Work

What Predicts Successful Literacy Acquisition in a Second Language?

Year: 2013

Type: article

Abstract: In the study reported here, we examined whether success (or failure) in assimilating the structure of a second language can be predicted by general statistical-learning abilities that are nonlinguistic in nature. We employed a visual-statistical-learning (VSL) task, monitoring our participants' implicit learning of the transitional probabilities of visual shapes. A pretest revealed that performance in the VSL task was not correlated with abilities related to a general g factor or working memory. We found that, on average, native speakers of English who more accurately picked up the implicit statistical structure embedded in the continuous stream of shapes better assimilated the Semitic structure of Hebrew words. Languages and their writing systems are characterized by idiosyncratic correlations of form and meaning, and our findings suggest that these correlations are picked up in the process of literacy acquisition, as they are picked up in any other type of learning, for the purpose of making sense of the environment.

Source: Psychological Science

DOI: 10.1177/0956797612472207

Authors: Ram Frost, Noam Siegelman, Alona Narkiss, Liron Afek

Institutions: Haskins Laboratories, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language

Language: English

Topic: Reading and Literacy Development

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: green

Funders: Israel Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development