how native-language processing affects learning success and what neural markers of native-language processing, if any, are related to success in learning. We therefore related variation in electrophysiol-ogy during native-language processing to success in learning a novel artificial language. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while native English speakers judged the acceptability of English sentences prior to learning an artificial language. There was a trend towards a double dissociation between native-language ERPs and their relationships to novel syntax and vocabulary learning. Individuals who exhibited a greater N400 effect when processing English semantics showed better future learning of the artificial language overall. The N400 effect was related to syntax learning via its specific relationship to vocabulary learning. In contrast, the P600 effect size when processing English syntax predicted future syntax learning but not vocabulary learning. These findings show that distinct neural signatures of native-language processing relate to dissociable abilities for learning novel semantic and syntactic information.

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Functional brain organization of working memory in adolescents varies in relation to family income and academic achievement

Working memory (WM) capacity reflects executive functions associated with performance on a wide r... more Working memory (WM) capacity reflects executive functions associated with performance on a wide range of cognitive tasks and education outcomes, including mathematics achievement, and is associated with dorsolateral prefrontal and parietal cortices. Here we asked if family income is associated with variation in the functional brain organization of WM capacity among adolescents, and whether that variation is associated with performance on a statewide test of academic achievement in mathematics. Participants were classified into higher-income and lower-income groups based on family income, and performed a WM task with a parametric manipulation of WM load (N-back task) during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Behaviorally, the higher-income group had greater WM capacity and higher mathematics achievement scores. Neurally, the higher-income group showed greater activation as a function of WM load in bilateral prefrontal, parietal, and other regions, although the lower-income group exhibited greater activation at the lowest load. Both groups exhibited positive correlations between parietal activations and mathematics achievement scores, but only the higher-income group exhibited a positive correlation between prefrontal activations and mathematics scores. Most of these findings were maintained when higher-and lower-income groups were matched on WM task performance or nonverbal IQ. Findings indicate that the functional neural architecture of WM varies with family income and is associated with education measures of mathematics achievement.

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Developmental dissociation between the maturation of procedural memory and declarative memory

by Amy Finn and Priya Kalra

Declarative memory and procedural memory are known to be two fundamentally different kinds of mem... more Declarative memory and procedural memory are known to be two fundamentally different kinds of memory that are dissociable in their psychological characteristics and measurement (explicit vs. implicit) and in the neural systems that subserve each kind of memory. Declarative memory abilities are known to improve from childhood through young adulthood, but the developmental matu-ration of procedural memory is largely unknown. We compared 10-year-old children and young adults on measures of declarative memory and working memory capacity and on four measures of procedural memory that have been strongly dissociated from declarative memory (mirror tracing, rotary pursuit, probabilistic classification, and artificial grammar). Children had lesser declarative memory ability and lesser working memory capacity than adults, but children exhibited learning equivalent to adults on all four measures of procedural memory. Therefore, declarative memory and procedural memory are developmentally dissociable, with procedural memory being adult-like by age 10 years and declarative memory continuing to mature into young adulthood.

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Why Segmentation Matters: Experience-Driven Segmentation Errors Impair " Morpheme " Learning

We ask whether an adult learner's knowledge of their native language impedes statistical learning... more We ask whether an adult learner's knowledge of their native language impedes statistical learning in a new language beyond just word segmentation (as previously shown). In particular, we examine the impact of native-language word-form phonotactics on learners' ability to segment words into their component morphemes and learn phonologically triggered variation of morphemes. We find that learning is impaired when words and component morphemes are structured to conflict with a learner's nativelanguage phonotactic system, but not when native-language phonotactics do not conflict with morpheme boundaries in the artificial language. A learner's native-language knowledge can therefore have a cascading impact affecting word segmentation and the morphological variation that relies upon proper segmentation. These results show that getting word segmentation right early in learning is deeply important for learning other aspects of language, even those (morphology) that are known to pose a great difficulty for adult language learners.

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When It Hurts (and Helps) to Try: The Role of Effort in Language Learning

Compared to children, adults are bad at learning language. This is counterintuitive; adults outpe... more Compared to children, adults are bad at learning language. This is counterintuitive; adults outperform children on most measures of cognition, especially those that involve effort (which continue to mature into early adulthood). The present study asks whether these mature effortful abilities interfere with language learning in adults and further, whether interference occurs equally for aspects of language that adults are good (word-segmentation) versus bad (grammar) at learning. Learners were exposed to an artificial language comprised of statistically defined words that belong to phonologically defined categories (grammar). Exposure occurred under passive or effortful conditions. Passive learners were told to listen while effortful learners were instructed to try to 1) learn the words, 2) learn the categories, or 3) learn the category-order. Effortful learners showed an advantage for learning words while passive learners showed an advantage for learning the categories. Effort can therefore hurt the learning of categories.

