Incidental Learning and Long‐Term Retention of New Word Meanings From Stories: The Effect of Number of Exposures

Abstract

This study used a Web‐based naturalistic story‐reading paradigm to investigate the impact of number of exposures on incidental acquisition and long‐term retention of new meanings for known words by native English‐speaking adults. Participants read one of four custom written stories in which they encountered novel meanings (e.g., a safe concealed within a piece of furniture) for familiar words (foam). These meanings appeared two, four, six, or eight times in the narrative. Results showed reasonably good memory of the new meanings, assessed by cued recall of novel meanings and word forms, after only two exposures, emphasizing the importance of initial encounters. Accuracy in cued recall of novel meanings showed a linear, incremental increase with more exposures. There was no significant forgetting after 1 week, regardless of the number of exposures during training, demonstrating the efficiency with which adults acquire new word meanings incidentally through reading and retain them over time. Open Practices This article has been awarded an Open Data badge. All data and analysis scripts are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/ybu6r. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.

The effects of contextual diversity on incidental vocabulary learning in the native and a foreign language

“…Following this reasoning, several studies have shown that it is possible to learn vocabulary implicitly through reading in our foreign language 3 – 7 . In addition, we know that people incorporate new lexical forms with as little as one exposure in their native language and as little as two exposures in their foreign language 4 , but that learning improves with exposure to multiple instances of the word 8 .…”

“…This is in part because these skills seem to be affected by knowledge of the language and experience in that particular task 9 , 10 . Although the number of times people encounter a word affects how well they learn and remember it 5 , 8 , there is not much literature on how spreading these encounters across passages affects learning. One of the ways in which this spread is quantified is through contextual diversity—namely, the number of texts in which a word appears in a database 11 , 12 .…”

“…Word frequency refers to the number of times a word appears in a database, which naturally is highly correlated with the number of texts it appears in 11 , and has been better studied than contextual diversity. Although word frequency has historically been considered a significant predictor of performance in various language-related tasks, such as word learning 8 , lexical access 18 , and serial recall performance 17 , recent studies have questioned this effect. These studies suggest that contextual diversity might be the factor responsible for some of the effects initially attributed to word frequency 12 , 18 , 19 , as in some cases it explains more variance than word frequency, rendering the later a non-significant predictor.…”

“…www.nature.com/scientificreports/ language-related tasks, such as word learning 8 , lexical access 18 , and serial recall performance 17 , recent studies have questioned this effect. These studies suggest that contextual diversity might be the factor responsible for some of the effects initially attributed to word frequency 12,18,19 , as in some cases it explains more variance than word frequency, rendering the later a non-significant predictor. Although word frequency and contextual diversity are highly correlated, they show different ERP signatures 19 , suggesting different underlying brain processes, and in some cases, they show opposite behavioral effects.…”

Gaming experience affects the interpretation of ambiguous words

“…The speed with which dominant and subordinate meanings are accessed can be affected by learning, prior knowledge, and experience [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. With respect to learning and experience, Hulme et al [9] showed that adults are able to acquire new meanings for previously non-ambiguous words. Participants were exposed to these novel meanings within a story narrative, and their accuracy in recalling the novel meanings increased with the number of times they encountered the meaning in the story narrative.…”