Rebecca L Gomez

Interests

Teaching

Cognitive DevelopmentChild Development

Research

Learning systems and brain development.  Memory formation in infancy and early childhood.  Language acquisition in infancy and early childhood.  Sleep, learning, and memory in infants, children, and adults. Memory updating.

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Chapters

• Esterline, K., & Gomez, R. L. (2020). Sleep in infancy and early childhood. In Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development. Biological: Brain and Physical/Motor(pp 149-156). Oxford, UK: Elsevier Press.
• Gomez, R. L. (2020). Learning in Infancy. In Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development(pp 249-159). Oxford, UK: Elsevier Press.
• Gomez, R. L., & Esterline, K. (2019). A role for sleep in understanding language acquisition. In International Handbook on Language Development.
• Sweeney, L., & Gomez, R. L. (2018). Statistical learning. In Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics.
• Hupbach, L. (2015). Memory Reconsolidation. In In M. Barense, D. R. Addis, \& A. Duarte (Eds.), The Cognitive Neuroscience of Human Memory.(pp 244--264). Wiley-Blackwell.
• Hupbach, A., Gomez, R., & Nadel, L. (2013). Episodic memory reconsolidation: an update. In Memory Reconsolidation(pp 233-246). Elsevier.
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  C. Alberini (Ed.)
• Sandoval, M., & Gómez, R. L. (2013). The development of nonadjacent dependency learning in natural and artificial languages. In Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science(pp 511-522).
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  Abstract: Nonadjacent dependencies occur over one or more intervening units and require learners to track discontinuous sequential relationships. These discontinuous relationships are present at multiple levels in language (e.g., as seen in morphosyntactic dependencies and at the phonological level in vowel harmony). Experiments suggest that these dependencies are acquired using statistical learning mechanisms and that this learning is also affected by perceptual biases. Artificial and natural language studies have shown that infants are sensitive to these statistical regularities but there appear to be developmental constraints on learning. Developmental investigations have also examined how knowledge and processing of the intervening elements affect learning, and whether categories can be acquired using nonadjacent dependency information. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
• Nadel, L., Hupbach, A., Gomez, R., & Newman-Smith, K. (2012). Memory Formation, Consolidation and Transformation. In Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews(pp 36, 1640-1645).
• Sandoval, M., Gonzales, K., & Gomez, R. L. (2012). The road to word class acquisition is paved with statistical and sound cues. In Statistical Learning and Language Acquisition(pp 145-170). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter Press.
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  P. Rebuschat & J. Williams (Eds.)

Journals/Publications

• Esterline, K., & G\'omez, R. L. (2021). The role of sleep in retention of new words in habitually and non-habitually napping children. Brain Sciences, 11(10), 1320.
• Nicholas, K., Plante, E., G\'omez, R., & Vance, R. (2021). The Role of Spontaneous Repetitions During Treatment of Morphosyntactic Forms for Children With Developmental Language Disorder. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 64(10), 3995--4003.
• Werchan, D. M., Kim, J., & G'omez, R. L. (2021). A daytime nap combined with nighttime sleep promotes learning in toddlers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 202, 105006.
• Bryant, N. B., Nadel, L., & G'omez, R. L. (2020). Associations between sleep and episodic memory updating. Hippocampus, 30(8), 794--805.
• Frost, R. L., Dunn, K., Christiansen, M. H., G'omez, R. L., & Monaghan, P. (2020). Exploring the “anchor word” effect in infants: Segmentation and categorisation of speech with and without high frequency words. Plos one, 15(12), e0243436.
• Simon, K. C., G'omez, R. L., & Nadel, L. (2020). Sleep’s role in memory reconsolidation. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 33, 132--137.
• Simon, K. C., Nadel, L., & G'omez, R. L. (2020). Parameters of memory reconsolidation: Learning mode influences likelihood of memory modification. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 14.
• Gonzales, K., Gerken, L., & G'omez, R. L. (2018). How who is talking matters as much as what they say to infant language learners. Cognitive psychology, 106, 1--20.
• Plante, E., & G'omez, R. L. (2018). Learning without trying: The clinical relevance of statistical learning. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 49(3S), 710--722.
• Simon, K. C., G'omez, R. L., & Nadel, L. (2018). Losing memories during sleep after targeted memory reactivation. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 151, 10--17.
