Doctoral Dissertation Research: Linguistic and visual cue competition in novel L2 structure learning and thematic role assignment

博士论文研究：小说二语结构学习和主题角色分配中的语言和视觉提示竞争

• 批准号: 2016922
• 负责人: Kiel Christianson
• 金额: $ 1.64万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-07-15 至 2022-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2016922&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Linguistic; visual

This project examines how American English speakers learn a case-marking, flexible word-order language as a second language under different context conditions (with supporting images or translations). It links the real time processing of the new language, as learners read sentences, to the learning outcomes. Learning languages whose structures are different from English poses great difficulty for learners. This project examines the origins of this attested difficulty, and how visual information (images) can guide learners’ attention and help them notice and understand new grammatical structures. It considers the role of the learning environment for grammar learning and can illustrate the way language input is better integrated with non-linguistic, multimodal contextual support. It can guide educators and policy makers in the development of educational software and game design, and online language learning. It can inform the design of successful language programs for U.S. adult learner populations.The studies include a language learning and a subsequent testing phase. During the learning phase, self-paced reading and eye-tracking will show where learners allocate their attention as they read second language sentences, and how attention to different parts of the sentence is modulated by the type of contextual support (images or translations). The goal is to examine how linguistic and visual information interact and compete for learners’ attention. The hypothesis is that visual scenes can make some aspects of grammar ‘stand out’ as learners compare their sentence interpretation to the visual information. During the testing phase, multiple measures will assess participants’ ability to comprehend and produce the new grammatical structure. These studies can show how multimodal input influences the focus of learners’ attention during real-time sentence reading and how this processing affects their learning. This will advance our understanding of how the mind processes and integrates linguistic and visual information when learning a second language, which has clear educational applications especially in online and multimedia language learning.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这个项目考察了美国英语使用者如何在不同的语境条件下(有辅助图像或翻译)学习区分大小写、灵活的词序语言作为第二语言。它将学习者阅读句子时对新语言的实时处理与学习结果联系起来。学习结构不同于英语的语言给学习者带来了很大的困难。本课题研究了这一难题的根源，以及视觉信息(图像)如何引导学习者的注意力，并帮助他们注意和理解新的语法结构。它考虑了学习环境对语法学习的作用，并可以说明语言输入如何与非语言的、多模式的语境支持更好地结合在一起。它可以指导教育工作者和政策制定者开发教育软件和游戏设计，以及在线语言学习。它可以为为美国成人学习者设计成功的语言课程提供参考。这些研究包括语言学习和随后的测试阶段。在学习阶段，自定进度的阅读和眼球跟踪将显示学习者在阅读第二语言句子时将注意力分配到哪里，以及对句子不同部分的注意力是如何受到语境支持类型(图像或翻译)的调节的。目标是研究语言和视觉信息是如何相互作用和竞争学习者的注意力的。假设是视觉场景可以使语法的某些方面“突出”，因为学习者将他们的句子解释与视觉信息进行比较。在测试阶段，多项测试将评估参与者理解和产生新语法结构的能力。这些研究表明，在实时句子阅读过程中，多通道输入如何影响学习者的注意力焦点，以及这种处理过程如何影响他们的学习。这将促进我们对学习第二语言时大脑如何处理和整合语言和视觉信息的理解，这具有明确的教育应用，特别是在在线和多媒体语言学习方面。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。