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At least 973 records · Page 54Linked to original sources
PubMed1996

Learning test on expressive phonetic symbolism.

We asked 249 students to learn three different vocabulary lists, each containing 19 word pairs (Indonesian, Suaheli, and one mixed list composed of items from 13 different languages) in three versions: "normal" (factual classification), "reversed" (opposite classification), and "disarranged" (word meaning imputed in a completely different dimension). That those word-pairs with "normal" classification would lead to best learning was not generally confirmed but was corroborated for favourable learning conditions (items at the top of the list, items at the beginning of the questioning, easy to learn items), whereas the effect of phonetic symbolism combined with "normal" presentation proved rather abstruse. We assume that in the latter cases encoding worked rather automatically, and additional information used energy. The encoding process uses so much energy that further information is not useful under unfavourable learning conditions. We found a relation between performance on each mode of presentation and sex. Independent of presentation mode, learning depends on age, sex, membership in a seminar, and subject matter studied. Therefore, we examined the distribution of these in our nine groups (three languages by three versions). Since no statistically relevant differences in distribution arose, our results do not have to be qualified.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Effect of language dominance on cognitive processes in a Stroop task.

The present study investigated the effect of language dominance on 40 subjects' performance on a Stroop task. In the first group were 20 Education majors using mainly the Arabic language, while in the second group of 20 students were majors in English. Each group performed two different Stroop tasks. Analysis showed that language comprehension affected the way subjects processed the information. This difference was explained in terms of cognitive processes involved and by a late selective attention process.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Effects of second language study of phonemic discrimination and auditory event-related potentials in adults.

This study was designed to investigate the effects of acquisition of a second language on auditory even-related brain potentials and discrimination of foreign language phonemes by 36 women (ages 18 to 47 years), and 25 men (ages 18 to 36 years) and of varying linguistic background, in response to synthetic versions of Japanese phonemes. Subjects were subsequently tested on discrimination between spoken Japanese phonemes. Analysis indicated that the men and women differed in phonological processing and in the way acquisition of the second language affected phonological processing.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1998

Manual response set in a Stroop-like task involving categorization of English and Japanese words indicates a common semantic representation.

The present study examined the semantic representation for English and Japanese words. A previous study using the interlingual word categorization showed Japanese words affected the semantic processing of English words, but English words did not affect the semantic processing of Japanese words. The present study tested the interlingual word categorization by a manual response instead of the vocal response. Analysis showed English words also affected the semantic processing of Japanese words. The common semantic representation for English and Japanese words was discussed.

Attention↗
PubMed1999

Relationships between anxiety and achievement at three stages of learning a foreign language.

Anxiety in foreign language courses has been conceptualized as occurring at each of three stages of input, processing, and output. Specifically, input anxiety refers to the learner's apprehension when receiving information in the foreign language; processing anxiety refers to the apprehension experienced by learners when learning and thinking in the foreign language; and output anxiety refers to the apprehension experienced when speaking or writing in the foreign language. The present purpose was to investigate the relationship between achievement and anxiety at each of these three stages of learning a foreign language. Participants were 224 college students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, enrolled in Spanish, French, or German classes. Small but significant negative associations were found between achievement in the foreign language and scores on the Input Scale, the Processing Scale, and the Output Scale. These indicate educators should consider more than just the output stage of learning in foreign language classes.

Achievement↗
PubMed1999

Writing Chinese characters and success on Mental Rotation Test.

Our recent study with Chinese and Chinese-American undergraduates indicated that writing Chinese characters was associated with better performance on the Piagetian Water-Level Task for Chinese-American men. The current study investigated whether the same effects would apply to the Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test. Two alternative hypotheses (bilingualism and birth place) were also tested. Participants were two groups of Chinese-American undergraduates: 48 writers of Chinese (21 men, 27 women) and 130 nonwriters of Chinese (58 men, 72 women). Analysis suggested that writing Chinese and birth in the USA contributed significantly to the success on Mental Rotation Test. Students who were born in the USA and able to write Chinese scored the highest on this test. Being bilingual was not associated with performance on the Mental Rotation Test. Men performed significantly better than women.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed2000

Automaticity, spelling, and second language learning.

This study investigated the relationship between a chronometric estimate of automaticity for the spelling of French words (Automaticity) and performance on four tests of French language attainment among a sample of Year 11 students of French as a foreign language. Fifty participants each completed a computerized test of French spelling and attainment tests in four aspects of French language learning: reading comprehension, writing fluency, oral fluency, and aural comprehension. Correlations were significant between Automaticity and performance on all four tests of French language attainment as well as on overall attainment.

Achievement↗
PubMed2000

Study habits and anxiety about learning foreign languages.