• Span`o, G., G'omez, R. L., Demara, B. I., Alt, M., Cowen, S. L., & Edgin, J. O. (2018). REM sleep in naps differentially relates to memory consolidation in typical preschoolers and children with Down syndrome. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(46), 11844--11849.
• Stare, C. J., Gruber, M. J., Nadel, L., Ranganath, C., & G'omez, R. L. (2018). Curiosity-driven memory enhancement persists over time but does not benefit from post-learning sleep. Cognitive neuroscience, 9(3-4), 100--115.
• Sandoval, M., Leclerc, J. A., & Gómez, R. L. (2017). Words to Sleep On: Naps Facilitate Verb Generalization in Habitually and Nonhabitually Napping Preschoolers. Child development.
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  A nap soon after encoding leads to better learning in infancy. However, whether napping plays the same role in preschoolers' learning is unclear. In Experiment 1 (N = 39), 3-year-old habitual and nonhabitual nappers learned novel verbs before a nap or a period of wakefulness and received a generalization test examining word extension to novel actors after 24 hr. Only habitual and nonhabitual nappers who napped after learning generalized 24 hr later. In Experiment 2 (N = 40), children learned the same verbs but were tested within 2-3 min of training. Here, habitual and nonhabitual nappers retained the mappings but did not generalize. The results suggest that naps consolidate weak learning that habitual and nonhabitual nappers would otherwise forget over periods of wakefulness.
• Simon, K. C., Gómez, R. L., Nadel, L., & Scalf, P. E. (2017). Brain correlates of memory reconsolidation: A role for the TPJ. Neurobiology of learning and memory.
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  In this paper, we investigate the process by which new experiences reactivate and potentially update old memories. Such memory reconsolidation appears dependent on the extent to which current experience deviates from what is predicted by the reactivated memory (i.e. prediction error). If prediction error is low, the reactivated memory is likely to be updated with new information. If it is high, however, a new, separate, memory is more likely to be formed. The temporal parietal junction TPJ has been shown across a broad range of content areas (attention, social cognition, decision making and episodic memory) to be sensitive to the degree to which current information violates the observer's expectations - in other words, prediction error. In the current paper, we investigate whether the level of TPJ activation during encoding predicts if the encoded information will be used to form a new memory or update a previous memory. We find that high TPJ activation predicts new memory formation. In a secondary analysis, we examine whether reactivation strength - which we assume leads to a strong memory-based prediction - mediates the likelihood that a given individual will use new information to form a new memory rather than update a previous memory. Individuals who strongly reactivate previous memories are less likely to update them than individuals who weakly reactivate them. We interpret this outcome as indicating that strong predictions lead to high prediction error, which favors new memory formation rather than updating of a previous memory.
• Simon, K. N., Werchan, D., Goldstein, M. R., Sweeney, L., Bootzin, R. R., Nadel, L., & Gómez, R. L. (2017). Sleep confers a benefit for retention of statistical language learning in 6.5month old infants. Brain and language, 167, 3-12.
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  Infants show robust ability to track transitional probabilities within language and can use this information to extract words from continuous speech. The degree to which infants remember these words across a delay is unknown. Given well-established benefits of sleep on long-term memory retention in adults, we examine whether sleep similarly facilitates memory in 6.5month olds. Infants listened to an artificial language for 7minutes, followed by a period of sleep or wakefulness. After a time-matched delay for sleep and wakefulness dyads, we measured retention using the head-turn-preference procedure. Infants who slept retained memory for the extracted words that was prone to interference during the test. Infants who remained awake showed no retention. Within the nap group, retention correlated with three electrophysiological measures (1) absolute theta across the brain, (2) absolute alpha across the brain, and (3) greater fronto-central slow wave activity (SWA).
• Gomez, R. L., & Michelle, S. (2016). Overriding the metrical bias with lexical information: English-learning 7.5-month-olds use Mommy to segment iambic words. Language Learning & Development, 12, 398-412.
• Gordon, K. R., McGregor, K. K., Waldier, B., Curran, M. K., Gomez, R. L., & Samuelson, L. K. (2016). Preschool Children's Memory for Word Forms Remains Stable Over Several Days, but Gradually Decreases after 6 Months. Frontiers in psychology, 7, 1439.
