Don’t just repeat after me: Retrieval practice is better than imitation for foreign vocabulary learning

Kang, Sean H. K.; Gollan, Tamar H.; Pashler, Harold

doi:10.3758/s13423-013-0450-z

Cited by 47 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Whereas errorless treatment was associated with superior rates of target production at training, retrieval practice methods conferred superior benefits at a retention test after one day, with the advantage persisting for the cueing condition after one week (for similar results in foreign language learning, see Kang, Gollan & Pashler, 2013). The advantage for the retrieval practice conditions originated from training trials involving successful retrieval of target names.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Test-enhanced learning versus errorless learning in aphasia rehabilitation: Testing competing psychological principles.

Middleton¹,

Schwartz²,

Rawson³

et al. 2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Because individuals with acquired language disorders are frequently unable to reliably access the names of common everyday objects (i.e., naming impairment), rehabilitation efforts often focus on improving naming. The present study compared two rehabilitation strategies for naming impairment, reflecting contradictory prescriptions derived from different theoretical principles. The prescription derived from psychological research on test-enhanced learning advocates providing patients opportunities to retrieve target names from long-term memory (i.e., retrieval practice) in the course of treatment. In contrast, the errorless learning approach derived from cognitive rehabilitation research eschews retrieval practice in favor of methods that minimize naming errors, and thus the potential for error learning, in the course of treatment. The present study directly compared these approaches and showed that, despite superior (and errorless) performance during errorless treatment, treatment that prioritized retrieval practice produced greater retention 1-day and 1-week following treatment. These findings have implications for clinical practice, as well as theoretical accounts of lexical access and test-enhanced learning.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Test-enhanced learning versus errorless learning in aphasia rehabilitation: Testing competing psychological principles.

Middleton¹,

Schwartz²,

Rawson³

et al. 2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…At the beginning of each training task or learning test, participants had eight practice trials during which the experimenter was still present in the room to confirm that they understood the task. Participants were instructed to learn the Arabic words and their meanings during the training cycles, of which there were two types (following Kang, Gollan, & Pashler, ). In the first, which took place only in Session 1, participants were instructed to repeat the Arabic word presented to them (Kaushanskaya & Yoo, ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Individual Differences Affect Learning of Translation‐Ambiguous Vocabulary

Degani

Goldberg

2019

Language Learning

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This study examined interactions of word and learner characteristics during foreign vocabulary learning, focusing on translation ambiguity and individual differences in cognitive resources and linguistic background (language proficiency, multilingual experience). Fifty-three native Hebrew speakers and Russian-Hebrew multilinguals learned the phonological form of target Arabic words along with their Hebrew translations and definitions. The mapping could be translation ambiguous, with a single Hebrew word translated into two Arabic words (one-to-many) or translation unambiguous (oneto-one mapping). Results from translation production and meaning recognition tests revealed that translation-ambiguous words were more difficult to learn than translationunambiguous words. This disadvantage did not dissipate with time, and learners' phonological short-term memory was associated with increased translation ambiguity costs. Learners' proficiency in the language through which learning took place (Hebrew), but not degree of multilingualism, modulated learning. Findings underscore the importance of item and learner interactions, clarifying the multilingualism effect in novel language learning. active competition between the different alternative translations may hinder performance, which is in line with assumptions of competitive inhibitory interactions between connected representations in interactive activation models (Doherty, 2004;McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981). Second, translation-ambiguous words may suffer from a decrease in associative strength, similar to the fan effect (e.g., Anderson, 1974). The fan effect assumes that as more facts are associated with a concept, each fact has decreased probability of occurrence and thus lower associative strength. As a result, the more facts that are connected to a concept, the longer individuals take to recall the concept. In the case of translation-ambiguous words, a learner would take longer to retrieve a translation if additional translations are linked to the same word.The majority of previous studies have examined the one-to-many direction of ambiguity, where a single L1 word was mapped onto two foreign language vocabulary items (for an exception focusing on many-to-one mapping, see

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“…The purpose of this task was to gauge the degree of learning from the two learning lists as well as to reinforce learning through feedback (Kang, Gollan, & Pashler, 2013). …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural changes underlying early stages of L2 vocabulary acquisition

Holcomb

Midgley

2016

Journal of Neurolinguistics

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Research has shown neural changes following second language (L2) acquisition after weeks or months of instruction. But are such changes detectable even earlier than previously shown? The present study examines the electrophysiological changes underlying the earliest stages of second language vocabulary acquisition by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) within the first week of learning. Adult native English speakers with no previous Spanish experience completed less than four hours of Spanish vocabulary training, with pre- and post-training ERPs recorded to a backward translation task. Results indicate that beginning L2 learners show rapid neural changes following learning, manifested in changes to the N400 — an ERP component sensitive to lexicosemantic processing and degree of L2 proficiency. Specifically, learners in early stages of L2 acquisition show growth in N400 amplitude to L2 words following learning as well as a backward translation N400 priming effect that was absent pre-training. These results were shown within days of minimal L2 training, suggesting that the neural changes captured during adult second language acquisition are more rapid than previously shown. Such findings are consistent with models of early stages of bilingualism in adult learners of L2 (e.g. Kroll and Stewart’s RHM) and reinforce the use of ERP measures to assess L2 learning.

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Don’t just repeat after me: Retrieval practice is better than imitation for foreign vocabulary learning

Cited by 47 publications

References 23 publications

Test-enhanced learning versus errorless learning in aphasia rehabilitation: Testing competing psychological principles.

Test-enhanced learning versus errorless learning in aphasia rehabilitation: Testing competing psychological principles.

How Individual Differences Affect Learning of Translation‐Ambiguous Vocabulary

Neural changes underlying early stages of L2 vocabulary acquisition

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