Bilingualism reduces native-language interference during novel-word learning.

Kaushanskaya, Margarita; Marian, Viorica

doi:10.1037/a0015275

Cited by 79 publications

(128 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Bilinguals, who continually control access to two languages, have better executive functioning than monolinguals as a result of their unique language experience (e.g., Bialystok, 2015; Blumenfeld & Marian, 2013). Inhibitory control skill is thought to contribute to differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in terms of second/third language learning ability (Bartolotti & Marian, 2012; Kaushanskaya & Marian, 2009a, 2009b), and here we observe that within monolingual speakers of English, differences in inhibitory control ability do affect word learning performance.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 59%

Neural signatures of second language learning and control

et al. 2017

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Experience with multiple languages has unique effects on cortical structure and information processing. Differences in gray matter density and patterns of cortical activation are observed in lifelong bilinguals compared to monolinguals as a result of their experience managing interference across languages. Monolinguals who acquire a second language later in life begin to encounter the same type of linguistic interference as bilinguals, but with a different pre-existing language architecture. The current study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the beginning stages of second language acquisition and cross-linguistic interference in monolingual adults. We found that after English monolinguals learned novel Spanish vocabulary, English and Spanish auditory words led to distinct patterns of cortical activation, with greater recruitment of posterior parietal regions in response to English words and of left hippocampus in response to Spanish words. In addition, cross-linguistic interference from English influenced processing of newly-learned Spanish words, decreasing hippocampus activity. Results suggest that monolinguals may rely on different memory systems to process a newly-learned second language, and that the second language system is sensitive to native language interference.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 59%

Neural signatures of second language learning and control

et al. 2017

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“…However, it is important to note that very little of this research has addressed the issue of new learning or the ways in which the use of a second language may change the sort of regulatory strategies people bring to new learning contexts. The few experiments that have investigated the consequences of bilingualism for vocabulary learning have produced results that are largely positive, with evidence that bilinguals are better new language learners than are monolinguals when confronted with new foreign language vocabulary (Kaushanskaya & Marian, 2009). What is unclear is whether the reported advantage is simply another reflection of the more general consequences of bilingualism for cognition or whether bilingualism produces specific consequences for learning that reflect the life experience bilinguals have in regulating the use of the two languages.…”

Section: Domain-general Effects Of Bilingualismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Desirable Difficulties in Vocabulary Learning

Bjork¹,

Kroll²

2015

The American Journal of Psychology

141

109

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In this article we discuss the role of desirable difficulties in vocabulary learning from two perspectives, one having to do with identifying conditions of learning that impose initial challenges to the learner but then benefit later retention and transfer, and the other having to do with the role of certain difficulties that are intrinsic to language processes, are engaged during word learning, and reflect how language is understood and produced. From each perspective we discuss evidence that supports the notion that difficulties in learning and imposed costs to language processing may produce benefits because they are likely to increase conceptual understanding. We then consider the consequences of these processes for actual second-language learning and suggest that some of the domain-general cognitive advantages that have been reported for proficient bilinguals may reflect difficulties imposed by the learning process, and by the requirement to negotiate cross-language competition, that are broadly desirable. As Alice Healy and her collaborators were perhaps the first to demonstrate, research on desirable difficulties in vocabulary and language learning holds the promise of bringing together research traditions on memory and language that have much to offer each other.Vocabulary learning, viewed broadly, is fundamental to our initial and continued learning in almost every domain. We need to know the language, so to speak, not simply in the sense of learning a first or second language but also in the sense of learning the vocabulary that characterizes some field of study, such as biology or the law. Our primary concern as teachers, for example, may be increasing students' higher-level understanding of concepts in some domain and increasing their ability to generalize those concepts to new situations where they are relevant, but achieving those goals rests on students having acquired the basic vocabulary of terms and labels in that domain.Perhaps understandably, then, vocabulary learning has often been examined in different ways by memory researchers and by language researchers. Memory researchers have frequently examined vocabulary learning using materials that are selected to ensure that the participants know little, typically nothing, of the to-be-learned language, such as having college students learn English translations of Swahili words, before the experiment. The goals of such experiments are to understand more about processes such as response learning,

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“…A language-background criterion was also employed. Bilingual speakers were excluded because they might present an advantage in novel word learning with respect to their monolingual peers (Kaushanskaya & Marian, 2009), and might employ mechanisms to switch from a dominant to a non-dominant language that differ in nature from those used by non-bilinguals (Costa & Santesteban, 2004). …”

Section: Experimental Investigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revise and resubmit: How real-time parsing limitations influence grammar acquisition

Pozzan

Trueswell

2015

Cognitive Psychology

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We present the results from a three-day artificial language learning study on adults. The study examined whether sentence-parsing limitations, in particular, difficulties revising initial syntactic/semantic commitments during comprehension, shape learners’ ability to acquire a language. Findings show that both comprehension and production of morphology pertaining to sentence argument structure are delayed when this morphology consistently appears at the end, rather than at the beginning, of sentences in otherwise identical grammatical systems. This suggests that real-time processing constraints impact acquisition; morphological cues that tend to guide linguistic analyses are easier to learn than cues that revise these analyses. Parallel performance in production and comprehension indicates that parsing constraints affect grammatical acquisition, not just real-time commitments. Properties of the linguistic system (e.g., ordering of cues within a sentence) interact with the properties of the cognitive system (cognitive control and conflict-resolution abilities) and together affect language acquisition.

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Bilingualism reduces native-language interference during novel-word learning.

Cited by 79 publications

References 41 publications

Neural signatures of second language learning and control

Neural signatures of second language learning and control

Desirable Difficulties in Vocabulary Learning

Revise and resubmit: How real-time parsing limitations influence grammar acquisition

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