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  Research on word learning has focused on children's ability to identify a target object when given the word form after a minimal number of exposures to novel word-object pairings. However, relatively little research has focused on children's ability to retrieve the word form when given the target object. The exceptions involve asking children to recall and produce forms, and children typically perform near floor on these measures. In the current study, 3- to 5-year-old children were administered a novel test of word form that allowed for recognition memory and manual responses. Specifically, when asked to label a previously trained object, children were given three forms to choose from: the target, a minimally different form, and a maximally different form. Children demonstrated memory for word forms at three post-training delays: 10 mins (short-term), 2-3 days (long-term), and 6 months to 1 year (very long-term). However, children performed worse at the very long-term delay than the other time points, and the length of the very long-term delay was negatively related to performance. When in error, children were no more likely to select the minimally different form than the maximally different form at all time points. Overall, these results suggest that children remember word forms that are linked to objects over extended post-training intervals, but that their memory for the forms gradually decreases over time without further exposures. Furthermore, memory traces for word forms do not become less phonologically specific over time; rather children either identify the correct form, or they perform at chance.
• Gómez, R. L. (2016). Do infants retain the statistics of a statistical learning experience? Insights from a developmental cognitive neuroscience perspective. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B.
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  Statistical structure abounds in language. Human infants show a striking capacity for using statistical learning (SL) to extract regularities in their linguistic environments, a process thought to bootstrap their knowledge of language. Critically, studies of SL test infants in the minutes immediately following familiarization, but long-term retention unfolds over hours and days, with almost no work investigating retention of SL. This creates a critical gap in the literature given that we know little about how single or multiple SL experiences translate into permanent knowledge. Furthermore, different memory systems with vastly different encoding and retention profiles emerge at different points in development, with the underlying memory system dictating the fidelity of the memory trace hours later. I describe the scant literature on retention of SL, the learning and retention properties of memory systems as they apply to SL, and the development of these memory systems. I propose that different memory systems support retention of SL in infant and adult learners, suggesting an explanation for the slow pace of natural language acquisition in infancy. I discuss the implications of developing memory systems for SL and suggest that we exercise caution in extrapolating from adult to infant properties of SL.This article is part of the themed issue 'New frontiers for statistical learning in the cognitive sciences'.
• Sandoval, M., & Gomez, R. L. (2016). English-learning 7.5-month-olds use Mommy to segment iambic words. Language Learning and Development.
• Bryant, N. B., & G{\'o}mez, R. L. (2015). The teen sleep loss epidemic: What can be done?. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 1, 116.
• Gonzales, K., Gerken, L., & Gomez, R. L. (2015). Does hearing dialects at different times help infants learn dialect-specific rules?. Cognition.
• G{\'o}mez, R. L., & Edgin, J. O. (2015). Sleep as a Window Into Early Neural Development: Shifts in Sleep-Dependent Learning Effects Across Early Childhood. Child development perspectives, 9, 183--189.
• Plante, E., Patterson, D., Gomez, R., Almryde, K. R., White, M. G., & Asbj{\o}rnsen, A. E. (2015). The nature of the language input affects brain activation during learning from a natural language. Journal of neurolinguistics, 36, 17--34.
• G{\'o}mez, R. L., & Edgin, J. O. (2016). The extended trajectory of hippocampal development: Implications for early memory development and disorder. Developmental cognitive neuroscience.
• Dongaonkar, B., Hupbach, A., Gomez, R., & Nadel, L. (2013). Effects of psychosocial stress on episodic memory updating. Psychopharmacology, 226, 769--779.
• Koss Torkildsen, J., Dailey, N. S., Aguilar, J. M., G{\'o}mez, R., & Plante, E. (2013). Exemplar variability facilitates rapid learning of an otherwise unlearnable grammar by individuals with language-based learning disability. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 56, 618--629.
• Lany, J., & Gómez, R. L. (2013). Probabilistically Cued Patterns Trump Perfect Cues in Statistical Language Learning. Language Learning and Development, 9(1), 66-87.
