Phonological short-term memory and language learning in different populations

提出了三个主题。第一个问题涉及语音短时记忆与新语言学习的关系。这项拟议的研究旨在增加我们对数据的理解，这些数据与第一语言习得、学习阅读的正常进展和成功学习一门外语有关，这些数据与立即重复相对无意义的口头材料的能力有关，例如数字或可发音的假词。这些发现促使Baddeley，Gathercole和Papagno(1998)提出，这些任务所利用的记忆类型构成了语言学习系统。该解释指出，语音短期记忆形成了语言材料长期存储的门户。我们在这里探索了另一种假设，即语音短期记忆任务为我们提供了学习过程的快照，语言学习的基本能力是编码特定的语音痕迹，这些痕迹在短期记忆任务的高干扰条件下幸存下来。第二个主题涉及语音工作记忆表征的特点及其与语音长期知识的相互作用。这一主题是在传统的列表学习实验中进行的，这些实验挖掘不同语言信息(在感觉特征、语音、词法和韵律水平上)的重要性，以供以后提取。最后一个主题是通过尝试开发标记不同类型学习的大脑测量来解决语言学习过程本身。这些被用来描述一生中的语言学习。其目的是调查语言学习过程中与年龄相关的质的差异。未来，这些知识可以用来为目标群体开发更适合的教学方法。

Three themes are proposed. The first one concerns the relationship between phonological short-term memory and learning of new language. The proposed research aims to add to our understanding of the data relating the ability to immediately repeat back relatively meaningless verbal material, for instance, digits or pronounceable pseudowords, with first language acquisition, normal progress in learning to read, and successful learning of a foreign-language. Such findings led Baddeley, Gathercole and Papagno (1998) to propose that the type of memory tapped by these tasks constitutes a language learning system. The explanation states that phonological short-term memory forms a gateway to long-term storage of language material. We explore here an alternative hypothesis that phonological short-term memory tasks provide us with a snapshot of the learning process, and that a fundamental ability underlying language learning is that of encoding well-specified phonological traces that survive the high-interference conditions in short-term memory tasks. The second theme concerns the character of phonological working memory representations and their interaction with phonological long-term knowledge. This theme is investigated in traditional list learning experiments that tap the importance of different language information (on the level of sensory features, phonology, morphology and prosody) for later retrieval. A final theme addresses the language learning process itself by attempting to develop brain measures that mark different types of learning. These are used to characterise language learning over the life span. The aim is to investigate age-dependent qualitative differences in language-learning processes. In the future, such knowledge can be used to develop better-suited teaching methods for target groups.