Doctoral Dissertation Research: Dynamics of language processing and the consequences for new language learning

随着美国的经济、社会和文化继续参与更大的全球文化，学习其他国家的语言以及改进将英语作为第二语言教给来到美国的家庭的方法变得越来越重要。儿童似乎比成年人更擅长学习一门新语言，相反，成年人对他们最终学习一门新语言的效果好坏参半。几十年来，研究人员一直试图了解为什么成年人在学习新语言时会遇到更多困难，以及与不太成功的语言学习者相比，优秀的语言学习者的特点是什么，以便我们能够利用这些信息来改进教学方法。从这项研究中，我们了解了某些因素如何影响新语言学习的结果，但大部分变异性仍未得到解释，这表明仍有一块拼图缺失。在国家科学基金会的支持下，金赛·比斯女士将在朱迪思·克罗尔博士的指导下，研究学习中的个体差异如何塑造新的第二语言学习模式。本项目将研究以前的语言经验如何与一般认知资源相结合，影响新语言学习的轨迹。以前的研究已经发现，母语处理方式的差异可能有助于新语言学习的轨迹(即快语言学习者和慢语言学习者)，也可能受到说话者在处理母语时如何招募认知的各个方面(例如，工作记忆、模式抽象)的影响。本项目将研究熟练语言处理过程中的这些差异如何预测新语言学习的轨迹，以及这些差异是否与非语言能力的差异有关。双语使用者已经有了学习一门新语言的经验，而且他们并不像单一语言使用者那样使用任何一种语言，他们之前被发现在习得新语言方面更好，但双语者在许多方面都不同，这会影响他们的语言学习结果。这个项目将比较单语者和双语者如何处理他们熟练的语言，以及他们如何学习新的语言。行为方法和大脑潜力将被用来确定大脑是否反映了一些仅在行为上不明显的学习过程。测试的双语者将是参加高级外语课程的典型大学生，以及在西班牙语家庭长大但随后接受英语教育的讲传统西班牙语的人。这两组双语者代表了美国公民自己经常遇到的语言体验，而单语组将从环境接触外语水平不同的美国部分地区招募。

As the economy, society, and culture of the United States continue to take part in a larger global culture, it is becoming more important to learn languages spoken in other countries, as well as to improve the methods for teaching English as a second language to the families arriving to the United States. Children appear to be better at learning new languages than adults, who instead have very mixed outcomes in how well they ultimately learn a new language. For decades, research has attempted to understand why adults experience more difficulty in learning new languages and what characterizes good language learners compared to less successful language learners, so that we can use this information to improve teaching methods. From this research, we have learned how certain factors contribute to the outcomes in new language learning, but much of the variability remains unaccounted for, suggesting that there is still a piece of the puzzle missing. With National Science Foundation support, Ms. Kinsey Bice, working under the direction of Dr. Judith Kroll, will investigate how individual differences in learning may shape patterns of new second language learning.The current project will examine how previous language experience combines with general cognitive resources to affect the trajectory of new language learning. Previous research has identified differences in the way that the native language is processed that may contribute to the trajectory of new language learning (i.e., fast and slow language learners), and that may also be affected by how speakers recruit various aspects of cognition (e.g., working memory, pattern abstraction) when processing their native language. This project will examine how these differences in skilled language processing predict the trajectory of new language learning, as well as whether the differences are related to variation in non-language abilities. Bilingual speakers, who already have experience with learning a new language and who do not use either language exactly as monolingual speakers do, have previously been found to be better at acquiring new languages, but bilinguals differ from each other in many ways that affect their language learning outcomes. This project will compare both monolingual and bilingual speakers in how they process their skilled languages and how they learn new languages. Behavioral methods and brain potentials will be used to determine whether the brain reflects some learning processes that are not apparent in behavior alone. The bilinguals tested will be typical college students who are taking advanced foreign language classes, as well as heritage Spanish speakers who are raised in Spanish-speaking homes but then educated in English. These two groups of bilinguals represent language experiences that American citizens often encounter themselves, while the monolingual groups will be recruited from parts of the United States that differ in the levels of ambient exposure to foreign languages.