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  Abstract: Probabilistically cued co-occurrence relationships between word categories are common in natural languages but difficult to acquire. For example, in English, determiner-noun and auxiliary-verb dependencies both involve co-occurrence relationships but determiner-noun relationships are more reliably marked by correlated distributional and phonological cues and appear to be learned more readily. We tested whether experience with co-occurrence relationships that are more reliable promotes learning those that are less reliable using an artificial language paradigm. Prior experience with deterministically cued contingencies did not promote learning of less reliably cued structure, nor did prior experience with relationships instantiated in the same vocabulary. In contrast, prior experience with probabilistically cued co-occurrence relationships instantiated in different vocabulary did enhance learning. Thus, experience with co-occurrence relationships sharing underlying structure but not vocabulary may be an important factor in learning grammatical patterns. Furthermore, experience with probabilistically cued co-occurrence relationships, despite their difficultly for naïve learners, lays an important foundation for learning novel probabilistic structure. © 2013 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
• Werchan, D. M., & Gómez, R. L. (2013). Generalizing memories over time: Sleep and reinforcement facilitate transitive inference. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 100, 70-76.
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  PMID: 23257278;Abstract: The use of reinforcement and rewards is known to enhance memory retention. However, the impact of reinforcement on higher-order forms of memory processing, such as integration and generalization, has not been directly manipulated in previous studies. Furthermore, there is evidence that sleep enhances the integration and generalization of memory, but these studies have only used reinforcement learning paradigms and have not examined whether reinforcement impacts or is critical for memory integration and generalization during sleep. Thus, the aims of the current study were to examine: (1) whether reinforcement during learning impacts the integration and generalization of memory; and (2) whether sleep and reinforcement interact to enhance memory integration and generalization. We investigated these questions using a transitive inference (TI) task, which is thought to require the integration and generalization of disparate relational memories in order to make novel inferences. To examine whether reinforcement influences or is required for the formation of inferences, we compared performance using a reinforcement or an observation based TI task. We examined the impact of sleep by comparing performance after a 12-h delay containing either wake or sleep. Our results showed that: (1) explicit reinforcement during learning is required to make transitive inferences and that sleep further enhances this effect; (2) sleep does not make up for the inability to make inferences when reinforcement does not occur during learning. These data expand upon previous findings and suggest intriguing possibilities for the mechanisms involved in sleep-dependent memory transformation. © 2012.
• Lany, J., & Gómez, R. L. (2008). Twelve-month-old infants benefit from prior experience in statistical learning. Psychological Science, 19(12), 1247-1252.
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  PMID: 19121132;PMCID: PMC2967014;Abstract: A decade of research suggests that infants readily detect patterns in their environment, but it is unclear how such learning changes with experience. We tested how prior experience influences sensitivity to statistical regularities in an artificial language. Although 12-month-old infants learn adjacent relationships between word categories, they do not track nonadjacent relationships until 15 months. We asked whether 12-month-old infants could generalize experience with adjacent dependencies to nonadjacent ones. Infants were familiarized to an artificial language either containing or lacking adjacent dependencies between word categories and were subsequently habituated to novel nonadjacent dependencies. Prior experience with adjacent dependencies resulted in enhanced learning of the nonadjacent dependencies. Female infants showed better discrimination than males did, which is consistent with earlier reported sex differences in verbal memory capacity. The findings suggest that prior experience can bootstrap infants' learning of difficult language structure and that learning mechanisms are powerfully affected by experience. © 2008 Association for Psychological Science.
• Gómez, R., & Maye, J. (2005). The developmental trajectory of nonadjacent dependency learning. Infancy, 7(2), 183-206.
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  Abstract: We investigated the developmental trajectory of nonadjacent dependency learning in an artificial language. Infants were exposed to 1 of 2 artificial languages with utterances of the form [aXc or bXd] (Grammar 1) or [aXd or bXc] (Grammar 2). In both languages, the grammaticality of an utterance depended on the relation between the 1st and 3rd elements, whereas the intervening element varied freely. High variability of the middle element is known to contribute to perception of nonadjacent dependencies (Gómez, 2002), but the developmental trajectory of such learning is unknown. Experiment 1 replicated the study of Gómez with a younger age group and a more subtle variability manipulation. Twelve-month-olds failed to track nonadjacent dependencies under conditions tested here (Experiments 2a and 2b), but by 15 months, infants are beginning to track this structure (Experiment 3). Such learning has implications for understanding how infants might begin to acquire similar structure in natural language. Copyright © 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
• Gómez, R. L., & Lakusta, L. (2004). A first step in form-based category abstraction by 12-month-old infants. Developmental Science, 7(5), 567-580.
