Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Dept. of Neuropsychology, Leipzig, Germany.
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Dept. of Neuropsychology, Leipzig, Germany; Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Dept. of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Cognition. 2017 Nov;168:76-90. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.06.018. Epub 2017 Jun 26.
A major challenge in second language acquisition is to build up new vocabulary. How is it possible to identify the meaning of a new word among several possible referents? Adult learners typically use contextual information, which reduces the number of possible referents a new word can have. Alternatively, a social partner may facilitate word learning by directing the learner's attention toward the correct new word meaning. While much is known about the role of this form of 'joint attention' in first language acquisition, little is known about its efficacy in second language acquisition. Consequently, we introduce and validate a novel visual word learning game to evaluate how joint attention affects the contextual learning of new words in a second language. Adult learners either acquired new words in a constant or variable sentence context by playing the game with a knowledgeable partner, or by playing the game alone on a computer. Results clearly show that participants who learned new words in social interaction (i) are faster in identifying a correct new word referent in variable sentence contexts, and (ii) temporally coordinate their behavior with a social partner. Testing the learned words in a post-learning recall or recognition task showed that participants, who learned interactively, better recognized words originally learned in a variable context. While this result may suggest that interactive learning facilitates the allocation of attention to a target referent, the differences in the performance during recognition and recall call for further studies investigating the effect of social interaction on learning performance. In summary, we provide first evidence on the role joint attention in second language learning. Furthermore, the new interactive learning game offers itself to further testing in complex neuroimaging research, where the lack of appropriate experimental set-ups has so far limited the investigation of the neural basis of adult word learning in social interaction.
第二语言习得的一个主要挑战是构建新词汇。如何在几个可能的指称中确定一个新词的意思？成年学习者通常使用上下文信息，这减少了一个新词可能具有的指称数量。或者，社交伙伴可以通过将学习者的注意力引导到正确的新词含义上来促进词汇学习。虽然人们对这种“共同注意”在第一语言习得中的作用了解很多，但对其在第二语言习得中的效果知之甚少。因此，我们引入并验证了一种新的视觉词汇学习游戏，以评估共同注意如何影响第二语言中新词的语境学习。成年学习者通过与知识渊博的伙伴玩游戏或独自在计算机上玩游戏，在固定或可变句子语境中学习新词。结果清楚地表明，在社交互动中学习新词的参与者：（i）在可变句子语境中更快地识别正确的新词指称，（ii）与社交伙伴的行为在时间上协调。在学习后的回忆或识别任务中测试所学单词表明，互动学习的参与者更好地识别了最初在可变语境中学习的单词。虽然这一结果可能表明互动学习有助于将注意力分配到目标指称上，但在识别和回忆过程中的表现差异需要进一步研究，以调查社交互动对学习表现的影响。总之，我们提供了关于共同注意在第二语言学习中的作用的第一个证据。此外，新的互动学习游戏本身也可以在复杂的神经影像学研究中进行进一步测试，在这些研究中，由于缺乏适当的实验设置，迄今为止限制了对社交互动中成人词汇学习的神经基础的研究。
