Abstract
This paper investigates relationships between procedural-memory, declarative-memory, and working-memory skills and adult native English speakers’ novel sound-category learning. Participants completed a sound-categorization task that required integrating two dimensions: one native (vowel quality), one non-native (pitch). Similar information-integration category structures in the visual and auditory domains have been shown to be best learned implicitly (e.g., Maddox et al., 2006). Thus, we predicted that individuals with greater procedural-memory capacity would better learn sound categories, because procedural memory appears to support implicit learning of new information and integration of dimensions. Seventy undergraduates were tested across two experiments. Procedural memory was assessed using a linguistic adaptation of the serial-reaction-time task (Misyak et al., 2010a,b). Declarative memory was assessed using the logical-memory subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale-4th edition (WMS-IV; Wechsler, 2009). Working memory was assessed using an auditory version of the reading-span task (Kane et al., 2004). Experiment 1 revealed contributions of only declarative memory to dimensional integration, which might indicate not enough time or motivation to shift over to a procedural/integrative strategy. Experiment 2 gave twice the speech-sound training, distributed over 2 days, and also attempted to train at the category boundary. As predicted, effects of declarative memory were removed and effects of procedural memory emerged, but, unexpectedly, new effects of working memory surfaced. The results may be compatible with a multiple-systems account in which declarative and working memory facilitate transfer of control to the procedural system.
Highlights
Learning new languages becomes increasingly difficult as we age
The second factor that we argue contributes to the disparity in language learning between adults and infants is differences in reliance on two different memory systems: the procedural-memory system and the declarative-memory system
In Experiment 1, regression models indicated that surprisingly, declarative memory significantly predicted the total number of invalidated the procedure (1), and failing to click in the correct portion of the screen in any trials in the procedural prediction task (2)
Summary
Individuals that begin learning a language after the age of seven are significantly less likely to attain native-like proficiency in that new language, for syntax and morphology (Newport, 1990) as well as for speech-sound perception and pronunciation (Flege, 1995, 1999; Díaz et al, 2012). It is, impossible to equate the real-world language-learning context across infant and adult learners. We relate individual differences in these memory-skill domains to sound-category learning, one crucial aspect of L2 learning that exhibits wide individual variation for adult learners
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