1 |
A preregistered study exploring language-specific distributional learning advantages in English-Mandarin bilingual adults
|
|
|
|
In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, vol 43, iss 43 (2021)
|
|
Abstract:
Bilinguals are reported to have language learning advantages. One possible pathway is a language-specific transfer effect, whereby sensitivity to structural regularities in known languages can be brought to novel languages that share features. To test for specific linguistic feature transfer, we designed a task for bilinguals with homogeneous language exposure (bilingual in same languages) and heterogeneous feature representation (differing proficiencies). As Hindi and Mandarin have retroflexion in phoneme contrasts, we conducted a pre-registered study with a statistical learning task of a Hindi dental-retroflex contrast on parallel English-Mandarin bilinguals with varied Mandarin proficiency. Unlike the pilot study (N = 15), the main study (N = 50) found no evidence for a learning effect, and language-experience did not explain learning variance. As these stimuli have shown learning effects in children, learning effects for this feature may be fragile in this adult population, and language-specific neural commitments may prevent learning of the contrast.
|
|
Keyword:
cognitive science
|
|
URL: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/83v2h50r
|
|
BASE
|
|
Hide details
|
|
|
|