scholarly journals Learning words in a new language: Orthography doesn't always help

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 384-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAOLA ESCUDERO ◽  
ELLEN SIMON ◽  
KAREN E. MULAK

Previous studies have shown that orthography is activated during speech processing and that it may have positive and negative effects for non-native listeners. The present study examines whether the effect of orthography on non-native word learning depends on the relationship between the grapheme–phoneme correspondences across the native and non-native orthographic systems. Specifically, congruence between grapheme–phoneme correspondences across the listeners’ languages is predicted to aid word recognition, while incongruence is predicted to hinder it. Native Spanish listeners who were Dutch learners or naïve listeners (with no exposure to Dutch) were taught Dutch pseudowords and their visual referents. They were trained with only auditory forms or with auditory and orthographic forms. During testing, non-native listeners were less accurate when the target and distractor pseudowords formed a minimal pair (differing in only one vowel) than when they formed a non-minimal pair, and performed better on perceptually easy than on perceptually difficult minimal pairs. For perceptually difficult minimal pairs, Dutch learners performed better than naïve listeners and Dutch proficiency predicted learners’ word recognition accuracy. Most importantly and as predicted, exposure to orthographic forms during training aided performance on minimal pairs with congruent orthography, while it hindered performance on minimal pairs with incongruent orthography.

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 606-616
Author(s):  
Marinella MAJORANO ◽  
Tamara BASTIANELLO ◽  
Marika MORELLI ◽  
Manuela LAVELLI ◽  
Marilyn M. VIHMAN

AbstractPrevious studies have demonstrated an effect of early vocal production on infants’ speech processing and later vocabulary. This study focuses on the relationship between vocal production and new word learning. Thirty monolingual Italian-learning infants were recorded at about 11 months, to establish the extent of their consonant production. In parallel, the infants were trained on novel word–object pairs, two consisting of early learned consonants (ELC), two consisting of late learned consonants (LLC). Word learning was assessed through Preferential Looking. The results suggest that vocal production supports word learning: Only children with higher, consistent consonant production attended more to the trained ELC images.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seyede Faranak Emami ◽  
Akram Pourbakht ◽  
Kianoush Sheykholeslami ◽  
Mohammad Kamali ◽  
Fatholah Behnoud ◽  
...  

Vestibular hearing in human is evoked as a result of the auditory sensitivity of the saccule to low-frequency high-intensity tone. The objective was to investigate the relationship between vestibular hearing using cervical vestibular-evoked myogenic potentials (cVEMPs) and speech processing via word recognition scores in white noise (WRSs in wn). Intervention comprised of audiologic examinations, cVEMPs, and WRS in wn. All healthy subjects had detectable cVEMPs (safe vestibular hearing). WRSs in wn were obtained for them (66.9 ± 9.3% in the right ears and 67.5 ± 11.8% in the left ears). Dizzy patients in the affected ears, had the cVEMPs abnormalities (insecure vestibular hearing) and decreased the WRS in wn (51.4 ± 3.8% in the right ears and 52.2 ± 3.5% in the left ears). The comparison of the cVEMPs between the subjects revealed significant differences (P < 0.05). Therefore, the vestibular hearing can improve the speech processing in the competing noisy conditions.


2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAOLA ESCUDERO

ABSTRACTSome previous studies have shown that the availability of orthographic information leads to positive effects for second language (L2) phonology, while others document negative effects. In this paper, we examine the role of orthography on novel spoken-word learning by comparing word pairs that differed in most or all of their segments (nonminimal pairs) and those that only differed in one phoneme (minimal pairs) that was considered easy or difficult to discriminate. We tested the performance of learners whose native languages have transparent orthographies as well as learners with opaque orthographies. Our findings show that regardless of linguistic background and native orthographic system, availability of orthographic information during word learning did not have an effect on nonminimal pairs or perceptually easy minimal pairs. However, it had a positive effect on two minimal pairs that had the highest accuracy among the seven perceptually difficult ones, indicating that orthography only helped contrasts that were relatively easy to discriminate. The implications of these findings for L2 teaching and for future directions within L2 phonology are discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alba Tuninetti ◽  
Karen E. Mulak ◽  
Paola Escudero

