Incidental Acquisition of Foreign Language Vocabulary through Brief Multi-Modal Exposure

Marie-Josée Bisson,Walter J B Van Heuven,Kathy Conklin,Richard J Tunney,Krish Sathian

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0060912

Marie-Josée Bisson, Walter J B Van Heuven + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060912

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Journal: PloS one	Publication Date: Apr 8, 2013
Citations: 67	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Nottingham

Abstract

First language acquisition requires relatively little effort compared to foreign language acquisition and happens more naturally through informal learning. Informal exposure can also benefit foreign language learning, although evidence for this has been limited to speech perception and production. An important question is whether informal exposure to spoken foreign language also leads to vocabulary learning through the creation of form-meaning links. Here we tested the impact of exposure to foreign language words presented with pictures in an incidental learning phase on subsequent explicit foreign language learning. In the explicit learning phase, we asked adults to learn translation equivalents of foreign language words, some of which had appeared in the incidental learning phase. Results revealed rapid learning of the foreign language words in the incidental learning phase showing that informal exposure to multi-modal foreign language leads to foreign language vocabulary acquisition. The creation of form-meaning links during the incidental learning phase is discussed.

Highlights

There are many advantages to learning a foreign language (FL), such as a better understanding of another culture or a better chance of employment in an increasingly multilingual society [1]
Exposure to a short FL weather report resulted in an increased sensitivity to the words heard in the weather report compared to other foreign language words [4]
To ensure that differences in performance for the old and the new words in the explicit learning task could be attributed to acquisition rather than to attentional arousal, in the incidental learning phase, a different group of participants saw picture stimuli that did not match the correct meaning of the words

Summary

Introduction

There are many advantages to learning a foreign language (FL), such as a better understanding of another culture or a better chance of employment in an increasingly multilingual society [1]. To ensure that differences in performance for the old and the new words in the explicit learning task could be attributed to acquisition rather than to attentional arousal, in the incidental learning phase, a different group of participants (mismatched group) saw picture stimuli that did not match the correct meaning of the words. If attentional arousal leads to an advantage for the old words, the results for this group should not differ from the group where the pictures matched the meaning of the words, as both groups were exposed to the same FL word forms Another group of participants (multi-session group) took part in phase 2 of the experiment the day rather than immediately after phase 1 and they completed the translation recognition task once again one week later. This multi-session group was used to explore whether the incidentally acquired form-meaning links were transitory or became embedded in memory after a relatively long retention interval

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