Collaborative Research: Inside Phonological Learning

语言学的核心问题之一是语言是如何习得的。人们学习语言是否就像鸟儿学习鸣叫一样，使用特殊的大脑机制？还是像学习国际象棋一样，使用通用智能来学习？这个问题的答案对于理解人们如何学习第一语言或第二语言、语言学习如何与其他类型的学习联系起来、大脑如何存储语言知识以及人类如何进化出语言能力至关重要。对于语言的不同方面，答案甚至可能是不同的，比如声音、词汇和句子结构。这对于理解为什么语言并不总是被成功地学习是特别重要的，无论是通过学习第一语言的儿童，还是学习第二语言的成年人。在广泛的层面上，了解如何提高语言学习对社会有积极的影响-改善文化外交，经济增长，增加移民国家的交流-对个人来说-与语言学习相关的个人实现和认知益处。通用智能的研究已经确定了两个独立的学习系统，大致对应于“推理”和“直觉”。他们被不同的学习情境激活，在大脑中引起不同的电活动，擅长学习不同结构的模式。这两个系统在语言习得中的作用尚不清楚。这个项目询问推理和直觉是如何参与第二语言习得的“一门语言的声音模式”——也就是说，声音如何组合成音节和单词等更大的单位。该项目还询问某些模式是否由于其结构或内容而更容易学习。研究人员将教人们发明的语言，这些语言的特性可以被操纵，并测量学习表现和大脑的电反应，以询问语言学习者是否表现出在学习非语言模式时发现的推理和直觉的特征，或者是否使用了不同的机制。研究结果将阐明影响语言学习成功的因素。为了在语言学习领域培养强大而可靠的科学，研究人员将为每个项目的实验分发“复制工具包”，其中包括所有的刺激文件、在用户计算机上设置实验的说明，以及运行实验和数据分析的软件脚本。

One of the core issues in linguistics is how language is acquired. Do people learn a language the way a bird learns its song, using special-purpose brain mechanisms? Or do they learn it the way they learn chess, using general-purpose intelligence? The answer to this question is crucial for understanding how people learn a first or second language, how language learning is connected to other kinds of learning, how the brain stores its knowledge of language, and how humans evolved the capacity for language. The answer might even be different for different aspects of language, such as sounds vs. vocabulary vs. sentence structure. It is especially important for understanding why language is not always learned successfully, either by children acquiring their first language, or adults learning a second language. At a broad level, understanding how to improve language learning has positive impacts for a society--improved cultural diplomacy, economic growth, increased communication in an immigrant nation--and for individuals--personal fulfillment and cognitive benefits associated with language study.Studies of general-purpose intelligence have identified two separate learning systems which approximately correspond to "reasoning" and "intuition". They are activated by different kinds of learning situation, cause different electrical activity in the brain, and are good at learning patterns with different structures. It is not known how these two systems are involved in language acquisition. This project asks how reasoning and intuition are involved in the second-language acquisition of the "sound pattern of a language--that is, how sounds combine to form larger units like syllables and words. The project also asks whether certain patterns are easier to learn either due to their structure or content. The researchers will teach people invented languages whose properties can be manipulated, and measure both learning performance and the brain's electrical response to ask whether the language learners show the characteristic signatures of reasoning and intuition found in learning non-linguistic patterns, or whether different mechanisms are being used. The results will illuminate factors that affect the success of language learning. To foster robust and reliable science in the area of language learning, the investigators will disseminate, for each of the project's experiments, "replication kits" that will include all stimulus files, instructions for setting up the experiments on the user's computer, and software scripts for running the experiments and for data analysis.