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Play along: effects of music and social interaction on word learning

Learning new words is an increasingly common necessity in everyday life. External factors, among which music and social interaction are particularly debated, are claimed to facilitate this task. Due to their influence on the learner’s temporal behavior, these stimuli are able to drive the learner’s...

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Autores principales: Verga, Laura, Bigand, Emmanuel, Kotz, Sonja A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4554937/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26388818
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01316
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author Verga, Laura
Bigand, Emmanuel
Kotz, Sonja A.
author_facet Verga, Laura
Bigand, Emmanuel
Kotz, Sonja A.
author_sort Verga, Laura
collection PubMed
description Learning new words is an increasingly common necessity in everyday life. External factors, among which music and social interaction are particularly debated, are claimed to facilitate this task. Due to their influence on the learner’s temporal behavior, these stimuli are able to drive the learner’s attention to the correct referent of new words at the correct point in time. However, do music and social interaction impact learning behavior in the same way? The current study aims to answer this question. Native German speakers (N = 80) were requested to learn new words (pseudo-words) during a contextual learning game. This learning task was performed alone with a computer or with a partner, with or without music. Results showed that music and social interaction had a different impact on the learner’s behavior: Participants tended to temporally coordinate their behavior more with a partner than with music, and in both cases more than with a computer. However, when both music and social interaction were present, this temporal coordination was hindered. These results suggest that while music and social interaction do influence participants’ learning behavior, they have a different impact. Moreover, impaired behavior when both music and a partner are present suggests that different mechanisms are employed to coordinate with the two types of stimuli. Whether one or the other approach is more efficient for word learning, however, is a question still requiring further investigation, as no differences were observed between conditions in a retrieval phase, which took place immediately after the learning session. This study contributes to the literature on word learning in adults by investigating two possible facilitating factors, and has important implications for situations such as music therapy, in which music and social interaction are present at the same time.
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spelling pubmed-45549372015-09-18 Play along: effects of music and social interaction on word learning Verga, Laura Bigand, Emmanuel Kotz, Sonja A. Front Psychol Psychology Learning new words is an increasingly common necessity in everyday life. External factors, among which music and social interaction are particularly debated, are claimed to facilitate this task. Due to their influence on the learner’s temporal behavior, these stimuli are able to drive the learner’s attention to the correct referent of new words at the correct point in time. However, do music and social interaction impact learning behavior in the same way? The current study aims to answer this question. Native German speakers (N = 80) were requested to learn new words (pseudo-words) during a contextual learning game. This learning task was performed alone with a computer or with a partner, with or without music. Results showed that music and social interaction had a different impact on the learner’s behavior: Participants tended to temporally coordinate their behavior more with a partner than with music, and in both cases more than with a computer. However, when both music and social interaction were present, this temporal coordination was hindered. These results suggest that while music and social interaction do influence participants’ learning behavior, they have a different impact. Moreover, impaired behavior when both music and a partner are present suggests that different mechanisms are employed to coordinate with the two types of stimuli. Whether one or the other approach is more efficient for word learning, however, is a question still requiring further investigation, as no differences were observed between conditions in a retrieval phase, which took place immediately after the learning session. This study contributes to the literature on word learning in adults by investigating two possible facilitating factors, and has important implications for situations such as music therapy, in which music and social interaction are present at the same time. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-09-01 /pmc/articles/PMC4554937/ /pubmed/26388818 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01316 Text en Copyright © 2015 Verga, Bigand and Kotz. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Verga, Laura
Bigand, Emmanuel
Kotz, Sonja A.
Play along: effects of music and social interaction on word learning
title Play along: effects of music and social interaction on word learning
title_full Play along: effects of music and social interaction on word learning
title_fullStr Play along: effects of music and social interaction on word learning
title_full_unstemmed Play along: effects of music and social interaction on word learning
title_short Play along: effects of music and social interaction on word learning
title_sort play along: effects of music and social interaction on word learning
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4554937/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26388818
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01316
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