Dense neighborhoods and mechanisms of learning: evidence from children with phonological delay

ABSTRACTThere is a noted advantage of dense neighborhoods in language acquisition, but the learning mechanism that drives the effect is not well understood. Two hypotheses – long-term auditory word priming and phonological working memory – have been advanced in the literature as viable accounts. These were evaluated in two treatment studies enrolling twelve children with phonological delay. Study 1 exposed children to dense neighbors versus non-neighbors before training sound production in evaluation of the priming hypothesis. Study 2 exposed children to the same stimuli after training sound production as a test of the phonological working memory hypothesis. Results showed that neighbors led to greater phonological generalization than non-neighbors, but only when presented prior to training production. There was little generalization and no differential effect of exposure to neighbors or non-neighbors after training production. Priming was thus supported as a possible mechanism of learning behind the dense neighborhood advantage in phonological acquisition.

Spoken-word processing in native and second languages: An investigation of auditory word priming

The present study investigated whether and to what extent auditory word priming, which is one mechanism of spoken-word processing and learning, is involved in a second language (L2). The objectives of the study were to determine whether L2 learners use auditory word priming as monolinguals do when they are acquiring an L2, how attentional processing orientation influences the extent to which they do so, and what L2 learners actually “learn” as they use auditory word priming. Results revealed that L2 learners use auditory word priming, that the extent to which they do so depends little on attention to the form of spoken input, and that L2 learners overrely on detailed context-specific information available in spoken input as they use auditory word priming.