Abstract
ABSTRACTThis study tested whether individual sensitivity to an auditory perceptual cue called amplitude rise time (ART) facilitates novel word learning. Forty adult native speakers of Polish performed a perceptual task testing their sensitivity to ART, learned associations between nonwords and pictures of common objects, and were subsequently tested on their knowledge with a picture recognition (PR) task. In the PR task participants heard each nonword, followed either by a congruent or incongruent picture, and had to assess if the picture matched the nonword. Word learning efficiency was measured by accuracy and reaction time on the PR task and modulation of the N300 ERP. As predicted, participants with greater sensitivity to ART showed better performance in PR suggesting that auditory sensitivity indeed facilitates learning of novel words. Contrary to expectations, the N300 was not modulated by sensitivity to ART suggesting that the behavioral and ERP measures reflect different underlying processes.
Highlights
IntroductionResearchers identified several factors that characterize good learners of foreign languages
What makes some people excel at learning words of a foreign language and others struggle with the acquisition of even basic vocabulary? Up to now, researchers identified several factors that characterize good learners of foreign languages
We argue that sensitivity to an acoustic cue called amplitude rise time (ART) is relevant for vocabulary acquisition
Summary
Researchers identified several factors that characterize good learners of foreign languages. These include the so-called language aptitude (Carroll & Sapon, 1959), phonological short-term memory capacity (e.g., Baddeley et al, 1998), inhibitory control (Bartolotti et al, 2011), and musical abilities (Dittinger et al, 2016, 2017). We argue that sensitivity to an acoustic cue called amplitude rise time (ART) is relevant for vocabulary acquisition. This acoustic cue is considered important for speech segmentation in an individual’s first language (Richardson et al, 2004; Thomson & Goswami, 2009). Given that better segmentation can lead to more efficient encoding of a novel word form (cf. Marecka et al, 2018 for an overview), high sensitivity to ART should make word learning much easier
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