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  PMID: 15603290;Abstract: The present experiments investigate how young language learners begin to acquire form-based categories and the relationships between them. We investigated this question by exposing 12-month-olds to auditory structure of the form aX and bY (infants had to learn that a-elements grouped with Xs and not Ys). Infants were then tested on strings from their training language versus strings from the other language using a preferential-listening procedure. Importantly, the X and Y elements were new at test, requiring infants to generalize to novel pairings. We also manipulated the probability of encountering grammatical structures of the training language by mixing strings from two artificial languages according to 83/17 and 67/33 percentage ratios in Experiment 2. Experiment 1 shows that 12-month-olds are capable of forming categories of X- and Y-elements based on a shared feature and, furthermore, form associations between particular a- and b-elements and these categories. Experiment 2 shows that learning was sustained even when 17% of instances from another language were present during training. However, infants failed to generalize when exposed to a larger percentage of strings from another language. The findings demonstrate that the first step of form-based category abstraction (the ability to generalize based on marker-feature pairings) is in place by 12 months of age.
• Gómez, R. L. (2002). Variability and detection of invariant structure. Psychological Science, 13(5), 431-436.
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  PMID: 12219809;Abstract: Two experiments investigated learning of nonadjacent dependencies by adults and 18-month-olds. Each learner was exposed to three-element strings (e.g., pel-kicey-jic) produced by one of two artificial languages. Both languages contained the same adjacent dependencies, so learners could distinguish the languages only by acquiring dependencies between the first and third elements (the nonadjacent dependencies). The size of the pool from which the middle elements were drawn was systematically varied to investigate whether increasing variability (in the form of decreasing predictability between adjacent elements) would lead to better detection of nonadjacent dependencies. Infants and adults acquired nonadjacent dependencies only when adjacent dependencies were least predictable. The results point to conditions that might lead learners to focus on nonadjacent versus adjacent dependencies and are important for suggesting how learning might be dynamically guided by statistical structure. Copyright © 2002 American Psychological Society.
• Thompson, L. A., Gomez, R. L., & Schvaneveldt, R. W. (2000). The salience of temporal cues in the developing structure of event knowledge. American Journal of Psychology, 113(4), 591-620.
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  PMID: 11131744;Abstract: Two experiments used a novel method called Pathfinder to examine whether the salience of temporal cues embedded in event structure increases developmentally and whether people link event actions by simple adjacency relationships or embed them in an organized whole. A sequential format for eliciting knowledge was compared with a less structured format for dinner and bedtime events. Adults and their 8- and 10-year-old children demonstrated well-developed script organizations regardless of format, and organization improved across this age range. In Experiment 1, temporal cues were not a salient basis of comparison for 6-year-olds, but in Experiment 2 they could use temporal cues when instructed to do so. The results suggest that temporal salience increases between 6 and 10 years and that temporal knowledge of event actions is highly organized in this age range. Furthermore, children's event knowledge functions partly in the interaction between their developing event knowledge and the support provided by sequential constraints in the environment.
• Schvaneveldt, R. W., & Gomez, R. L. (1998). Attention and probabilistic sequence learning. Psychological Research, 61(3), 175-190.
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  Abstract: Limitations of using fixed sequences of events in studies of learning in the sequential reaction-time task led us to develop a probabilistic version of the task. When sequences occur probabilistically, transitions usually follow a sequence, but with some small probability, events occur out of sequence. This variation on the paradigm provides new evidence associated with manipulations of attentional load. Most notably, single-task learning leads to particularly high error rates on improbable transitions, suggesting anticipation of the sequence. Dual-task learning shows sensitivity to the sequence (by reaction-time differences to probable and improbable transitions), but without inflated errors on improbable transitions. Sensitivity to the sequence and anticipatory errors disappeared when participants transferred from single-task learning to dual-task conditions, suggesting that what is learned with single-task practice cannot be applied under conditions of limited attention. When learners transferred from dual- to single-task conditions, sensitivity of RT to the sequence increased but anticipation errors remained the same, suggesting that attentional load limits performance, but not learning. Qualitative differences in performance result from variations in attentional resources, which may reflect different learning processes.
