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The effects of language and emotionality of stimuli on vocabulary learning

Learning new content and vocabulary in a foreign language can be particularly difficult. Yet, there are educational programs that require people to study in a language they are not native speakers of. For this reason, it is important to understand how these learning processes work and possibly diffe...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Frances, Candice, de Bruin, Angela, Duñabeitia, Jon Andoni
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7540870/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33027296
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240252
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author Frances, Candice
de Bruin, Angela
Duñabeitia, Jon Andoni
author_facet Frances, Candice
de Bruin, Angela
Duñabeitia, Jon Andoni
author_sort Frances, Candice
collection PubMed
description Learning new content and vocabulary in a foreign language can be particularly difficult. Yet, there are educational programs that require people to study in a language they are not native speakers of. For this reason, it is important to understand how these learning processes work and possibly differ from native language learning, as well as to develop strategies to ease this process. The current study takes advantage of emotionality—operationally defined as positive valence and high arousal—to improve memory. In two experiments, the present paper addresses whether participants have more difficulty learning the names of objects they have never seen before in their foreign language and whether embedding them in a positive semantic context can help make learning easier. With this in mind, we had participants (with a minimum of a B2 level of English) in two experiments (43 participants in Experiment 1 and 54 in Experiment 2) read descriptions of made-up objects—either positive or neutral and either in their native or a foreign language. The effects of language varied with the difficulty of the task and measure used. In both cases, learning the words in a positive context improved learning. Importantly, the effect of emotionality was not modulated by language, suggesting that the effects of emotionality are independent of language and could potentially be a useful tool for improving foreign language vocabulary learning.
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spelling pubmed-75408702020-10-19 The effects of language and emotionality of stimuli on vocabulary learning Frances, Candice de Bruin, Angela Duñabeitia, Jon Andoni PLoS One Research Article Learning new content and vocabulary in a foreign language can be particularly difficult. Yet, there are educational programs that require people to study in a language they are not native speakers of. For this reason, it is important to understand how these learning processes work and possibly differ from native language learning, as well as to develop strategies to ease this process. The current study takes advantage of emotionality—operationally defined as positive valence and high arousal—to improve memory. In two experiments, the present paper addresses whether participants have more difficulty learning the names of objects they have never seen before in their foreign language and whether embedding them in a positive semantic context can help make learning easier. With this in mind, we had participants (with a minimum of a B2 level of English) in two experiments (43 participants in Experiment 1 and 54 in Experiment 2) read descriptions of made-up objects—either positive or neutral and either in their native or a foreign language. The effects of language varied with the difficulty of the task and measure used. In both cases, learning the words in a positive context improved learning. Importantly, the effect of emotionality was not modulated by language, suggesting that the effects of emotionality are independent of language and could potentially be a useful tool for improving foreign language vocabulary learning. Public Library of Science 2020-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7540870/ /pubmed/33027296 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240252 Text en © 2020 Frances et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Frances, Candice
de Bruin, Angela
Duñabeitia, Jon Andoni
The effects of language and emotionality of stimuli on vocabulary learning
title The effects of language and emotionality of stimuli on vocabulary learning
title_full The effects of language and emotionality of stimuli on vocabulary learning
title_fullStr The effects of language and emotionality of stimuli on vocabulary learning
title_full_unstemmed The effects of language and emotionality of stimuli on vocabulary learning
title_short The effects of language and emotionality of stimuli on vocabulary learning
title_sort effects of language and emotionality of stimuli on vocabulary learning
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7540870/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33027296
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240252
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