Hayakawa Sayuri, Bartolotti James, van den Berg Aimee, Marian Viorica
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
Languages (Basel). 2020 Mar;5(1). doi: 10.3390/languages5010002. Epub 2019 Dec 27.
When learning a foreign language, words that are the hardest to learn are often the easiest to forget. Yet, there is also evidence that more challenging learning contexts can lead to greater long-term retention. Here, we investigate the effect of language difficulty on vocabulary retention by teaching participants novel words that varied in both imageability and similarity to a known language over a period of four weeks. We found that easier words (high-imageability and familiar) were generally retained better than harder words (low-imageability and unfamiliar). However, when words were fully learned during training, the more difficult unfamiliar words were later recalled with higher accuracy than easier familiar words. The effect of language difficulty on vocabulary retention therefore varies depending on how well words were initially encoded. We conclude that greater challenges can reap greater long-term rewards so long as learners establish a strong foundation during initial acquisition.
学习外语时，最难学的单词往往也是最容易忘记的。然而，也有证据表明，更具挑战性的学习环境会带来更好的长期记忆效果。在此，我们通过在四周时间内教授参与者在形象性和与已知语言的相似性方面都有所不同的新单词，来研究语言难度对词汇记忆的影响。我们发现，较简单的单词（高形象性且熟悉）通常比更难的单词（低形象性且不熟悉）记忆得更好。然而，当单词在训练期间被完全学会时，更难的不熟悉单词后来的回忆准确率要高于较简单的熟悉单词。因此，语言难度对词汇记忆的影响取决于单词最初的编码效果。我们得出结论，只要学习者在初始学习阶段建立起坚实的基础，更大的挑战就能带来更大的长期回报。