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Cognitive Skills, Student Achievement Tests, and Schools

Cognitive skills predict academic performance, so schools that improve academic performance might... more Cognitive skills predict academic performance, so schools that improve academic performance might also improve cognitive skills. To investigate the impact schools have on both academic performance and cognitive skills, we related standardized achievement-test scores to measures of cognitive skills in a large sample (N = 1,367) of eighth grade students attending traditional, exam, and charter public schools. Test scores and gains in test scores over time correlated with measures of cognitive skills. Despite wide variation in test scores across schools, differences in cognitive skills across schools were negligible after we controlled for fourth-grade test scores. Random offers of enrollment to oversubscribed charter schools resulted in positive impacts of such school attendance on math achievement but had no impact on cognitive skills. These findings suggest that schools that improve standardized achievement-test scores
do so primarily through channels other than improving cognitive skills.

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The Effect of Sonority on Word Segmentation: Evidence for the Use of a Phonological Universal

It has been well documented how language-specific cues may be used for word segmentation. Here, w... more It has been well documented how language-specific cues may be used for word segmentation. Here, we investigate what role a language-independent phonological universal, the sonority sequencing principle (SSP), may also play. Participants were presented with an unsegmented speech stream with non-English word onsets that juxtaposed adherence to the SSP with transitional probabilities. Participants favored using the SSP in assessing word-hood, suggesting that the SSP represents a potentially powerful cue for word segmentation. To ensure the SSP influenced the segmentation process (i.e., during learning), we presented two additional groups of participants with either (a) no exposure to the stimuli prior to testing or (b) the same stimuli with pauses marking word breaks. The SSP did not influence test performance in either case, suggesting that the SSP is important for word segmentation during the learning process itself. Moreover, the fact that SSP-independent segmentation of the stimulus occurred (in the latter control condition) suggests that universals are best understood as biases rather than immutable constraints on learning.

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Learning language with the wrong neural scaffolding: The cost of neural commitment to sounds

www.frontiersin.org Citation: Finn AS, Hudson_kam CL, Ettlinger M, Vytlacil J and D_esposito M(20... more www.frontiersin.org Citation: Finn AS, Hudson_kam CL, Ettlinger M, Vytlacil J and D_esposito M(2013) Learning language with the wrong neural scaffolding: The cost of neural commitment to sounds.. Front. Syst. Neurosci. 7:85. Article URL: http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/Abstract.aspx?s=1091& name=systems%20neuroscience&ART_DOI=10.3389 /fnsys.2013.00085 (If clicking on the link doesn't work, try copying and pasting it into your browser.)

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Longitudinal Evidence for Functional Specialization of the Neural Circuit Supporting Working Memory in the Human Brain

Although children perform more poorly than adults on many cognitive measures, they are better abl... more Although children perform more poorly than adults on many cognitive measures, they are better able to learn things such as language and music. These differences could result from the delayed specialization of neural circuits and asynchronies in the maturation of neural substrates required for learning. Working memory-the ability to hold information in mind that is no longer present in the environment-comprises a set of cognitive processes required for many, if not all, forms of learning. A critical neural substrate for working memory (the prefrontal cortex) continues to mature through early adulthood. What are the functional consequences of this late maturation for working memory? Using a longitudinal design, we show that although individuals recruit prefrontal cortex as expected during both early and late adolescence during a working memory task, this recruitment is correlated with behavior only in late adolescence. The hippocampus is also recruited, but only during early, and not late, adolescence. Moreover, the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex are coactive in early adolescence regardless of task demands or performance, in contrast to the pattern seen in late adolescents and adults, when these regions are coactive only under high task demands. Together, these data demonstrate that neural circuitry underlying working memory changes during adolescent development. The diminishing contribution of the hippocampus in working memory function with age is an important observation that informs questions about how children and adults learn differently.

format_quoteAdolescent development shifts neural circuitry for working memory, with a notable decline in hippocampal involvement as age increases.format_quote

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The curse of knowledge: First language knowledge impairs adult learners' use of novel statistics for word segmentation

We investigated whether adult learners' knowledge of phonotactic restrictions on word forms from ... more We investigated whether adult learners' knowledge of phonotactic restrictions on word forms from their first language impacts their ability to use statistical information to segment words in a novel language. Adults were exposed to a speech stream where English phonotactics and phoneme co-occurrence information conflicted. A control where these did not conflict was also run. Participants chose between words defined by novel statistics and words that are phonotactically possible in English, but had much lower phoneme contingencies. Control participants selected words defined by statistics while experimental participants did not. This result held up with increases in exposure and when segmentation was aided by telling participants a word prior to exposure. It was not the case that participants simply preferred Englishsounding words, however, when the stimuli contained very short pauses, participants were able to learn the novel words despite the fact that they violated English phonotactics. Results suggest that prior linguistic knowledge can interfere with learners' abilities to segment words from running speech using purely statistical cues at initial exposure.

format_quoteAdults can selectively suppress native language knowledge when aware of learning a new language, impacting statistical learning abilities.format_quote

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