RUI: The Role of Childhood Language Memory in Adult Language Learning: Korean Adoptees Learning Korean as Adults

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。广泛的研究表明，早期的语言经验对于达到母语水平至关重要。然而，尚不清楚的是，仅仅局限于早期的早期语言经验是否仍然可以帮助成年语言学习者重新学习语言，即使在多年不用之后。在一项对被收养时（3岁至8岁）与韩语完全隔绝的韩国被收养者的一系列研究中，被收养者似乎没有表现出早期韩语经历的任何优势。事实上，他们似乎没有表现出对童年语言的记忆，这似乎表明，如果没有对童年语言的持续体验，早期语言体验的好处就无法维持。相比之下，其他研究表明，成年学习者只在幼儿时期说过或听过一种传统语言，这种早期的、中断的语言经验确实会给他们带来好处。尽管这些成人学习者在幼儿期之后没有常规的语言经验，但他们说话的口音比那些没有这种经历的成人学习者要好，这表明早期语言经验的好处是可以保持的，即使这种经验在幼儿期之后没有继续。为什么传统语言的成人学习者可以记忆童年语言，而被收养者却不能？也许在这两种情况下，儿童时期的语言记忆都是完整的，但被收养者无法访问他们的记忆，因为他们多年没有使用或听过这种语言。相比之下，成人学习儿童时期的语言可能能够重新访问这些记忆，因为重新学习语言有助于激活旧的记忆。因此，如果被收养的韩国人重新学习他们小时候的语言，他们可能会重新使用他们小时候的语言。另外，重新学习他们的传统语言的成年人可能通过家庭成员或传统社区成员有一些有限但持续的接触他们童年的语言。因此，该项目将调查被收养的成年韩国人对韩语的再学习情况，这一群体在童年早期就没有继续接触过韩语。在研究1中，正在学习韩国语的被收养者将在第一学期韩国语课程开始和结束时接受语言评估。在研究2中，之前没有韩语经验的被收养者将在一系列以韩语顿音为重点的感知训练之前和之后参加相同的语言评估。在这两项研究中，被收养者？研究人员将把被收养者的表现与非被收养者的表现进行比较，看看被收养者是否比第一次学习英语的人表现出任何优势。他们还将与母语为韩语的人进行比较，以评估他们的能力是否像母语人士。我们还将调查这些影响是否随一系列心理和情感因素而变化。这项研究将丰富我们对早期语言经验如何影响成人语言学习的理解。它将告诉我们早期的、中断的语言经验对后来的语言学习的作用，这对那些想让孩子接触多种语言的父母来说是有意义的。此外，这项研究将告知那些可能希望帮助他们的孩子学习或保持童年语言的国际收养儿童的父母。通过研究收养前的经历如何影响后来的发展，甚至在成年期，这也将有助于我们对被收养者发展的理解。最后，该研究将有助于语言教学课程的设计，特别是对于那些语言学习者来自不同类型遗产背景的课程。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Extensive research has demonstrated that early linguistic experience is critical for achieving native-like proficiency in a language. However, what remains unclear is whether early linguistic experience that is limited only to the very early years can still aid the adult language learner when relearning the language, even after many years of disuse. In one series of studies of Korean adoptees who were completely cut off from Korean when they were adopted (between ages 3 and 8), the adoptees do not seem to show any advantages of their early experiences with Korean. In fact, they appear to show no memory for their childhood language, which seems to indicate that without continued experience with a childhood language, the benefits of early linguistic experience cannot be maintained. In contrast, other studies indicate that adult learners of a heritage language that they spoke or heard only during early childhood do show benefits of such early, discontinued linguistic experience. Although they did not have regular experience with the language after early childhood, these adult learners speak with a better accent than those adult learners who have not had such experiences, thus demonstrating that the benefits of early linguistic experience can be maintained, even when that experience is not continued after early childhood. Why is childhood language memory accessible for the adult heritage language learners but not the adoptees? Perhaps the childhood language memory is intact in both cases, but the adoptees cannot access their memory because they have not used or heard the language in many years. In contrast, adult learners of a childhood language may be able to re-access these memories because relearning the language helps activate an old memory. Thus, if Korean adoptees were to relearn their childhood language, they might be able to tap back into their childhood language. Alternatively, adults who relearned their heritage language may have had some limited but continued exposure to their childhood language through family members or members of the heritage community. This project will therefore investigate the relearning of Korean among adult Korean adoptees, a group that would not have experienced continued exposure to the language after early childhood. In Study 1, adoptees who are learning Korean as adults will take part in a language assessment at the beginning and end of their first-semester Korean language course. In Study 2, adoptees with no prior experience with Korean will take part the same language assessment before and after a series of perceptual training sessions focusing on Korean stop consonants. In both studies, adoptees? performance will be compared to that of English-monolingual non-adoptees to see whether adoptees show any advantage over first-time learners of the language. They will also be compared to native Korean speakers to assess how native-like their abilities are. We will also investigate whether these effects vary with a range of psychological and emotional factors.This study will enrich our understanding of how early language experiences can impact adult language learning. It will inform us about the role of early, discontinued language experience on later language learning, which has implications for parents who may want to expose their young children to more than one language. Additionally, the study will inform parents of internationally adopted children who may want to help their children in learning or maintaining their childhood language. It will also contribute to our understanding of adoptee development by examining how pre-adoption experiences may affect later development, even in adulthood. Finally, the study will aid in the design of language instruction courses, especially for those programs in which many of the language learners come from various types of heritage backgrounds.