Effects of making errors in learning a foreign language

ABSTRACT

Kornell, Hays, and Bjork ([2009]. Unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance subsequent learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 989–998) showed that incorrect guesses do not necessarily harm and might even improve the retention of information on a subsequent test. We sought to replicate the finding using educationally relevant stimuli. In two experiments, our participants either translated sentences in a foreign language receiving immediate feedback (errorful condition), or copied and studied the correct translation (errorless condition). After this training phase, a final test with the same sentences showed that translating sentences wrongly during training did not lower the accuracy of the errorful as compared to the errorless condition. Overall there was evidence that errorful training produced superior learning of the meaning and grammar of the foreign language sentences. The results support the idea that search processes activate a greater network of related knowledge in the errorful than in the errorless condition.     

Prenatal daily musical exposure is associated with enhanced neural representation of speech fundamental frequency: Evidence from neonatal frequency-following responses

Fetal hearing experiences shape the linguistic and musical preferences of neonates. From the very first moment after birth, newborns prefer their native language, recognize their mother's voice, and show a greater responsiveness to lullabies presented during pregnancy. Yet, the neural underpinnings of this experience inducing plasticity have remained elusive. Here we recorded the frequency-following response (FFR), an auditory evoked potential elicited to periodic complex sounds, to show that prenatal music exposure is associated to enhanced neural encoding of speech stimuli periodicity, which relates to the perceptual experience of pitch. FFRs were recorded in a sample of 60 healthy neonates born at term and aged 12–72 hours. The sample was divided into two groups according to their prenatal musical exposure (29 daily musically exposed; 31 not-daily musically exposed). Prenatal exposure was assessed retrospectively by a questionnaire in which mothers reported how often they sang or listened to music through loudspeakers during the last trimester of pregnancy. The FFR was recorded to either a /da/ or an /oa/ speech-syllable stimulus. Analyses were centered on stimuli sections of identical duration (113 ms) and fundamental frequency (F₀ = 113 Hz). Neural encoding of stimuli periodicity was quantified as the FFR spectral amplitude at the stimulus F₀. Data revealed that newborns exposed daily to music exhibit larger spectral amplitudes at F₀ as compared to not-daily musically-exposed newborns, regardless of the eliciting stimulus. Our results suggest that prenatal music exposure facilitates the tuning to human speech fundamental frequency, which may support early language processing and acquisition.

Research Highlights

• Frequency-following responses to speech were collected from a sample of neonates prenatally exposed to music daily and compared to neonates not-daily exposed to music.
• Neonates who experienced daily prenatal music exposure exhibit enhanced frequency-following responses to the periodicity of speech sounds.
• Prenatal music exposure is associated with a fine-tuned encoding of human speech fundamental frequency, which may facilitate early language processing and acquisition.

     

Preliminary evidence for selective cortical responses to music in one-month-old infants

Prior studies have observed selective neural responses in the adult human auditory cortex to music and speech that cannot be explained by the differing lower-level acoustic properties of these stimuli. Does infant cortex exhibit similarly selective responses to music and speech shortly after birth? To answer this question, we attempted to collect functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 45 sleeping infants (2.0- to 11.9-weeks-old) while they listened to monophonic instrumental lullabies and infant-directed speech produced by a mother. To match acoustic variation between music and speech sounds we (1) recorded music from instruments that had a similar spectral range as female infant-directed speech, (2) used a novel excitation-matching algorithm to match the cochleagrams of music and speech stimuli, and (3) synthesized “model-matched” stimuli that were matched in spectrotemporal modulation statistics to (yet perceptually distinct from) music or speech. Of the 36 infants we collected usable data from, 19 had significant activations to sounds overall compared to scanner noise. From these infants, we observed a set of voxels in non-primary auditory cortex (NPAC) but not in Heschl's Gyrus that responded significantly more to music than to each of the other three stimulus types (but not significantly more strongly than to the background scanner noise). In contrast, our planned analyses did not reveal voxels in NPAC that responded more to speech than to model-matched speech, although other unplanned analyses did. These preliminary findings suggest that music selectivity arises within the first month of life. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/c8IGFvzxudk .

Research Highlights

• Responses to music, speech, and control sounds matched for the spectrotemporal modulation-statistics of each sound were measured from 2- to 11-week-old sleeping infants using fMRI.
• Auditory cortex was significantly activated by these stimuli in 19 out of 36 sleeping infants.
• Selective responses to music compared to the three other stimulus classes were found in non-primary auditory cortex but not in nearby Heschl's Gyrus.
• Selective responses to speech were not observed in planned analyses but were observed in unplanned, exploratory analyses.

     

Stopping Rules for Computer Adaptive Testing When Item Banks Have Nonuniform Information

The standard error (SE) stopping rule, which terminates a computer adaptive test (CAT) when the SE is less than a threshold, is effective when there are informative questions for all trait levels. However, in domains such as patient-reported outcomes, the items in a bank might all target one end of the trait continuum (e.g., negative symptoms), and the bank may lack depth for many individuals. In such cases, the predicted standard error reduction (PSER) stopping rule will stop the CAT even if the SE threshold has not been reached and can avoid administering excessive questions that provide little additional information. By tuning the parameters of the PSER algorithm, a practitioner can specify a desired tradeoff between accuracy and efficiency. Using simulated data for the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System Anxiety and Physical Function banks, we demonstrate that these parameters can substantially impact CAT performance. When the parameters were optimally tuned, the PSER stopping rule was found to outperform the SE stopping rule overall, particularly for individuals not targeted by the bank, and presented roughly the same number of items across the trait continuum. Therefore, the PSER stopping rule provides an effective method for balancing the precision and efficiency of a CAT.     

Effectiveness of the Visual–Auditory Shadowing Method on Learning the Pronunciation of Kanji

This study investigates whether the visual–auditory (VA) shadowing method can better facilitate vocabulary learning for learners of Japanese as a second language (JSL) than the visual–visual (VV) shadowing method in K-8 immersion education. Learning vocabulary involves three aspects: meaning, orthography, and pronunciation. The Japanese language has complex orthography and pronunciation. Learners of Japanese need to learn three kinds of orthographic characters: ideographs (kanji) and two kinds of syllabic characters (hiragana and katakana). In addition, because the pronunciation of kanji can vary by context, learners must learn several pronunciations for a single kanji character. This study explores a reasonable way to learn pronunciations of kanji and compares VA shadowing (n = 48) and VV shadowing (n = 47) to investigate which condition better facilitates learning the pronunciation of Japanese ideographs. The analysis suggests that compared to the VV shadowing condition (p < .05), the VA shadowing condition is more effective for Level 3 learners but not for Level 2 or Level 1 learners.     

From elementary school to midlife: Childhood personality predicts behavior during cognitive testing over four decades later

The current study uses a prospective, longitudinal design and lifespan perspective to understand how child personality relates to directly observed adult behavior during cognitive testing. Teacher assessments of child Big Five personality in elementary school were correlated with directly observed behaviors during a videotaped cognitive test four decades later. Past work suggested Openness and Conscientiousness may relate to task-relevant academic behaviors. Childhood Openness was associated with several behaviors, even after controlling for participant’s cognitive performance. Childhood Conscientiousness was also related to behavior, but not as expected. Other Big Five ratings were not reliably related to behavior. The study examined personality stability in a unique way and suggests a further examination of how Openness in children manifests in later behavior.