scholarly journals Language Shift Effect on Memory Generalization of Chinese-English Bilinguals

Author(s):  
Mengmeng Zuo ◽  
Lulu Wang ◽  
Yaqi Wang

Language shift occurs when people learn information in one language but recall it in another language. This mismatch between encoding and retrieval language is found to impair memory accuracy when memory is tested immediately after learning. However, does the observed language shift effect still exist after a certain period of delay? Would it influence other aspects of memory, especially memory generalization? To address these two questions, we performed a memory experiment among unbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals. In the experiment, participants were required to read two stories (one in English, one in Chinese) and to retell the stories in Chinese from their memories afterward. Delay interval was manipulated in the experiment where participants either took memory recall tests immediately after story-reading or after 24 hours' delay. To analyze memory generalization, we coded the generalized words participants used to retell the stories. The results suggest that language shift (encoding in English and retrieving in Chinese) leads to a more generalized description in a memory recall task. However, the observed language shift effect disappears after 24 hours' delay. It can be concluded that language shift impacts bilingual learners' memory generalization in immediate recall tests, but such effect disappears after 24 hours' delay, which indicates the key role of delay interval in modulating language shift effect.

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-130
Author(s):  
Ha Ngan Ngo ◽  
Maya Khemlani David

Vietnam represents a country with 54 ethnic groups; however, the majority (88%) of the population are of Vietnamese heritage. Some of the other ethnic groups such as Tay, Thai, Muong, Hoa, Khmer, and Nung have a population of around 1 million each, while the Brau, Roman, and Odu consist only of a hundred people each. Living in northern Vietnam, close to the Chinese border (see Figure 1), the Tay people speak a language of the    Central    Tai language group called Though, T'o, Tai Tho, Ngan, Phen, Thu Lao, or Pa Di. Tay remains one of 10 ethnic languages used by 1 million speakers (Buoi, 2003). The Tày ethnic group has a rich culture of wedding songs, poems, dance, and music and celebrate various festivals. Wet rice cultivation, canal digging and grain threshing on wooden racks are part of the Tày traditions. Their villages situated near the foothills often bear the names of nearby mountains, rivers, or fields. This study discusses the status and role of the Tày language in Northeast Vietnam. It discusses factors, which have affected the habitual use of the Tay language, the connection between language shift and development and provides a model for the sustainability and promotion of minority languages. It remains fundamentally imperative to strengthen and to foster positive attitudes of the community towards the Tày language. Tày’s young people must be enlightened to the reality their Tày non-usage could render their mother tongue defunct, which means their history stands to be lost.


2021 ◽  
pp. 014616722110072
Author(s):  
Pieter Van Dessel ◽  
Jeremy Cone ◽  
Anne Gast

We sometimes learn about certain behaviors of others that we consider diagnostic of their character (e.g., that they did immoral things). Recent research has shown that such information trumps the impact of other (less diagnostic) information both on self-reported evaluations and on more automatic evaluations as probed with indirect measures such as the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP). We examined whether facilitating memory recall of alternative information moderates the impact of diagnostic information on evaluation. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants learned one diagnostic positive and one diagnostic negative behavior of two unfamiliar people. Presenting a cue semantically related to this information during evaluation influenced AMP scores but not self-reported liking scores. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that elaborative rehearsal of low diagnostic information eliminated diagnosticity effects on AMP scores and reduced them on self-reported liking scores. These findings help elucidate the role of memory recall and diagnosticity in evaluation.


2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 757-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEONG-IM HAN ◽  
TAE-HWAN CHOI

ABSTRACTThis study examined the role of orthography in the production and storage of spoken words. Korean speakers learned novel Korean words with potential variants of /h/, including [ɦ] and ø. They were provided with the same auditory stimuli but with varying exposure to spelling. One group was presented with the letter for ø (<ㅇ>), the second group, the letter for [ɦ] (<ㅎ>), and the third group, auditory input only. In picture-naming tasks, the participants presented with <ㅇ> produced fewer words with [ɦ] than those presented with <ㅎ>. In a spelling recall task, the participants who were not exposed to spelling displayed various types of spellings for variants, but after exposure to spelling, they began to produce spellings as provided in the task. These results suggest that orthographic information influences the production of words via an offline restructuring of the phonological representation.