• Gomez, R. L. (1997). Transfer and complexity in artificial grammar learning. Cognitive Psychology, 33(2), 154-207.
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  Abstract: Implicit and explicit learning are sensitive to various degrees of complexity and abstractness, ranging from knowledge of first-order dependencies and specific surface structure to second-order dependencies and transfer. Three experiments addressed whether implicit learning is sensitive to this entire range of information or whether explicit knowledge becomes an important factor in cases of more complex learning. Experiment 1 used recognition and prediction to assess deliberate access to knowledge of letter patterns in an artificial grammar learning paradigm. Experiment 2 manipulated stimulus presentation and response in a sequence-based grammar learning paradigm. Learning can occur without awareness in cases of lesser complexity (such as learning first-order dependencies). However, more complex learning, such as that involved in learning second-order dependencies or in transfer to stimuli with the same underlying syntax but new surface features is linked to explicit knowledge. In contrast to Experiments 1 and 2 which assessed deliberate access to knowledge of the acquisition stimuli, Experiment 3 assessed deliberate access to knowledge of the transfer stimuli. Knowledge of initial trigrams in the transfer stimuli appears to play an important role in transfer. These findings are evaluated in terms of postulated implicit learning mechanisms. © 1997 Academic Press.
• Gomez, R. L., Hadfield, O. D., & Housner, L. D. (1996). Conceptual Maps and Simulated Teaching Episodes as Indicators of Competence in Teaching Elementary Mathematics. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88(3), 572-585.
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  Abstract: Network representation was used to assess knowledge obtained during a teaching methodology course in elementary mathematics. Participants were the course instructor, 4 teacher educators, and 53 prospective teachers. Relatedness ratings on key terms were used to construct associative networks. Teacher educator networks shared significant similarities to the course instructor's network, and similarities between the teacher educator and prospective teacher networks were as predictive of course grades as similarity to the course instructor. Fourteen of the prospective teachers participated in a simulated teaching task. Network similarity predicted teaching for conceptual understanding, as did final course grade, and was more predictive than were either exams or lab scores. The advantage of associative networks may be in representing patterns of concept relations underlying mental models of teaching.
• Gomez, R. L., Schvaneveldt, R. W., & Staudenmayer, H. (1996). Assessing beliefs about 'environmental illness/multiple chemical sensitivity'. Journal of Health Psychology, 1(1), 107-123.
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  PMID: 22011524;Abstract: Knowledge representation was used to characterize beliefs in patients with Environmental Illness/Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (EI/MCS). EI/MCS patients, allergy and asthma patients, doctors and controls made relatedness judgments on concepts relevant to EI/MCS. Associative networks showed that EI/MCS patients viewed these concepts differently from others. Multiple chemical exposure was central in EI/MCS networks, with many links to every other concept, but was only peripherally connected in the other subject networks. Similarity comparisons to an EI/MCS prototype network discriminated EI/MCS patients from the other control populations, as did an index based on critical concept pairs. This approach shows promise for distinguishing patient groups using belief structure. © 1996 SAGE Publications.
• Gomez, R. L., & Schvaneveldt, R. W. (1994). What Is Learned From Artificial Grammars? Transfer Tests of Simple Association. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20(2), 396-410.
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  Abstract: Ss were trained on letter pairs or letter strings in an artificial grammar learning paradigm to determine the extent to which implicit learning is driven by simple associative knowledge. Learning on strings resulted in sensitivity to violations of grammaticality and in transfer to a changed letter set. Learning on letter pairs resulted in less sensitivity and no transfer. Discrepancies in performance were later reduced, but not eliminated, by equating the task demands of the conditions during learning. A direct test of associative knowledge showed that training on letter pairs resulted in knowledge of legal bigrams, but this knowledge was only weakly related to violation sensitivity. The experiments demonstrate that knowledge of isolated associations is sufficient to support some learning, but this knowledge cannot explain the more abstract knowledge that results from learning on complete exemplars.
• Housner, L. D., Gomez, R. L., & Griffey, D. C. (1993). Pedagogical knowledge structures in prospective teachers: relationships to performance in a teaching methodology course.. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 64(2), 167-177.
