Department of Psychology, College of Staten Island, City University of New York, 2800 Victory Boulevard 4S-108, Staten Island, NY 10314, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2013 Feb;41(2):281-96. doi: 10.3758/s13421-012-0262-9.
In this study, we sought to identify cognitive predictors of individual differences in adult foreign-language learning and to test whether metalinguistic awareness mediated the observed relationships. Using a miniature language-learning paradigm, adults (N = 77) learned Russian vocabulary and grammar (gender agreement and case marking) over six 1-h sessions, completing tasks that encouraged attention to phrases without explicitly teaching grammatical rules. The participants' ability to describe the Russian gender and case-marking patterns mediated the effects of nonverbal intelligence and auditory sequence learning on grammar learning and generalization. Hence, even under implicit-learning conditions, individual differences stemmed from explicit metalinguistic awareness of the underlying grammar, which, in turn, was linked to nonverbal intelligence and auditory sequence learning. Prior knowledge of languages with grammatical gender (predominantly Spanish) predicted learning of gender agreement. Transfer of knowledge of gender from other languages to Russian was not mediated by awareness, which suggests that transfer operates through an implicit process akin to structural priming.
在这项研究中，我们试图确定成人外语学习个体差异的认知预测因素，并检验元语言意识是否在观察到的关系中起中介作用。使用微型语言学习范式，成年人（N=77）在六个 1 小时的课程中学习俄语词汇和语法（性别一致和格标记），完成鼓励关注短语而不明确教授语法规则的任务。参与者描述俄语性别和格标记模式的能力，在非言语智力和听觉序列学习对语法学习和泛化的影响之间起中介作用。因此，即使在隐性学习条件下，个体差异也源于对潜在语法的明确元语言意识，而这种意识又与非言语智力和听觉序列学习有关。对具有语法性别（主要是西班牙语）的语言的先验知识预测了性别一致的学习。从其他语言到俄语的性别知识的转移不受意识的影响，这表明转移是通过类似于结构启动的隐性过程进行的。