2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-63
Author(s):  
Leandro R. Palhares ◽  
Alessandro T. Bruzi ◽  
Guilherme M. Lage ◽  
João V. A. P. Fialho ◽  
Herbert Ugrinowitsch ◽  
...  

The purpose of the present study was to identify the effects of relative frequency and delay interval of Knowledge of Results (KR) in the acquisition of a serial motor skill. Sixty students were randomly distributed in 2 experiments, with three groups in each experiment (n = 10). The Experiment 1 investigated the effects of the KR frequency without KR delay interval and the Experiment 2 investigated the effects of the KR frequency with KR delay interval (3 seconds) in the acquisition of a serial motor skill. The serial task consisted of putting a tennis ball into six holes, positioned in a wood platform in a previously determined target time. In both experiments, the subjects performed 60 trials in target time of 2,700 ms, in the acquisition phase. In the Experiment 1, the results showed superiority of G33 in relation to the other groups, during the tests. In the Experiment 2, the results did not show any difference among the groups. These results are discussed with respect to the effect of KR delay interval, showing the role of combination of the variables.  


2021 ◽  
pp. 255-271
Author(s):  
Francesco Goglia

This chapter presents a discussion on the role of English in the linguistic repertoires of the second generation of onward-migrating families from Italy to the UK. Participants reported on their language use, language maintenance, and language attitudes, both in their early life in Italy and in the UK. The second generation maintain Italian with same-age peer friendships and older siblings. They view the language as linguistic capital to enhance their future career prospects in the UK or support a return to Italy. Italian is also maintained in conversations with parents often in the form of code-switching. Parents struggle with English after a long period of residence in Italy and children are not fluent in the heritage languages. English is considered the most important language and, together with a British education to improve their children’s life chances, is the main pull factor for families in the decision to migrate onward. Onward migration allows these families to restart language shift towards English (which was interrupted during the years of stay in Italy) in a parallel way to language shift towards English taking place in their countries of origin.


Author(s):  
Mark Donohue ◽  
Tim Denham

The spread of modern humans into and across Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific represents the earliest confirmed dispersal of humans across a marine environment, and involved numerous associated technologies that indicate sophisticated societies on the move. The later spread of ‘Austronesian’ over the region shows language replacement on a scale that is reminiscent of the period of state-sponsored European colonization, and yet the Austronesian languages present a typological profile that is more diverse than any other large language family. These facts require investigation. This chapter examines the separate, but intertwined, histories of the region. It shows that the dispersal of Austronesian languages, originating in Taiwan, should not be portrayed as a technological and demographic steamroller. This involves discussion of the nature of pre-Austronesian society and language in the south-west Pacific, and the degree to which it has and has not changed following ‘Austronesianization’.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-335
Author(s):  
Yangke Zhao ◽  
Chuansheng Chen ◽  
Xiuying Qian

Abstract Research on serial order memory has traditionally used tasks where participants passively view the items. A few studies that included hand movement showed that such movement interfered with serial order memory. In the present study of three experiments, we investigated whether and how hand movements improved spatial serial order memory. Experiment 1 showed that manual tracing (i.e., hand movements that traced the presentation of stimuli on the modified eCorsi block tapping task) improved the performance of backward recall as compared to no manual tracing (the control condition). Experiment 2 showed that the facilitation effect resulted from voluntary hand movements and could not be achieved via passive viewing of another person’s manual tracing. Experiment 3 showed that it was the temporal, not the spatial, signal within manual tracing that facilitated spatial serial memory.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Remco Knooihuizen

AbstractIt has been observed that language-shift varieties of English tend to be relatively close to Standard English (Trudgill and Chambers 1991: 2–3). An often-used explanation for this is that Standard English was acquired in schools by the shifting population (Filppula 2006: 516). In this paper, I discuss three cases of language shift in the Early Modern period: in Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Shetland. I offer evidence that the role of Standard English education was, in fact, fairly limited, and suggest that the standard-likeness of Cornish English, Manx English and Shetland Scots is most likely due to the particular sociolinguistic circumstances of language shift, where not only language contact, but also dialect contact contributed to a loss of non-standard-like features and the acquisition of a standard-like target variety. This atelic and non-hierarchical process is termed apparent standardisation.


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