THE INFLUENCE OF PHONOLOGICAL SIMILARITY IN ADULTS LEARNING WORDS IN A SECOND LANGUAGE

Neighborhood density refers to the number of similar sounding words to a target word (Luce & Pisoni, 1998) and influences first language word learning in adults learning English (Storkel, Armbruster, & Hogan, 2006). There are two processes in word learning: lexical configuration and lexical engagement (Leach & Samuel, 2007). Lexical configuration refers to the speaker learning the sounds of the word. Lexical engagement refers to when the novel word is integrated into the lexicon and participates in lexical processes such as competition. The present work is the first to examine how neighborhood density influences lexical configuration and lexical engagement in second language word learning. Third-semester Spanish students performed four word learning tasks. The present results suggest neighborhood density influences lexical configuration and lexical engagement where words from a dense neighborhood are learned more accurately than words from a sparse neighborhood. The psycholinguistic and pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed

Phonological similarity influences word learning in adults learning Spanish as a foreign language

Neighborhood density—the number of words that sound similar to a given word (Luce & Pisoni, 1998)—influences word-learning in native English speaking children and adults (Storkel, 2004; Storkel, Armbruster, & Hogan, 2006): novel words with many similar sounding English words (i.e., dense neighborhood) are learned more quickly than novel words with few similar sounding English words (i.e., sparse neighborhood). The present study examined how neighborhood density influences word-learning in native English speaking adults learning Spanish as a foreign language. Students in their third-semester of Spanish language classes learned advanced Spanish words that sounded similar to many known Spanish words (i.e., dense neighborhood) or sounded similar to few known Spanish words (i.e., sparse neighborhood). In three word-learning tasks, performance was better for Spanish words with dense rather than sparse neighborhoods. These results suggest that a similar mechanism may be used to learn new words in a native and a foreign language

The Beginning Spanish Lexicon: A Web-based interface to calculate phonological similarity among Spanish words in adults learning Spanish as a foreign language

A number of resources provide psycholinguistic researchers with information about the words that the typical child or adult knows in a variety of languages. What is currently not available is a resource that provides information about the words that a typical adult learning a foreign language knows. We created such a resource for Spanish: The Beginning Spanish Lexicon. The present report describes the words contained in this web-accessible resource, and the information about those words provided by the interface. This information is freely accessible at: http://www.people.ku.edu/~mvitevit/BegSpanLex.htm

The influence of neighborhood density (and neighborhood frequency) in Spanish speech production: A follow-up report

Vitevitch & Stamer (2006) observed that Spanish speakers in a picture-naming task named words with dense neighborhoods more slowly than words with sparse neighborhoods; a finding that contrasts with results typically obtained in studies of speech production in English (Vitevitch, 2002b). Baus, Costa & Carreiras (2008) raised concerns about the stimuli employed in Vitevitch & Stamer (2006), and found with a different set of pictures that Spanish speakers in a picture-naming task named words with dense neighborhoods more quickly than words with sparse neighborhoods. Several supplemental analyses of the stimuli employed in Vitevitch & Stamer (2006) are reported. Furthermore, the results of a picture-naming experiment raise concerns about the stimuli used by Baus, Costa & Carreiras (2008). Finally, an analysis of naming times from an independent set of pictures (Bates et al., 2003) replicated the pattern of results initially observed in Vitevitch & Stamer (2006): phonologically similar words compete during speech production in Spanish.This research was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health to the University of Kansas through the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) R01 DC 006472), the Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development P30 HD002528), and the Center for Biobehavioral Neurosciences in Communication Disorders (NIDCD P30 DC005803)