TY - THES T1 - The interactive nature of second-language word learning in non-instructed environments A1 - Köhne,Judith Y1 - 2011/12/05 N2 - Gaining the command of a second language is a difficult task for an adult. Understanding and learning novel words is challenging, particularly in non-instructed situations: Words are often parts of complex linguistic contexts and potential referents are embedded in rich visual scenes. To overcome this challenge learners can potentially exploit the richness of their multi-modal environment through a range of different word-learning mechanisms and based on automatic sentence-processing mechanisms.Despite numerous investigations of word learning by researchers from a range of disciplines, few have examined the interplay of different learning and processing mechanisms. Such an approach, however, potentially both oversimplifies and overcomplicates the scenario. The main goal of this thesis is to study word learning in adults in a more situated and interactive manner, considering different mechanisms, processes, and information sources in parallel. This enterprise is driven by the motivation to contribute to a more complete theory of second-language word learning, to bridge research traditions, and to draw implications for the development of practical learning applications. In particular, we examined the interaction of the two important and visually situated word-learning mechanisms, cross-situational word learning (CSWL, Yu & Smith, 2007) and sentence-level constraint learning (SLCL). CSWL is a bottom-up, associative manner of word learning: people make connections between visual objects and spoken words by tracking their co-occurrence frequencies. SLCL, on the contrary, is a top-down strategy, which is based on making inferences about likely word meanings given a linguistic context (and word knowledge). SLCL in this thesis refers to inferring the meanings of object nouns (e.g., the corn) based on restrictive verbs (e.g., eat), a visual context, and people's world knowledge. Our studies exploit a novel experimental paradigm which integrates teaching German adults a semi-natural miniature language in a step-wise procedure. Participants were familiarized with a set of verbs (e.g., bermamema "to eat';) before they were exposed to noun-learning trials. These trials consisted of pairs of visual scenes and auditory transitive sentences, in which novel nouns were embedded (e.g. Si laki bermamema si sonis.}, "The man will eat the corn';). Finally, participants performed a forced-choice vocabulary test (with confidence ratings). Eye-movements were recorded during learning and testing. In Experiment 1, we evaluated the use of CSWL and SLCL in this naturalized situation. We found that participants applied both mechanisms in a complementary manner to learn the vocabulary. In Experiment 2, we introduced a second word order (OVS), which is characterized by a verb which follows rather than precedes the syntactic object (that denotes a visual object). Results are in accordance with the hypothesis that verb-based prediction of referents has a positive influence on noun learning. In Experiment 3, we re-addressed the question whether SLCL boosts noun learning and examined the interaction of CSWL and SLCL by manipulating the degree of referential uncertainty. Results provide evidence for the hypotheses that, firstly, SLCL boosts noun learning and secondly, SLCL and CSWL interact in that they jointly contribute to the identification of noun meanings. Experiment 4 was conducted in order to investigate the interaction of CSWL and SLCL when both mechanisms are in conflict. Learning rates clearly reveal that CSWL and SLCL were similarly influential with regard to learners' decisions in the vocabulary test. The aim of Experiment 5 was to examine the nature of both mechanisms by studying the interaction of CSWL and SLCL when both are independently applicable. Results clearly provide evidence for the hypothesis that SLCL completely blocks learner's sensitivity to smaller difference in co-occurrence frequencies, which characterizes pure CSWL learning. This pattern confirms the hypothesis that while CSWL is a parallel and probabilistic way of learning, SLCL is more deterministic. Results from a vocabulary test one day after learning reveal that learning rates were still clearly above chance.Taken together, our experimental data clearly shows that CSWL and SLCL are powerful mechanisms for word learning in adults in non-instructed environments, which may lead into long-lasting retention. Importantly, these mechanisms interact in multiple ways due to differences in their nature: They can be used in a complementary way, they influence word learning about equally strongly when they are in conflict, and SLCL blocks CSWL when both mechanisms are independently applicable. We conclude that adult word learners employ as many resources in parallel as necessary but ignore the less direct and helpful cue when information is redundant. However, when the relevance of different cues is unclear, they consider all of them. KW - Fremdsprachenlernen KW - Sprachverarbeitung KW - Augenfolgebewegung KW - Kunstsprache CY - Saarbrücken PB - Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek AD - Postfach 151141, 66041 Saarbrücken UR - http://scidok.sulb.uni-saarland.de/volltexte/2011/4515 ER -