3 research outputs found
Learning foreign language vocabulary with gestures and pictures enhances vocabulary memory for several months post-learning in eight-year-old school children
Funding Information: This work was funded by the German Research Foundation grant KR 3735/3-1, a Schulbezogene Forschung grant from the Saxony Zentrum fĂŒr Lehrerbildung und Schulforschung (ZLS), and an Erasmus Mundus Postdoctoral Fellowship in Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience. B.M. is also supported by the European Research Council Consolidator Grant SENSOCOM 647051 to K.v.K. Acknowledgments Open access funding provided by Projekt DEAL. We thank Julia Schwerin for assistance with planning and preparing the study, as well as serving as a teacher to the children in two experiments.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Twelve- and fourteen-year-old school children differentially benefit from sensorimotor- and multisensory-enriched vocabulary training
Both children and adults have been shown to benefit from the integration of
multisensory and sensorimotor enrichment into pedagogy. For example,
integrating pictures or gestures into foreign language (L2) vocabulary learning
can improve learning outcomes relative to unisensory learning. However, whereas
adults seem to benefit to a greater extent from sensorimotor enrichment such as
the performance of gestures in contrast to multisensory enrichment with
pictures, this is not the case in elementary school children. Here, we compared
multisensory- and sensorimotor-enriched learning in an intermediate age group
that falls between the age groups tested in previous studies (elementary school
children and young adults), in an attempt to determine the developmental time
point at which children's responses to enrichment mature from a child-like
pattern into an adult-like pattern. Twelve-year-old and fourteen-year-old
German children were trained over 5 consecutive days on auditorily-presented,
concrete and abstract, Spanish vocabulary. The vocabulary was learned under
picture-enriched, gesture-enriched, and non-enriched (auditory-only)
conditions. The children performed vocabulary recall and translation tests at 3
days, 2 months, and 6 months post-learning. Both picture and gesture enrichment
interventions were found to benefit children's L2 learning relative to
non-enriched learning up to 6 months post-training. Interestingly,
gesture-enriched learning was even more beneficial than picture-enriched
learning for the fourteen-year-olds, while the twelve-year-olds benefitted
equivalently from learning enriched with pictures and gestures. These findings
provide evidence for opting to integrate gestures rather than pictures into L2
pedagogy starting at fourteen years of age
Twelve- and Fourteen-Year-Old School Children Differentially Benefit from Sensorimotor- and Multisensory-Enriched Vocabulary Training
Both children and adults have been shown to benefit from the integration of multisensory and sensorimotor enrichment into pedagogy. For example, integrating pictures or gestures into foreign language (L2) vocabulary learning can improve learning outcomes relative to unisensory learning. However, whereas adults seem to benefit to a greater extent from sensorimotor enrichment such as the performance of gestures in contrast to multisensory enrichment with pictures, this is not the case in elementary school children. Here, we compared multisensory- and sensorimotor-enriched learning in an intermediate age group that falls between the age groups tested in previous studies (elementary school children and young adults), in an attempt to determine the developmental time point at which childrenâs responses to enrichment mature from a child-like pattern into an adult-like pattern. Twelve-year-old and fourteen-year-old German children were trained over 5 consecutive days on auditorily presented, concrete and abstract, Spanish vocabulary. The vocabulary was learned under picture-enriched, gesture-enriched, and non-enriched (auditory-only) conditions. The children performed vocabulary recall and translation tests at 3 days, 2 months, and 6 months post-learning. Both picture and gesture enrichment interventions were found to benefit childrenâs L2 learning relative to non-enriched learning up to 6 months post-training. Interestingly, gesture-enriched learning was even more beneficial than picture-enriched learning for the 14-year-olds, while the 12-year-olds benefitted equivalently from learning enriched with pictures and gestures. These findings provide evidence for opting to integrate gestures rather than pictures into L2 pedagogy starting at 14 years of age