The purpose was to investigate the relationship of self-reported study habits to anxiety about learning foreign languages. 219 college students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds were enrolled in either Spanish, French, German, or Japanese classes. Correlational analyses, using the Bonferroni adjustment, indicated that students with the highest anxiety about foreign languages tended to report that (1) they spend too much time on some subjects and not enough time on others, (2) they frequently do not get enough sleep and feel sluggish in class or when studying, (3) they do not try to space study period to avoid becoming too tired while studying, and (4) they have trouble settling down to work and do not begin to study as soon as they sit down. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Sex and skill differences in translation of English color words by Chinese students.

The present study investigated sex and skill differences in color-word translation by Chinese-speaking students in university English classes. A questionnaire was administered to estimate the correlation between subjects' performance and their color-related hobbies. To conceptualize the issue better, two more groups of correlated parameter (academic achievements plus demographic factors) were introduced in this research as well. 40 English majors (20 women, 20 men), ranging in education from level one to level four, were randomly drawn from a metropolitan university and tested in the experiments as subjects. These university students were asked to provide Chinese equivalents for a list of 33 elaborated English color terms chosen from a thesaurus by mapping on the 11 color-tone categories defined by basic color theory. The results confirm the findings in relevant studies that used native speakers as subjects by observing that (1) women possessed a richer color vocabulary both in their source language and in their target language, (2) women also provided more elaborated Chinese equivalents to the color words used as stimuli, and finally, (3) women showed a superiority in accuracy in this color-lexicon matching or translating task. As a whole, the effects of skill and age were not significant. A significant correlation was found between the learners' proficiency in English and performance in translation of color words, but this relationship was rather weak and only true for the men. Color-related hobbies did not significantly correlate with the color-decoding performance of these language learners. Neither did the demographic factors. Taken together, it is sensible to state that differences reported here were affected primarily by the sex of the learn er. conditionally by language proficiency, and presumably by the cognitive and perceptual sex differences as well. These findings further indicate that the process of color codability is a complicated but unstudied issue in language learning and that sex should be treated as an independent variable in this area of research.

Achievement↗
PubMed2001

Bilingual aphasia and subcortical-cortical lesions.

The use of the mother tongue relies on implicit memory procedures that are mainly controlled by subcortical structures. A second language depends on the integrity of the explicit memory system, largely subserved by cortical areas. Therefore, bilinguals can be considered as neurolinguistic models which contribute to the understanding of how the cortical and subcortical language systems communicate while maintaining independent functions. We describe a patient who developed an impairment of the mother tongue after an infarct of the caudate. During follow-up, a dramatic improvement of the mother tongue accompanied by worsening of the second language became evident after the extension of the ischemic lesion to the cortex.

Amygdala↗
PubMed2001

Remembering more nouns than verbs in lists of foreign-language words as an indicator of syntactic phonetic symbolism.

In lists with words from languages not known to the subjects (students of the University of Essen, Germany, and in one experiment Polish teachers in North Poland), nouns were remembered more often than verbs, and the effect was not dependent on the length of the words. The effect was clearer with languages with a strong (Swahili) or medium (Hungarian, Turkish) tendency to marcation and less with languages with a tendency for weak marcation (Japanese). We interpreted this effect as influenced by syntactic phonetic symbolism, assuming there is a phonologic and prosodic difference between nouns and verbs.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Assessing handwriting speed of children biliterate in English and Chinese.

The assessment of multiliterate handwriting performance is rarely reported despite increased globalization. The present study describes the psychometric properties of a handwriting speed test developed for children who are biliterate in English and Chinese. This included interrater reliability, test-retest reliability, interitem correlation, construct validity, and concurrent validity. The test's reliabilities between two raters and over a 1-wk. interval were high with ICCs ranging from .89 to .99. Interitem correlation between the English and Chinese items was .87. The presence of age trends but not sex differences was a positive indicator of the test's validity. Correlations of .91 and 1.00 between the Chinese and the English items of the Handwriting Assessment Tool with the Chinese Handwriting Speed Test and Handwriting Speed Test, respectively, provided evidence of concurrent validity. These preliminary results showed the Handwriting Assessment Tool is reliable and is a potentially useful handwriting test for children biliterate in English and Chinese. The feasibility of assessing biliterate handwriting speed performance with the same set of scoring criteria for different writing systems was supported.

Child↗
PubMed2004

Discrimination and production of English vowels by bilingual speakers of Spanish and English.