Cross-situational word learning (CSWL) paradigms have gained traction in recent years as a way to examine word learning in ambiguous scenarios in infancy, childhood, and adulthood. However, no study thus far has examined how CSWL paradigms may provide viable learning pathways for second language (L2) word learning. Here, we used a CSWL paradigm to examine how native Australian English (AusE) speakers learned novel Dutch (Experiment 1) and Brazilian Portuguese (Experiment 2) word-object pairings. During each learning phase trial, two words and objects were presented without indication as to which auditory word belonged to which visual referent. The two auditory words formed a non-minimal or vowel minimal pair. Minimal pairs were classified as “perceptually easy” or “perceptually difficult” based on the acoustic-phonetic relationship between AusE and each L2. At test, participants again saw two visual referents but heard one auditory label and were asked to select the corresponding referent. We predicted that accuracy would be highest for non-minimal pair trials (in which the auditory words associated with the target and distractor object formed a non-minimal pair), followed by perceptually easy minimal pairs, with lowest accuracy for perceptually difficult minimal pair trials. Our results support these hypotheses: While accuracy was above chance for all pair types, in both experiments accuracy was highest for non-minimal pair trials, followed by perceptually easy and then perceptually difficult minimal pair trials. These results are the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of CSWL in adult L2 word learning. Furthermore, the difference between perceptually easy and perceptually difficult minimal pairs in both language groups suggests that the acoustic-phonetic relationship between the L1-L2 is an important factor in novel L2 word learning in ambiguous learning scenarios. We discuss the implications of our findings for L2 acquisition, cross-situational learning and encoding of phonetic detail in a foreign language.


2019 ◽  
pp. 46-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir V. Klimanov ◽  
Sofiya М. Kazakova ◽  
Anna A. Mikhaylova

The article examines the impact of various socio-economic and financial indicators on the resilience of Russian regions. For each region, the integral index of resilience is calculated, and its correlation dependence with the selected indicators is revealed. The study confirms the relationship between fiscal resilience and socio-economic resilience of the regions. The analysis of panel data for 75 regions from 2007 to 2016 shows that there are significant differences in the dynamics of indicators in different periods. In particular, the degree of exposure to the negative effects of the crises of 2008—2009 and 2014—2015 in non-resilient regions is higher than in resilient ones.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 504
Author(s):  
Matthias Omotayo Oladele ◽  
Temilola Morufat Adepoju ◽  
Olaide ` Abiodun Olatoke ◽  
Oluwaseun Adewale Ojo

Yorùbá language is one of the three main languages that is been spoken in Nigeria. It is a tonal language that carries an accent on the vowel alphabets. There are twenty-five (25) alphabets in Yorùbá language with one of the alphabets a digraph (GB). Due to the difficulty in typing handwritten Yorùbá documents, there is a need to develop a handwritten recognition system that can convert the handwritten texts to digital format. This study discusses the offline Yorùbá handwritten word recognition system (OYHWR) that recognizes Yorùbá uppercase alphabets. Handwritten characters and words were obtained from different writers using the paint application and M708 graphics tablets. The characters were used for training and the words were used for testing. Pre-processing was done on the images and the geometric features of the images were extracted using zoning and gradient-based feature extraction. Geometric features are the different line types that form a particular character such as the vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines. The geometric features used are the number of horizontal lines, number of vertical lines, number of right diagonal lines, number of left diagonal lines, total length of all horizontal lines, total length of all vertical lines, total length of all right slanting lines, total length of all left-slanting lines and the area of the skeleton. The characters are divided into 9 zones and gradient feature extraction was used to extract the horizontal and vertical components and geometric features in each zone. The words were fed into the support vector machine classifier and the performance was evaluated based on recognition accuracy. Support vector machine is a two-class classifier, hence a multiclass SVM classifier least square support vector machine (LSSVM) was used for word recognition. The one vs one strategy and RBF kernel were used and the recognition accuracy obtained from the tested words ranges between 66.7%, 83.3%, 85.7%, 87.5%, and 100%. The low recognition rate for some of the words could be as a result of the similarity in the extracted features.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 159
Author(s):  
Eva Krisna

