TY - JOUR
T1 - Network constraints on learnability of probabilistic motor sequences
AU - Kahn, Ari E.
AU - Karuza, Elisabeth A.
AU - Vettel, Jean M.
AU - Bassett, Danielle S.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank D. M. Lydon-Staley and S. H. Tompson for feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation CAREER award (PHY-1554488 to D.S.B.), Army Research Laboratory through contract number W911NF-10-2-0022 and Army Research Office through contract number Grafton-W911NF-16-1-0474 and contract number DCIST-W911NF-17-2-0181. We also acknowledge additional support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, ISI Foundation, Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Army Research Office (Bassett-W911NF-14-1-0679), Office of Naval Research, National Institute of Mental Health (2-R01-DC-009209-11, R01 MH-112847, R01 MH-107235, R21 MH-106799 and R01 MH-113550), National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1R01HD086888-01), National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01 NS099348) and National Science Foundation (BCS-1441502, BCS-1631550 and CNS-1626008). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of any of the funding agencies. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - Human learners are adept at grasping the complex relationships underlying incoming sequential input 1 . In the present work, we formalize complex relationships as graph structures 2 derived from temporal associations 3,4 in motor sequences. Next, we explore the extent to which learners are sensitive to key variations in the topological properties 5 inherent to those graph structures. Participants performed a probabilistic motor sequence task in which the order of button presses was determined by the traversal of graphs with modular, lattice-like or random organization. Graph nodes each represented a unique button press, and edges represented a transition between button presses. The results indicate that learning, indexed here by participants’ response times, was strongly mediated by the graph’s mesoscale organization, with modular graphs being associated with shorter response times than random and lattice graphs. Moreover, variations in a node’s number of connections (degree) and a node’s role in mediating long-distance communication (betweenness centrality) impacted graph learning, even after accounting for the level of practice on that node. These results demonstrate that the graph architecture underlying temporal sequences of stimuli fundamentally constrains learning, and moreover that tools from network science provide a valuable framework for assessing how learners encode complex, temporally structured information.
AB - Human learners are adept at grasping the complex relationships underlying incoming sequential input 1 . In the present work, we formalize complex relationships as graph structures 2 derived from temporal associations 3,4 in motor sequences. Next, we explore the extent to which learners are sensitive to key variations in the topological properties 5 inherent to those graph structures. Participants performed a probabilistic motor sequence task in which the order of button presses was determined by the traversal of graphs with modular, lattice-like or random organization. Graph nodes each represented a unique button press, and edges represented a transition between button presses. The results indicate that learning, indexed here by participants’ response times, was strongly mediated by the graph’s mesoscale organization, with modular graphs being associated with shorter response times than random and lattice graphs. Moreover, variations in a node’s number of connections (degree) and a node’s role in mediating long-distance communication (betweenness centrality) impacted graph learning, even after accounting for the level of practice on that node. These results demonstrate that the graph architecture underlying temporal sequences of stimuli fundamentally constrains learning, and moreover that tools from network science provide a valuable framework for assessing how learners encode complex, temporally structured information.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41562-018-0463-8
DO - 10.1038/s41562-018-0463-8
M3 - Letter
C2 - 30988437
AN - SCOPUS:85056155677
VL - 2
SP - 936
EP - 947
JO - Nature Human Behaviour
JF - Nature Human Behaviour
SN - 2397-3374
IS - 12
ER -