Stamer Melissa K, Vitevitch Michael S
Department of Psychology, University of Kansas.
Biling (Camb Engl). 2012 Jul 1;15(3):490-502. doi: 10.1017/S1366728911000216.
Neighborhood density-the number of words that sound similar to a given word (Luce & Pisoni, 1998)-influences word-learning in native English speaking children and adults (Storkel, 2004; Storkel, Armbruster, & Hogan, 2006): novel words with many similar sounding English words (i.e., dense neighborhood) are learned more quickly than novel words with few similar sounding English words (i.e., sparse neighborhood). The present study examined how neighborhood density influences word-learning in native English speaking adults learning Spanish as a foreign language. Students in their third-semester of Spanish language classes learned advanced Spanish words that sounded similar to many known Spanish words (i.e., dense neighborhood) or sounded similar to few known Spanish words (i.e., sparse neighborhood). In three word-learning tasks, performance was better for Spanish words with dense rather than sparse neighborhoods. These results suggest that a similar mechanism may be used to learn new words in a native and a foreign language.
邻域密度——即与某个给定单词发音相似的单词数量（卢斯和皮索尼，1998年）——会影响以英语为母语的儿童和成人的词汇学习（斯托克尔，2004年；斯托克尔、阿姆布鲁斯特和霍根，2006年）：与许多发音相似的英语单词相邻的新单词（即高密度邻域）比与很少发音相似的英语单词相邻的新单词（即低密度邻域）学得更快。本研究考察了邻域密度如何影响以英语为母语、将西班牙语作为外语学习的成年人的词汇学习。西班牙语课程第三学期的学生学习了与许多已知西班牙语单词发音相似（即高密度邻域）或与很少已知西班牙语单词发音相似（即低密度邻域）的高级西班牙语单词。在三项词汇学习任务中，高密度邻域的西班牙语单词的表现优于低密度邻域的单词。这些结果表明，可能使用了类似的机制来学习母语和外语中的新单词。
