Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T00:10:43.179Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Phonological similarity influences word learning in adults learning Spanish as a foreign language*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2011

MELISSA K. STAMER  and
MICHAEL S. VITEVITCH
MELISSA K. STAMER
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Kansas
MICHAEL S. VITEVITCH*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Kansas
*
Address for correspondence: Michael S. Vitevitch, Spoken Language Laboratory, Department of Psychology, 1415 Jayhawk Blvd., University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USAmvitevit@ku.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Neighborhood density – the number of words that sound similar to a given word (Luce & Pisoni, 1998) – influences word learning in native English-speaking children and adults (Storkel, 2004; Storkel, Armbruster & Hogan, 2006): novel words with many similar sounding English words (i.e., dense neighborhood) are learned more quickly than novel words with few similar sounding English words (i.e., sparse neighborhood). The present study examined how neighborhood density influences word learning in native English-speaking adults learning Spanish as a foreign language. Students in their third semester of Spanish-language classes learned advanced Spanish words that sounded similar to many known Spanish words (i.e., dense neighborhood) or sounded similar to few known Spanish words (i.e., sparse neighborhood). In three word-learning tasks, performance was better for Spanish words with dense rather than sparse neighborhoods. These results suggest that a similar mechanism may be used to learn new words in a native and a foreign language.

Keywords

neighborhood densitySpanishword learningadults
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , July 2012 , pp. 490 - 502
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This research was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health to the University of Kansas through the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) R01 DC 006472), the Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development P30 HD002528), and the Center for Biobehavioral Neurosciences in Communication Disorders (NIDCD P30 DC005803). The experiments in this report partially fulfilled the requirements for a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Foreign Language Education-Curriculum and Instruction awarded to MKS. We thank the members of the committee (Manuela Gonzalez-Bueno (co-chair), Joan A. Sereno, Lizette Peter, and Suzanne Rice) and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

