Second Language Acquisition in Healthy Young Adults
Conditions
Keywords
Second language, Word learning, Self-production
Brief summary
Self-production facilitates acquisition of spoken words, signs, and characters from an unfamiliar second language. The proposed work investigates how motor cortex, a key part of the brain enabling body action, supports their acquisition via production as well as perception, providing insight into whether they are learned via mental simulation of the body actions used to produce them. It is hypothesized that activity in motor cortex will differ based on the body part used to produce lexical items (e.g., mouth vs. hands), will be greater for lexical items learned via production than observation, and will differentiate lexical items recognized successfully vs. unsuccessfully.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALSelf-production
After participants learn L2 lexical items via hearing or observing them paired with L1 translations, they are prompted to produce them themselves
Sponsors
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
SINGLE (Subject)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to 35 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* Right-handed * Native English speaker
Exclusion criteria
* Knowledge of sign language or languages with logographic characters * Hearing or vision impairments * Speech, language, or learning disorders * Unsecured metal body implants
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Functional activity in motor cortex location, 5 min, recognition | 5 minutes after learning | Location of Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) signal in motor cortex at recognition |
| Functional activity in motor cortex degree, 5 min, recognition | 5 minutes after learning | Degree of Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) signal in motor cortex at recognition |
| Functional activity in motor cortex location, 1 week, recognition | 1 week after learning | Location of Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) signal in motor cortex at recognition |
| Functional activity in motor cortex degree, 1 week, recognition | 1 week after learning | Degree of Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) signal in motor cortex at recognition |
Countries
United States
Contacts
Primary ContactLaura Morett, Ph.D.
Outcome results
None listed