Long-term phonological learning begins at the level of word form

Incidental learning of phonological structures through repeated exposure is an important component of native and foreign-language vocabulary acquisition that is not well understood at the neurophysiological level. It is also not settled when this type of learning occurs at the level of word forms as opposed to phoneme sequences. Here, participants listened to and repeated back foreign phonological forms (Korean words) and new native-language word forms (Finnish pseudowords) on two days. Recognition performance was improved, repetition latency became shorter and repetition accuracy increased when phonological forms were encountered multiple times. Cortical magnetoencephalography responses occurred bilaterally but the experimental effects only in the left hemisphere. Superior temporal activity at 300–600 ms, probably reflecting acoustic-phonetic processing, lasted longer for foreign phonology than for native phonology. Formation of longer-term auditory-motor representations was evidenced by a decrease of a spatiotemporally separate left temporal response and correlated increase of left frontal activity at 600–1200 ms on both days. The results point to item-level learning of novel whole-word representations

Why computational models are better than verbal theories: the case of nonword repetition

Tests of nonword repetition (NWR) have often been used to examine children’s phonological knowledge and word learning abilities. However, theories of NWR primarily explain performance either in terms of phonological working memory or long-term knowledge, with little consideration of how these processes interact. One theoretical account that focuses specifically on the interaction between short-term and long-term memory is the chunking hypothesis. Chunking occurs because of repeated exposure to meaningful stimulus items, resulting in the items becoming grouped (or chunked); once chunked, the items can be represented in short-term memory using one chunk rather than one chunk per item. We tested several predictions of the chunking hypothesis by presenting 5-6 year-old children with three tests of NWR that were either high, medium, or low in wordlikeness. The results did not show strong support for the chunking hypothesis, suggesting that chunking fails to fully explain children’s NWR behavior. However, simulations using a computational implementation of chunking (namely CLASSIC, or Chunking Lexical And Sublexical Sequences In Children) show that, when the linguistic input to 5-6 year old children is estimated in a reasonable way, the children’s data is matched across all three NWR tests. These results have three implications for the field: (a) a chunking account can explain key NWR phenomena in 5-6 year old children; (b) tests of chunking accounts require a detailed specification both of the chunking mechanism itself and of the input on which the chunking mechanism operates; and (c) verbal theories emphasizing the role of long-term knowledge (such as chunking) are not precise enough to make detailed predictions about experimental data, but computational implementations of the theories can bridge the gap

Questioning short-term memory and its measurement: why digit span measures long-term associative learning

Traditional accounts of verbal short-term memory explain differences in performance for different types of verbal material by reference to inherent characteristics of the verbal items making up memory sequences. The role of previous experience with sequences of different types is ostensibly controlled for either by deliberate exclusion or by presenting multiple trials constructed from different random permutations

Computer simulations of developmental change: The contributions of working memory capacity and long-term knowledge

Increasing working memory (WM) capacity is often cited as a major influence on children’s development and yet WM capacity is difficult to examine independently of long-term knowledge. A computational model of children’s nonword repetition (NWR) performance is presented that independently manipulates long-term knowledge and WM capacity to determine the relative contributions of each in explaining the developmental data. The simulations show that (1) both mechanisms independently cause the same overall developmental changes in NWR performance; (2) increase in long-term knowledge provides the better fit to the child data; and (3) varying both long-term knowledge and WM capacity adds no significant gains over varying long-term knowledge alone. Given that increases in long-term knowledge must occur during development, the results indicate that increases in WM capacity may not be required to explain developmental differences. An increase in WM capacity should only be cited as a mechanism of developmental change when there are clear empirical reasons for doing so

The influences and outcomes of phonological awareness: a study of MA, PA and auditory processing in pre-readers with a family risk of dyslexia

The direct influence of phonological awareness (PA) on reading outcomes has been widely demonstrated, yet PA may also exert indirect influence on reading outcomes through other cognitive variables such as morphological awareness (MA). However, PA's own development is dependent and influenced by many extraneous variables such as auditory processing, which could ultimately impact reading outcomes. In a group of pre-reading children with a family risk of dyslexia and low-risk controls, this study sets out to answer questions surrounding PA's relationship at various grain sizes (syllable, onset/rime and phoneme) with measures of auditory processing (frequency modulation (FM) and an amplitude rise-time task (RT)) and MA, independent of reading experience. Group analysis revealed significant differences between high- and low-risk children on measures of MA, and PA at all grain sizes, while a trend for lower RT thresholds of high-risk children was found compared with controls. Correlational analysis demonstrated that MA is related to the composite PA score and syllable awareness. Group differences on MA and PA were re-examined including PA and MA, respectively, as control variables. Results exposed PA as a relevant component of MA, independent of reading experience

Towards a Unified Model of Language Acquisition

In this theoretical paper, we first review and rebut standard criticisms against distributional approaches to language acquisition. We then present two closely-related models that use distributional analysis. The first deals with the acquisition of vocabulary, the second with grammatical development. We show how these two models can be combined with a semantic network grown using Hebbian learning, and briefly illustrate the advantages of this combination. An important feature of this hybrid system is that it combines two different types of distributional learning, the first based on order, and the second based on co-occurrences within a context

Exploratory Practice: Researching the Impact of Songs on EFL Learners' Verbal Memory

Traditionally popular songs have been used as a way of enhancing listening and auditory perception skills and teaching vocabulary, but not necessarily for memory recall. Popular song gap-fills are already commonplace within the EFL (English as a foreign language) field; however, this study found that more attention needs to be given, to the lexical, grammatical and phonological items that learners are instructed to retain. The results of this study suggest that, verbal memory is a vital part of language learning that should be incorporated into popular song gap-fills and that EFL teachers, theorists and textbook authors need to review the way language in popular songs is encoded, stored and retrieved, by incorporating memory strategies, following guidelines on gap-selection, including a phonological aspect and using a recycling activity. In this article traditional and contemporary understandings of verbal memory and popular song are outlined and comprehensively analysed within relevant fields that embrace ELT (English language teaching), Biology, Psycholinguistics, Neurolinguistics and Cognitive Psychology perspectives and discusses their pedagogical implications

From phonetics to phonology : The emergence of first words in Italian

This study assesses the extent of phonetic continuity between babble and words in four Italian children followed longitudinally from 0; 9 or 0; 10 to 2;0-two with relatively rapid and two with slower lexical growth. Prelinguistic phonetic characteristics, including both (a) consistent use of specific consonants and (b) age of onset and extent of consonant variegation in babble, are found to predict rate of lexical advance and to relate to the form of the early words. In addition, each child's lexical profile is analyzed to test the hypothesis of non-linearity in phonological development. All of the children show the expected pattern of phonological advance: 'Relatively accurate first word production is followed by lexical expansion, characterized by a decrease in accuracy and an increase of similarity between word forms. We interpret such a profile as reflecting the emergence of word templates, a first step in phonological organization

Phonological processing deficit - a culprit behind developmental dyslexia?

Udostępnienie publikacji Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego finansowane w ramach projektu „Doskonałość naukowa kluczem do doskonałości kształcenia”. Projekt realizowany jest ze środków Europejskiego Funduszu Społecznego w ramach Programu Operacyjnego Wiedza Edukacja Rozwój; nr umowy: POWER.03.05.00-00-Z092/17-00