“Batombe” is an oral tradition of the Nagari Abai society at Sangir Batanghari Subdistrict, South Solok District, West Sumatra Province. Batombe is exchanging rhymes (berbalas pantun) which is performed as an entertainment on the wedding party (baralek). Batombe is identical with Great House (Rumah Gadang) Nagari Abai which is a unique house because it is a long traditional custom house that has many rooms. It reaches 21 rooms. The rhymes in batombe tends to deliver a feeling of lilting so the singers often drift into the atmosphere of the show. Therefore, as part of community life, batombe often cause a negative effects for the singers soul. This paper describes various things, such as: who batombe singer is; the time to perform this activity; the relationship between batombe and Great House (Rumah Gadang) at Nagari Abai; and the negative effects caused by batombe for the singers. This paper based on the fact that in oral tradition there is a close relationship between text and the speakers and text with context (place, time and atmosphere), a multidisciplinary approach is used in this paper, such as historical, sociological, anthropological, and psychological approach. The method used is descriptive analysis method.AbstrakBatombe adalah tradisi lisan masyarakat Nagari Abai, Kecamatan Sangir Batanghari, Kabupaten Solok Selatan, Provinsi Sumatra Barat. Batombe adalah tradisi berbalas pantun yang dilakukan sebagai hiburan pada pesta pernikahan (baralek). Batombe identik dengan rumah gadang Nagari Abai yang unik, yakni rumah adat dengan ruangan yang sangat panjang hingga 21 ruangan. Pantun-pantun batombe cenderung menyampaikan perasaan yang mendayu-dayu sehingga para pedendangnya sering hanyut ke dalam suasana pertunjukan. Oleh sebab itu, sebagai bagian dari kehidupan masyarakat, seringkali batombe menyebabkan efek negatif bagi (kejiwaan) para pedendangnya. Tulisan ini mendeskripsikan berbagai hal, seperti penutur batombe, waktu untuk melakukan batombe, hubungan batombe dengan rumah gadang di Nagari Abai, dan efek negatif yang ditimbulkan batombe bagi pedendangnya. Tulisan ini bertolak dari kenyataan bahwa pada tradisi lisan terdapat hubungan erat, antara lain seperti teks dengan penutur dan teks dengan konteks (tempat, waktu, dan suasana). Pendekatan multidisipliner digunakan pada tulisan ini, yakni pendekatan historis, sosiologis, antropologis, dan psikologis. Metode yang digunakan adalah metode analisis deskriptif.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun-Jie Tang ◽  
Shuang Feng ◽  
Xing-Dong Chen ◽  
Hua Huang ◽  
Min Mao ◽  
...  

: Neurological diseases bring great mental and physical torture to the patients, and have long-term and sustained negative effects on families and society. The attention to neurological diseases is increasing, and the improvement of the material level is accompanied by an increase in the demand for mental level. The p75 neurotrophin receptor (p75NTR) is a low-affinity neurotrophin receptor and involved in diverse and pleiotropic effects in the developmental and adult central nervous system (CNS). Since neurological diseases are usually accompanied by the regression of memory, the pathogenesis of p75NTR also activates and inhibits other signaling pathways, which has a serious impact on the learning and memory of patients. The results of studies shown that p75NTR is associated with LTP/LTD-induced synaptic enhancement and inhibition, suggest that p75NTR may be involved in the progression of synaptic plasticity. And its pro-apoptotic effect is associated with activation of proBDNF and inhibition of proNGF, and TrkA/p75NTR imbalance leads to pro-survival or pro-apoptotic phenomena. It can be inferred that p75NTR mediates apoptosis in the hippocampus and amygdale, which may affect learning and memory behavior. This article mainly discusses the relationship between p75NTR and learning memory and associated mechanisms, which may provide some new ideas for the treatment of neurological diseases.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 54-56
Author(s):  
Ashmita Dahal Chhetri

Advertisements have been used for many years to influence the buying behaviors of the consumers. Advertisements are helpful in creating the awareness and perception among the customers of a product. This particular research was conducted on the 100 young male and female who use different brands of product to check the influence of advertisement on their buying behavior while creating the awareness and building the perceptions. Correlation, regression and other statistical tools were used to identify the relationship between these variables. The results revealed that the relationship between media and consumer behavior is positive. The adve1tising impact on sales and there is positive and high degree relationship between advertising and consumer behavior. The impact on advertising of a product of electronic media is better than non-electronic media.


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