Doctoral Dissertation Research: Cross-language Interactions in Beginning Adult Bilinguals

美国在外语成功率方面远远落后于其他国家，这对我们在日益全球化的世界中的参与、安全和增长具有深远的影响。这种滞后的一个原因可能是，美国学生第一次接触第二语言的时间相对较晚，通常要到高中或大学才能开始。在这些年龄段学习第二语言可能是相当具有挑战性的，部分原因是年轻人已经掌握了广泛的母语语言知识。本研究的目的是更好地了解不同类型的母语知识是如何影响第二语言词汇学习的：母语如何帮助或阻碍青少年的第二语言词汇学习？为什么？了解这些相互作用将进一步加深我们对新的第二语言单词如何在大脑中呈现以及它们如何与现有语言系统相联系的理解。还将测试母语作为学习方法的作用在多大程度上不同。这些研究将为开发更有效、更循证的外语教学实践奠定基础。更具体地说，该研究使用事件相关电位(ERPs)在实验室环境下跟踪单语大学生的第二语言单词学习。事件相关电位以毫秒为单位测量大脑的电活动，这使得它们有助于跟踪单词识别过程随着时间的推移是如何快速展开的。重点放在两种特定类型的母语单词上，以及它们的相对重要性如何随着学习时间的推移而变化。目标1考虑了新学到的第二语言单词(例如，lait是法语中“牛奶”的意思)如何与在形式上重叠的相邻母语单词(例如，layed，last)的心理表征相互作用。目标2考虑了意义重叠的第二语言单词表征(例如，lait)和其母语对等翻译(例如，Milk)之间的联系。这两种类型的词在第二语言学习和加工的理论模型中都扮演着重要的角色；然而，它们的具体作用在不同的模型中有很大的不同。因此，该领域需要经验证据来在这些不同的模型之间做出判断，并促进我们对新学习的单词如何与母语词汇整合的理解。了解第二语言单词学习的神经认知机制是发展循证教学实践和提高年轻成年学生外语成绩的先决条件。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。

The United States lags far behind other countries in terms of foreign language success rates, which has far-reaching implications for our engagement, safety, and growth in an increasingly global world. One reason for this lag might be that American students are first introduced to a second language relatively late, often not until high school or college. Learning a second language at these ages can be quite challenging, in part because of the extensive linguistic knowledge that young adults already have in their native language. The goal of the present research is to better understand how different types of native language knowledge influence second language word learning: How does the native language help or hinder second language word learning in young adults and why? Understanding these interactions will further our understanding of how the new second language words are represented in the brain and how they are connected up to the existing linguistic system. The extent to which involvement of the native language differs as a function of learning methodology will also be tested. These studies will help form the foundation for the development of more effective, evidence-based foreign language teaching practices.More specifically, the proposed studies use event-related potentials (ERPs) to track second language word learning among monolingual college students in a laboratory setting. ERPs measure the electrical activity of the brain on a millisecond-by-millisecond basis, which makes them useful for tracking how rapid word recognition processes unfold over time. The focus is on two specific types of native language words and how their relative importance changes over learning time. Aim 1 considers how newly learned second language words (e.g., lait is the French word for 'milk') interact with the mental representations of neighboring native language words (e.g., laid, last), which overlap in form. Aim 2 considers the connections between the second language word representations (e.g., lait) and their native language translation equivalents (e.g., milk), which overlap in meaning. Both types of words play prominent roles in theoretical models of second language learning and processing; however, their specific roles differ substantially across models. Thus, the field is in need of empirical evidence that will adjudicate between these various models and advance our understanding of how newly learned words are integrated with the native language lexicon. Understanding the neurocognitive mechanisms of second language word learning is a prerequisite to developing evidence-based teaching practices and improving foreign language outcomes among young adult students.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.