Cross-Situational Word Learning in Two Foreign Languages: Effects of Native Language and Perceptual Difficulty

Alba Tuninetti,Paola Escudero,Karen E. Mulak

doi:10.3389/fcomm.2020.602471

Abstract

Cross-situational word learning (CSWL) paradigms have gained traction in recent years as a way to examine word learning in ambiguous scenarios in infancy, childhood, and adulthood. However, no study thus far has examined how CSWL paradigms may provide viable learning pathways for second language (L2) word learning. Here, we used a CSWL paradigm to examine how native Australian English (AusE) speakers learned novel Dutch (Experiment 1) and Brazilian Portuguese (Experiment 2) word-object pairings. During each learning phase trial, two words and objects were presented without indication as to which auditory word belonged to which visual referent. The two auditory words formed a non-minimal or vowel minimal pair. Minimal pairs were classified as “perceptually easy” or “perceptually difficult” based on the acoustic-phonetic relationship between AusE and each L2. At test, participants again saw two visual referents but heard one auditory label and were asked to select the corresponding referent. We predicted that accuracy would be highest for non-minimal pair trials (in which the auditory words associated with the target and distractor object formed a non-minimal pair), followed by perceptually easy minimal pairs, with lowest accuracy for perceptually difficult minimal pair trials. Our results support these hypotheses: While accuracy was above chance for all pair types, in both experiments accuracy was highest for non-minimal pair trials, followed by perceptually easy and then perceptually difficult minimal pair trials. These results are the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of CSWL in adult L2 word learning. Furthermore, the difference between perceptually easy and perceptually difficult minimal pairs in both language groups suggests that the acoustic-phonetic relationship between the L1-L2 is an important factor in novel L2 word learning in ambiguous learning scenarios. We discuss the implications of our findings for L2 acquisition, cross-situational learning and encoding of phonetic detail in a foreign language.

Highlights

Learning a second language (L2) can be difficult and time-consuming
We focused on vowel minimal pairs over consonant minimal pairs because previous work has demonstrated that while native Australian English (AusE) listeners learn both consonant and vowel minimal pairs via Cross-situational word learning (CSWL) in their own language, performance is weakest for native vowel minimal pairs (Escudero et al, 2016; Mulak et al, 2019)
While previous research demonstrates that adults can learn words in their native language via CSWL, we were interested in whether CSWL extends to foreign language word learning, in situations in which the foreign words are predicted to be perceptually difficult for the listener to discriminate, since this would be expected to impact learners’ ability to accurately track wordobject co-occurences across trials

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Learning a second language (L2) can be difficult and time-consuming. Compared to young children, adults need more time and exposure to achieve native-like proficiency in an L2 (e.g., Johnson and Newport, 1989; deKeyser, 2000), and despite these efforts, are rarely rated as sounding like native speakers of the language (see Piske et al, 2001). In a CSWL task in which participants were taught two auditory labels for each visual referent, participants with experience with more than one language (i.e., they knew English and had knowledge of at least one other language) were better at learning both labels compared to monolingual English participants, but only when the two auditory labels were very phonologically distinct (disyllabic words ending in a vowel vs monosyllabic words ending in /k/; Benitez et al, 2016) These results highlight the possibility that if monolinguals are unable to distinguish between the auditory minimal pairs, their ability to track the wordobject pairs across learning trials may be disrupted and may lead to competition between certain word pairs depending on their phonetic similarity. We further predicted that accuracy would be worst for perceptually difficult minimal pairs compared to perceptually easy pairs, presumably because the difficulty in discriminating between words would disrupt cross-situational tracking of wordobject co-occurrences

METHODS

RESULTS

DISCUSSION

ETHICS STATEMENT