The goal of this study was to examine whether listeners bilingual in Spanish and English would have difficulty in the discrimination of English vowel contrasts. An additional goal was to estimate the correlation between their discrimination and production of these vowels. Participants (40 bilingual Spanish- and English-speaking and 40 native monolingual English-speaking college students, 23-36 years of age) participated (M age = 25.3 yr., Mdn = 25.0). The discrimination and production of English vowels in real and novel words by adult participants bilingual in Spanish and English were examined and their discrimination was compared with that of 40 native monolingual English-speaking participants. Stimuli were presented within triads in an ABX paradigm. Novel words were chosen to represent new words when learning a new language and to provide a more valid test of discrimination. Bilingual participants' productions of vowels were judged by two independent listeners to estimate the correlation between discrimination and production. Discrimination accuracy was significantly greater for native English-speaking participants than for bilingual participants for vowel contrasts and novel words. Significant errors also appeared in the bilingual participants' productions of certain vowels. Earlier age of acquisition, absence of communication problems, and greater percentage of time devoted to communication contributed to greater accuracy in discrimination and production.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Cross-cultural adjustment of Chinese students in Japan.

The present study examined responses of 92 Chinese students in Japan to questionnaires which included adjustment items selected from work of Baker in 1981 and Uehara in 1988. These items were classified by factor analysis into four scales of Emotional, Academic, Cultural-Social, and Environmental. Adjustment scores on the Environmental scale were higher than those on the other three scales. Country of origin was a significant influence only for scores on the Environmental scale. Students who came from Taiwan scored higher on adjustment. There were gender differences on Emotional and Academic scales; male students reported higher adjustment. The effects of students' length of residence and proficiency in the Japanese language could be seen in scores on Academic and Cultural-Social scales; the students who had a longer period of stay or had higher proficiency in Japanese language had higher scores on adjustment. Thus, results indicated that personal differences were reflected in subfactors of adjustment.

Acculturation↗
PubMed1998

Anxiety about foreign language among students in French, Spanish, and German classes.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether anxiety reported by students while studying foreign language courses in college was similar for 253 college students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, who were enrolled in either Spanish, French, or German classes. Analysis indicated no difference in anxiety about foreign languages among students in the three classes. In addition, a moderate negative relationship was found between anxiety about learning a foreign language and achievement for all three classes. Recommendations for research are made, including investigating anxiety about other foreign languages.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

Development of reading proficiency in English by bilingual children and their monolingual peers.

The semantic, syntactic, and graphophonic cueing techniques employed by 55 bilingual children and 39 monolingual peers when reading aloud in English were identified through miscue analysis. In contrast to earlier research in 1999 by Cline and Cozens no significant differences were found between the two groups on any of the techniques. Both bilingual and monolingual readers consistently used more graphophonic cues than syntactic or semantic cues but not significantly so. The authors discuss possible extraneous variables which may account in part for this unexpected result.

Child↗
PubMed2002

Effects of bilingual and monolingual presentations and time on concept- and language-matching tasks.

Balanced Turkish-English bilingual participants viewed word pairs, presented both monolingually (English-English or Turkish-Turkish) or bilingually (English-Turkish or Turkish-English) and both for short and long durations. They made decisions on whether the simultaneously presented words in a pair were in the same language or not, or whether they denoted the same concept or not. In the short presentation condition, we found no evidence for subliminal processing. In cases in which both words were consciously identified, participants were more accurate, although not faster in the long than in the short presentation condition for both language and concept decisions. In the long presentation condition, language decisions were more accurate than concept decisions, although not faster. In addition, language decisions were not affected by whether the words were synonyms (concept identity), and concept decisions were not affected by whether the presentation was monolingual or bilingual (language identity), although in the monolingual conditions, "same" decisions were faster but not more accurate, and in the bilingual conditions a speed-accuracy trade-off was observed in that "same" decisions were faster but "different" decisions were more accurate.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

A mediational model of the relationship between linguistic acculturation and polydrug use among Hispanic adolescents.

Hispanic seventh and eighth graders (N=1,038) in 22 New York City middle or junior high schools completed self-report questionnaires with items related to drug use (cigarette smoking, alcohol use, and marijuana use), linguistic acculturation (language use with parents), perceived peer smoking norms, perceived peer drinking norms, and psychological distress. Students who spoke English with their parents and bilingual students who spoke English and Spanish with their parents engaged in greater polydrug use than those who spoke Spanish with their parents. Bilingual students perceived that a higher proportion of their peers drink than those who spoke Spanish with their parents, and this higher perception of their peers' drinking was associated with greater polydrug use controlling for linguistic acculturation. In the final model, linguistic acculturation was no longer significant and peer drinking norms predicted polydrug use, peer drinking norms mediated the relationship between linguistic acculturation and polydrug use, but not peer smoking norms and psychological distress.

Acculturation↗