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  PMID: 8341840;Abstract: The purpose of the article is to describe the relationships of prospective teachers' pedagogical knowledge structures to performance in a physical education teaching methods class. The Pathfinder network scaling algorithm was used to elicit knowledge structures prior to and after the prospective teachers completed the class. The findings indicated that their knowledge of key pedagogical concepts was more coherent and corresponded more closely to the instructor's following the courses. Student measures of correspondence and coherence before the class were not significantly correlated with course performance; however, following the class, correlations between these measures and course performance were significant. Additionally, university grade point average (GPA) was highly related to course performance variables and knowledge measures, whereas American College Test (ACT) scores were not. A follow-up investigation of a subset of students indicated that key pedagogical concepts were retained over a 6-month period of time. However, performance on a semantic classification task provided little evidence that students with knowledge structures similar to that of the instructor organized knowledge at a more semantic level than students who were less similar. Future directions for the study of pedagogical knowledge acquisition in physical education are discussed.
• Housner, L. D., Gomez, R., & Griffey, D. C. (1993). A Pathfinder analysis of pedagogical knowledge structures: a follow-up investigation.. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 64(3), 291-299.
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  PMID: 8235050;Abstract: This study is an extension of an earlier investigation of undergraduate students' acquisition of key pedagogical concepts in a physical education teaching methodology course. In that study, Pathfinder, a method for eliciting associative memory networks, was used to describe and compare the pedagogical knowledge structures of students to that of the course instructor. After the course, students' pedagogical knowledge structures corresponded more closely with that of the instructor, and students who corresponded the closest performed better in the course. The results raised an interesting issue regarding the acquisition of knowledge in undergraduate students. Did students acquire a generalizable body of pedagogical knowledge applicable beyond the context of the teaching methodology course or a highly contextualized reflection of their course instructor's knowledge base? In the present study the external validity of the pedagogical knowledge base was examined by using Pathfinder to compare the knowledge structures of students from the initial investigation with knowledge structures of five experienced teacher educators from five different teacher education programs. The findings indicated that students' knowledge structures became significantly more correspondent with that of the experienced teachers' structures from the beginning to the end of the course. Also, students' correspondence with teacher educators' structures following instruction was found to be significantly correlated with academic and teaching performance. The findings point to the external validity of the domain of knowledge under study and the robustness of Pathfinder for capturing pedagogical knowledge.

Presentations

• Gomez, R. L. (2017, June). How sleep in infants, toddlers, and children impacts learning. SRS Trainee Day. Boston: Sleep Research Society.
• Kalim, G., Gerken, L., & Gomez, R. L. (2017, November). Language learning in the face of inter-talker variation: when talker voice proves helpful. Boston University Conference on Child Language.
• Sandoval, M., & Gomez, R. L. (2017, October). Consolidation is key for bootstrapping segmentation. Cognitive Development Society. Portland.
• Alt, M., Edgin, J. O., Gomez, R. L., Cowen, S. L., Goffredina, S., Bianca, D., Bianca, D., Alt, M., Cowen, S. L., Gomez, R. L., Goffredina, S., & Edgin, J. O. (2016, Summer). Sleep and Memory Consolidation in Toddlers with Down syndrome:. The 6th International Conference on Memory, ICOM-6. Budapest, Hungary.
• Gomez, R. L. (2016, Fall). Why is language learning so slow if infants are such rapid learners?. Departmental Colloquium. The University of Arizona.
• Gomez, R. L. (2016, July). Cortical and hippocampal signature of memory formation in very young children. International Conference of Memory Studies. Budapest, Hungary.
• Gomez, R. L. (2016, July). Very young children’s retention of associations to similar and dissimilar target. International Conference of Memory.
• Gomez, R. L. (2015, February). Sleep and time dependent learning in young children. Cognitive Science Brown Bag Colloquium.
• Gomez, R. L. (2015, February). The role of sleep in learning and memory formation in young children: Implications for language acquisition.. Invited talk at The University of Texas at Austin.
• Gomez, R. L. (2015, June). Do infants retain the statistics of a statistical learning experience? Insights from a developmental cognitive neuroscience perspective. Invited talk at the conference on Interdisciplinary Advances in Statistical Learning. Basque Center on Cognition, Brain & Language, San Sebastian.
