Xue Heng, Deng Renhua, Chen Yanyan, Zheng Wenxin
College of Education, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang, China.
School of Foreign Languages, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Nov 24;13:1003199. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1003199. eCollection 2022.
Bilingual experience exerts a complex influence on novel word learning, including the direct effects of transferable prior knowledge and learning skill. However, the facilitation and interference mechanism of such influence has largely been tangled by the similarity of the previously learned word knowledge. The present study compared Chinese-English bilinguals' paired-associate learning of nonwords in logographic and alphabetic writing systems. The logographic nonwords resemble the form and meaning of L1 Chinese words in varying degrees, being cognates, false cognates, or non-cognates of Chinese. The alphabetic nonwords resemble the form and meaning of L2 English words, being cognates, false cognates, or non-cognates of English. The learning sequence of logographic and alphabetic words was cross-balanced. The learning results were measured in production and recognition tasks. As for learning the logographic nonwords, both the recognition and production results showed that cognates were learned significantly faster than the non-cognates, and the false cognates were also learned significantly faster than the non-cognates. This suggests stronger facilitation rather than interference from L1 on novel word learning. As for learning the alphabetic nonwords, both the recognition and production results revealed that cognates were learned significantly faster than the non-cognates, but false cognates showed no advantage over the non-cognates. This indicates that interference from L2 is stronger than that from L1. Taken together, the results provide new evidence for the dissociable facilitation and interference effects of bilingual experience. These results carry potential educational implications in that learning novel words depends on substantial bilingual experience.
双语经验对新单词学习产生复杂影响，包括可迁移的先验知识和学习技能的直接作用。然而，这种影响的促进和干扰机制在很大程度上因先前所学单词知识的相似性而变得错综复杂。本研究比较了汉英双语者对表意文字和拼音文字系统中的非词进行配对联想学习的情况。表意文字非词在不同程度上类似于第一语言汉语单词的形式和意义，是汉语的同源词、假同源词或非同源词。拼音文字非词类似于第二语言英语单词的形式和意义，是英语的同源词、假同源词或非同源词。表意文字和拼音文字单词的学习顺序进行了交叉平衡。学习结果通过产出和识别任务来衡量。对于学习表意文字非词，识别和产出结果均表明，同源词的学习速度明显快于非同源词，假同源词的学习速度也明显快于非同源词。这表明第一语言对新单词学习的促进作用强于干扰作用。对于学习拼音文字非词，识别和产出结果均显示，同源词的学习速度明显快于非同源词，但假同源词与非同源词相比没有优势。这表明第二语言的干扰作用强于第一语言。综合来看，这些结果为双语经验的可分离促进和干扰效应提供了新证据。这些结果具有潜在的教育意义，即学习新单词依赖于丰富的双语经验。
