Incidental Auditory Category Training for Language Learning (IACT)

Carnegie Mellon University

Status: Terminated

Conditions: Healthy; Language

Treatments: Behavioral: Explicit training; Behavioral: Classroom training; Behavioral: Classroom and incidental training; Behavioral: Classroom and explicit training; Behavioral: Incidental training

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04509024

1R03HD099382-01

Details and patient eligibility

About

The overarching goal of the proposed research is to understand how human listeners learn speech categories. The project takes a prospective approach with adult second-language learners, blending empirical, methodological and theoretical advances from laboratory studies with explicit classroom instruction. The central hypothesis is that incidentally-acquired nonlinguistic perceptual building block categories may support speech perception and production in a second language. The project will advance important theoretical debates about the cross-talk between general auditory representations and speech categories and will provide a novel approach to nudging adult learners off learning plateau typically encountered in classroom instruction.

Full description

Robust speech communication requires that listeners learn linguistically-relevant representations for stable language regularities, such as the speech sounds (phonemes) that convey meaning. In an increasingly multilingual society, as many as twenty percent of Americans accomplish this across multiple languages. Yet, second language acquisition is especially challenging among adult language learners, for whom learning typically involves explicit classroom instruction. Troublingly, research documents that instruction routinely results in a 'learning plateau' whereby language abilities stagnate or even atrophy despite continued instruction. There is a need to establish effective new approaches to nudge adult language learners off this plateau. This project integrates theoretical and methodological developments in auditory category learning with approaches to classroom-based L2 instruction. Specifically, incidental category learning (in which learners' attention is directed away from to-be-learned categories by an engaging videogame) taps into category learning systems distinct from those engaged in more explicit learning. Moreover, incidental learning of nonspeech sound categories leads to activation of putatively speech-selective cortex associated with speech categorization, suggesting potential representational cross-talk. This guides the central hypothesis of the project: incidental learning of nonspeech perceptual building block categories may provide a 'back door' through which to influence adult L2 learners' speech acquisition and to move them off the classroom learning plateau. An intensive 8-week incidental training study will test the hypothesis (Aim 1). Comparison of incidental nonspeech training with explicit L2 speech training will assess whether this cognitive 'back door' may be more effective in promoting L2 speech perception and production than explicit training with L2 speech and will determine the extent to which each interacts with classroom instruction in the L2 (Aim 2). The results will reveal whether nonspeech, auditory categories sharing common perceptual dimensions with second language categories scaffold L2 acquisition, the degree to which explicit instruction may support or interfere with new auditory categories, whether incidental learning is retained after training, and whether learning gains transfer to support other language-learning tasks. In blending empirical, methodological, and theoretical advances from laboratory studies with explicit classroom learning it will be possible to determine the interplay between incidentally-acquired nonlinguistic perceptual building block categories and an emerging L2. This will advance important theoretical debates about the cross-talk between general auditory representations and speech categories and will provide a novel approach to L2 pedagogy.

Enrollment: 106 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• 18 or older, normal hearing
• Native/non-native Chinese speakers

Exclusion criteria

• Younger than 18, loss of hearing

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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106 participants in 6 patient groups

Incidental training

Experimental group

Description:

Participants undergo novel non-linguistic incidental category learning training.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Incidental training

Explicit training

Experimental group

Description:

Participants undergo traditional explicit language learning.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Explicit training

No training

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants do not undergo any training.

Classroom training

Experimental group

Description:

Participants take part in structured classroom learning.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Classroom training

Classroom and incidental training

Experimental group

Description:

Participants take part in structured classroom learning and incidental learning.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Classroom and incidental training

Classroom and explicit training

Experimental group

Description:

Participants take part in structured classroom learning and explicit learning.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Classroom and explicit training