• Gomez, R. L. (2015, June). Learning language over time. Invited talk at the LUCID ESRC Centre for early language and communicative development, Lancaster, UK.
• Gomez, R. L. (2015, June). Sleep as a window into the neural underpinnings of learning and memory in early development. Invited talk at Birkbeck College, London.
• Gomez, R. L. (2015, June). Sleep as a window into the neural underpinnings of learning and memory in early development. Invited talk at Oxford University, Oxford.
• Gomez, R. L. (2015, March). Evidence for qualitatively different memory processes in infancy vs. early childhood.. In R. Gómez (Chair), New ideas in memory development. Symposium held at the 2015 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development. Philadelphia..
• Gomez, R. L. (2015, March). Is cross-situational word learning feasible in young children?. Presentation given at the 2015 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development. Philadelphia..
• Gomez, R. L. (2015, March). Sleep as a window into the neural underpinnings of word learning in young children. Invited talk at the Magical Moments in Word Learning meeting at the Donders Institute, Nijmegen.
• Gomez, R. L. (2015, November). Learning language over time: Do children retain the statistics of a statistical learning experience?. Presentation given in one of two symposia selected for the annual meeting of the Boston University Conference on Language Development. Boston..
• Gomez, R. L. (2015, November). Sleep, learning and memory in young children. Invited presentation given at the Eighth Biennial Pediatric Sleep Medicine Conference. Amelia Island..
• Gomez, R. L. (2015, September). The role of sleep in memory formation and generalization in very young children. Presentation given at the annual meeting of the Memory Disorders Research Society. Cambridge..
• Newman-Smith, K., Werchan, D., Nadel, L., Bootzin, R. R., & Gomez, R. L. (2015, March). Retention of statistical learning in 6.5-month-old infants. Talk given at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Philadelphia, PA.
• Sandoval, M., & Gomez, R. L. (2015, March). Napping in the preschool years: When sleep maturation outpaces memory development. Presentation given at the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting, Philadelphia, PA.
• Sandoval, M., Newman-Smith, K., & Gomez, R. L. (2015, March). Consolidation: Recovery periods of sleep and wake lead to stabilization of learning in the developing brain. Talk given at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Philadelphia, PA.
• Gomez, R. L. (2014, April). The (complicated) role of sleep in abstraction in infants and young children. Presentation given at the 21st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. Boston.
• Gomez, R. L. (2014, November). A puzzle in memory development: Similar outcomes driven by different memory processes. In R. Gómez & N. Newcombe (Chairs), New ideas in memory development. Symposium held at the 2014 meeting of the Psychonomic Society. Longbeach.
• Gomez, R. L. (2014, September). A new approach to memory development. Invited talk at The University of Colorado, Boulder.
• Gomez, R. L. (2014, September). Mixed benefits of sleep versus wake across early development: How similar outcomes can be supported by different neural processes. Presentation given at the 2nd Annual Meeting of the FLUX Society. Hollywood.
• Gomez, R. L. (2013, June). Sleep-dependent learning in infants and young children. Invited talk at Birkbeck College, London,.
• Gomez, R. L. (2013, September). Sleep- and time-dependent learning in infants and young children. Invited talk at The University of Maryland, College Park.
• Gomez, R. L., Chavez, S., Nadel, L., & Bootzin, R. R. (2013). Sleep enables abstraction to new vocabulary in language learning infants. Invited 1-minute talk given at SFN Sleep and Circadian Biology Data Blitz-2013.
• Gomez, R. L. (2012, May). Learning mechanisms in language acquisition. Invited talk at The University of Bergen. Bergen.
• Gomez, R. L. (2012, September). Implicit learning over time. Invited talk at Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels.

Poster Presentations

• Demara, B., Gomez, R. L., Cowen, S. L., Spano, G., & Edgin, J. O. (2017, October). To Nap or Not to Nap?: Sleep-dependent Memory Consolidation in Typically and Atypically Developing Preschoolers. World Sleep 2017. Prague: World Sleep Congress.
• Katharine, S., Gomez, R. L., & Nadel, L. (2017, June). Using targeted memory reactivation to induce forgetting during sleep. SLEEP. Boston.
• Stare, C., Nadel, L., & Gomez, R. L. (2017, June). The role of sleep in curiosity-driven memory enhancement. SLEEP. Boston.