| NSF Org: |
SMA SBE Office of Multidisciplinary Activities |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 15, 2021 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 15, 2021 |
| Award Number: | 2105195 |
| Award Instrument: | Fellowship Award |
| Program Manager: |
Josie Welkom Miranda
jwmirand@nsf.gov (703)292-7376 SMA SBE Office of Multidisciplinary Activities SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2021 |
| End Date: | February 29, 2024 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $138,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $138,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
Lewisburg PA US 17837 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
Eugene OR US 97403-1290 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | (SPRF-FR) SBE Postdoctoral Res |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.075 |
ABSTRACT
This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Melissa M. Baese-Berk at the University of Oregon, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating processes that affect language learning as an adult. We effortlessly incorporate new words like kvetch and Google into our native language structure, but we have much more difficulty learning how words are structured in the languages we learn as adults. Languages like Arabic present a particular challenge for English speakers to learn due to its word formation processes being dramatically different from English: for example, while book and cat become books and cats in English, kitaab (book) and qitta (cat) become kutub (books) and qitaat (cats) in Arabic. Which factors affect how well we learn these patterns in languages that we learn as adults?
By knowing more about the factors that influence adult word learning and exploring the types of errors that adults make in the early stages of learning a language, we can develop a more nuanced view of how language learning happens in the fully developed adult mind. This research will also provide insight into one of the key theoretical questions in language acquisition: Why are we able to continue learning and integrating new words in our primary language throughout our lifespan, but have difficulty learning nativelike structural properties of words in languages we acquire as adults? The three proposed manipulations take advantage of common techniques and limitations in the second language classroom to better connect the existing psycholinguistics literature in processing and the existing second language acquisition and pedagogy literature. The proposed project uses an artificial grammar learning paradigm that incorporates different word formation patterns while different learning scenarios are tested. This will provide us with further knowledge about which of the scenarios are most effective for word learning, and can be incorporated into classroom pedagogy.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This project focused on how we learn how to form words in languages that are structured very differently from our primary language. A real-life analog is an English speaker learning Arabic: English forms its words linearly, like dis- em- bowel -ment, while Arabic words are formed by interleaving consonants and vowels, like KTB ‘books, writing’ + _a_a_a ‘masculine past tense’ = kataba ‘he wrote’. Previous research and anecdotal classroom experience has indicated the process of transferring our English-based word formation knowledge to Arabic is very difficult. However, previous research has shown that other variables that are unrelated to word structure may help us learn these patterns more accurately or more quickly: (1) receiving explicit instructions about word formation rules; (2) sleeping between training and testing sessions; and (3) hearing more than one person say the words we are trying to learn. We tested each of these variables in separate experiments, and analyzed both overall accuracy (similar to getting percentage correct on a test) and individual answers given to researchers. Instead of using a real language, we taught our participants an artificial language based on Arabic with similar word formation patterns as the ‘kataba’ example above.
Our research has shown that each of these variables affects word learning in a similar way over a very short training period. After approximately 15-20 minutes of learning, our participants’ overall accuracy was roughly the same regardless of whether they had explicit instructions or had to figure out the rules themselves, whether they slept or not between training and test, or if they heard three repetitions from three different people or from the same person. However, participants’ individual responses differed in which parts of their responses were accurately provided. Participants in the experimental conditions tended to grasp the Arabic-like structure of the words more quickly and tended to use fewer English-like responses.
To complete this research, we recruited research assistants from underrepresented backgrounds in science. Both research assistants who worked on this project were women of color with little previous experience in linguistics, but who were able to provide valuable insights into the project and resulting research. Through their participation in the design and dissemination process, they have been able to make connections with other researchers at conferences, they have had a hand in designing posters and adding content to talks, and they have been trained in academic writing.
We have disseminated this research through traditional academic channels and also informally, through classroom discussions with linguists, language instructors, and psychologists, and discussions with coworkers both in academia and in tech. We are continuing to disseminate our research through future academic articles, podcast interviews, and a popular science book.
Last Modified: 04/21/2024
Modified by: Shiloh Drake
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