References

Arbesman, S., Strogatz, S. H., & Vitevitch, M. S. (2010a). Comparative analysis of networks of phonologically similar words in English and Spanish. Entropy, 12, 327–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arbesman, S., Strogatz, S. H., & Vitevitch, M. S. (2010b). The structure of phonological networks across multiple languages. International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, 20, 679–685.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barcroft, J. (2003). Effects of questions about word meaning during L2 Spanish lexical learning. Modern Language Journal, 87 (4), 546–561.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breiner-Sanders, K. E., Lowe, P., Miles, J., & Swender, E. (2000). ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines–Speaking Revised 1999. Foreign Language Annals, 33, 13–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byers-Heinlein, K., Burns, T. C., & Werker, J. F. (2010). The roots of bilingualism in newborns. Psychological Science, 21, 343–348.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carlson, M. T. (2007). The acquisition of probabilistic patterns in Spanish phonology by adult second language learners: The case of diphthongization. Unpublished dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, available at http://gradworks.umi.com/33/80/3380721.html.Google Scholar
Chan, K. Y., & Vitevitch, M. S. (2009). The influence of the phonological neighborhood clustering-coefficient on spoken word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 35, 1934–1949.Google ScholarPubMed
Chan, K. Y., & Vitevitch, M. S. (2010). Network structure influences speech production. Cognitive Science, 34, 685–697.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Charles-Luce, J., & Luce, P. A. (1990). Similarity neighbourhoods of words in young children's lexicons. Journal of Child Language, 17 (1), 205–215.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cluff, M. S., & Luce, P. A. (1990). Similarity neighborhoods of spoken two-syllable words: Retroactive effects on multiple activation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 16, 551–563.Google ScholarPubMed
Cohen, J. (1983). The cost of dichotomization. Applied Psychological Measurement, 7, 249–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. 2nd edn. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Cohen, J., MacWhinney, B., Flatt, M., & Provost, J. (1993). PsyScope: An interactive graphic system for defining and controlling experiments in the psychology laboratory using Macintosh computers. Behavior Research, Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 25, 257–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cortese, M. J. & Khanna, M. M. (2008). Age of acquisition ratings for 3,000 monosyllabic words. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 791–794.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dell, G. S., Schwartz, M. S., Martin, N., Saffran, E. M., & Gagnon, D. A. (1997). Lexical access in aphasic and nonaphasic speakers. Psychological Review, 104, 801–838.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dumay, N., & Gaskell, M. G. (2007). Sleep-associated changes in the mental representation of spoken words. Psychological Science, 18 (1), 35–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Finkbeiner, M., & Nicol, J. (2003). Semantic category effects in second language word learning. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24 (3), 369–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gan, Z., Humphreys, G., & Hamp-Lyons, L. (2004). Understanding successful and unsuccessful EFL students in Chinese universities. Modern Language Journal, 88, 229–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardner, R. C., Tremblay, P. F., & Masgoret, A. (1997). Towards a full model of second language learning: An empirical investigation. Modern Language Journal, 81, 344–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaskell, M. G., & Dumay, N. (2003). Lexical competition and the acquisition of novel words. Cognition, 89, 105–132.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gershkoff-Stowe, L., & Smith, L. B. (2004). Shape and the first hundred nouns. Child Development, 75, 1–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldinger, S. D., Luce, P. A., & Pisoni, D. B. (1989). Priming lexical neighbors of spoken words: Effects of competition and inhibition.Journal of Memory and Language, 28, 501–518.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldrick, M., & Rapp, B. (2007). Lexical and post-lexical phonological representations in spoken production. Cognition, 102, 219–260.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Graphpad Software, I. (2002–2005). Sign and binomial test. Retrieved October 27, 2009, from www.graphpad.com/quickcalcs/binomial1.cfmGoogle Scholar
Hollich, G., Jusczyk, P. W., & Luce, P. A. (2002). Lexical neighborhood effects in 17-month-old word learning. In Skarabela, Barbora, Fish, Sarah & Do, Anna H.-J. (eds.), BUCLD 26: Proceedings of the 26th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, pp. 314–323. Boston, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Hulstijn, J. H., & Bossers, B. (1992). Individual differences in L2 proficiency as a function of L1 proficiency. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 4, 341–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jusczyk, P. W., Luce, P. A., & Charles-Luce, J. (1994) Infants’ sensitivity to phonotactic patterns in the native language. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 630–645.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kittredge, A. K., Dell, G. S., Verkuilen, J., & Schwartz, M. F. (2008). Where is the effect of frequency in word production? Insights from aphasic picture-naming errors. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 25, 463–492.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leach, L., & Samuel, A. G. (2007). Lexical configuration and lexical engagement: When adults learn new words. Cognitive Psychology, 55, 306–353.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lemhöfer, K., Dijkstra, T., Schriefers, H., Baayen, R. H., Grainger, J., & Zwitserlood, P. (2008). Native language influences on word recognition in a second language: A megastudy. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34, 12–31.Google Scholar
Li, P., Sepanski, S., & Zhao, X. (2006). Language history questionnaire: A Web-based interface for bilingual research. Behavior Research Methods, 38 (2), 202–210.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lisker, L., & Abramson, A. S. (1964). A cross-language study of voicing in initial stops: Acoustical measurements. Word, 20, 384–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luce, P. A., & Pisoni, D. B. (1998). Recognizing spoken words: The neighborhood activation model. Ear and Hearing, 19 (1), 1–36.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacCallum, R. C., Zhang, S., Preacher, K. J., & Rucker, D. D. (2002). On the practice of dichotomization of quantitative variables. Psychological Methods, 7, 19–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maekawa, J. (2006). Factors affecting word learning in second language acquisition. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas.Google Scholar
McMurray, B. (2007). Defusing the childhood vocabulary explosion. Science, 317, 631.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Newman, M. E. J. (2002). Assortative mixing in networks. Physical Review Letters, 89, 208701.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Palmer, S .D., & Havelka, J. (2010). Age of acquisition effect in vocabulary learning. Acta Psychologica, 135, 310–315.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Preacher, K. J., Rucker, D. D., MacCallum, R. C., & Nicewander, W. A. (2005). Use of the extreme groups approach: A critical reexamination and new recommendations. Psychological Methods, 10, 178–192.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roodenrys, S., Hulme, C., Lethbridge, A., Hinton, M., & Nimmo, L. M. (2002). Word-frequency and phonological-neighborhood effects on verbal short-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 28, 1019–1034.Google ScholarPubMed
Sebastián Gallés, N., Martí Antonín, M. A., Carreiras Valiña, M. F., & Cuetos Vega, F. (2000). Lexesp. Léxico informatizado del español [CD-ROM]: Barcelona: Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona.Google Scholar
Singh, L. (2008). Influences of high and low variability on infant word recognition. Cognition, 106, 833–870.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smits, E., Sandra, D., Martensen, H., & Dijkstra, T. (2009). Phonological inconsistency in word naming: Determinants of the interference effect between languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12, 23–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snodgrass, J. G., & Vanderwart, M. (1980). A standardized set of 260 pictures: Norms for name agreement, image agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 6, 174–215.Google ScholarPubMed
Spieler, D. H., & Balota, D. A. (2000). Factors influencing word naming in younger and older adults. Psychology and Aging, 15, 225–231.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Storkel, H. L. (2001). Learning new words: Phonotactic probability in language development. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 44, 1321–1337.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Storkel, H. L. (2003). Learning new words II: Phonotactic probability in verb learning. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 46, 1312–1323.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Storkel, H. L. (2004). Do children acquire dense neighborhoods? An investigation of similarity neighborhoods in lexical acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 201–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Storkel, H. L. (2009). Developmental differences in the effects of phonological, lexical and semantic variables on word learning by infants. Journal of Child Language, 36, 291–321.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Storkel, H. L., Armbruster, J., & Hogan, T. P. (2006). Differentiating phonotactic probability and neighborhood density in adult word learning. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49, 1175–1192.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Storkel, H. L., & Hoover, J. R. (2010). An on-line calculator to compute phonotactic probability and neighborhood density based on child corpora of spoken American English. Behavior Research Methods, 42, 497–506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Storkel, H. L., & Maekawa, J. (2005). A comparison of homonym and novel word learning: The role of phonotactic probability and word frequency. Journal of Child Language, 32, 827–853.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Storkel, H. L., & Morrisette, M. L. (2002). The lexicon and phonology: Interactions in language acquisition. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in the Schools, 33, 22–35.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Swingley, D., & Aslin, R. N. (2000). Spoken word recognition and lexical representation in very young children. Cognition, 76, 147–166.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Swingley, D., & Aslin, R. N. (2007). Lexical competition in young children's word learning. Cognitive Psychology, 54, 99–132.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
VanPatten, B., Lee, J. F., & Ballman, T. L. (2004). ¿Sabías que. . . ?: Beginning Spanish, 4th edn. New York: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
Vitevitch, M. S. (1997). The neighborhood characteristics of malapropisms. Language and Speech, 40, 211–228.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vitevitch, M. S. (2002a). Naturalistic and experimental analyses of word frequency and neighborhood density effects in slips of the ear. Language and Speech, 45, 407–434.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vitevitch, M. S. (2002b). The influence of phonological similarity neighborhoods on speech production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 28, 735–747.Google ScholarPubMed
Vitevitch, M. S. (2003). The influence of sublexical and lexical representations on the processing of spoken words in English. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 17, 487–499.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vitevitch, M. S. (2008). What can graph theory tell us about word learning and lexical retrieval? Journal of Speech Language Hearing Research, 51, 408–422.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vitevitch, M. S. (in press). What do foreign neighbors say about the mental lexicon? Bilingualism: Language & Cognition.Google Scholar
Vitevitch, M. S., & Luce, P. A. (1999). Probabilistic phonotactics and neighborhood activation in spoken word recognition. Journal of Memory & Language, 40, 374–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vitevitch, M. S., & Luce, P.A. (2005). Increases in phonotactic probability facilitate spoken nonword repetition. Journal of Memory & Language, 52, 193–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vitevitch, M. S., & Rodríguez, E. (2005). Neighborhood density effects in spoken word recognition in Spanish. Journal of Multilingual Communication Disorders, 3, 64–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vitevitch, M. S., & Stamer, M. K. (2006). The curious case of competition in Spanish speech production. Language and Cognitive Processes, 21, 760–770.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vitevitch, M. S., & Stamer, M. K. (2009). The influence of neighborhood density (and neighborhood frequency) in Spanish speech production: A follow-up report. Spoken Language Laboratory Technical Report, 1, 1–6.Google Scholar
Vitevitch, M. S., Stamer, M. K., & Sereno, J. A. (2008). Word length and lexical competition: Longer is the same as shorter. Language & Speech, 51, 361–383.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Watts, D. J., & Strogatz, S. H. (1998). Collective dynamics of “small-world” networks. Nature, 393, 440–442.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yates, M., Locker, L., & Simpson, G. B. (2004). The influence of phonological neighborhood on visual word perception. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 11, 452–457.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed