When It Hurts (and Helps) to Try: The Role of Effort in Language Learning
Compared to children, adults are bad at learning language. This is counterintuitive; adults outperform children on most measures of cognition, especially those that involve effort (which continue to mature into early adulthood). The present study asks whether these mature effortful abilities interfe...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Public Library of Science
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/89237 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7717-3562 |
| _version_ | 1826205999104524288 |
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| author | Finn, Amy Sue Lee, Taraz Kraus, Allison Hudson Kam, Carla L. |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Finn, Amy Sue Lee, Taraz Kraus, Allison Hudson Kam, Carla L. |
| author_sort | Finn, Amy Sue |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Compared to children, adults are bad at learning language. This is counterintuitive; adults outperform children on most measures of cognition, especially those that involve effort (which continue to mature into early adulthood). The present study asks whether these mature effortful abilities interfere with language learning in adults and further, whether interference occurs equally for aspects of language that adults are good (word-segmentation) versus bad (grammar) at learning. Learners were exposed to an artificial language comprised of statistically defined words that belong to phonologically defined categories (grammar). Exposure occurred under passive or effortful conditions. Passive learners were told to listen while effortful learners were instructed to try to 1) learn the words, 2) learn the categories, or 3) learn the category-order. Effortful learners showed an advantage for learning words while passive learners showed an advantage for learning the categories. Effort can therefore hurt the learning of categories. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:22:23Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/89237 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:22:23Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/892372022-10-01T14:49:19Z When It Hurts (and Helps) to Try: The Role of Effort in Language Learning Finn, Amy Sue Lee, Taraz Kraus, Allison Hudson Kam, Carla L. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT Finn, Amy Sue Compared to children, adults are bad at learning language. This is counterintuitive; adults outperform children on most measures of cognition, especially those that involve effort (which continue to mature into early adulthood). The present study asks whether these mature effortful abilities interfere with language learning in adults and further, whether interference occurs equally for aspects of language that adults are good (word-segmentation) versus bad (grammar) at learning. Learners were exposed to an artificial language comprised of statistically defined words that belong to phonologically defined categories (grammar). Exposure occurred under passive or effortful conditions. Passive learners were told to listen while effortful learners were instructed to try to 1) learn the words, 2) learn the categories, or 3) learn the category-order. Effortful learners showed an advantage for learning words while passive learners showed an advantage for learning the categories. Effort can therefore hurt the learning of categories. Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.) (Grant 048572) National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Graduate Research Fellowship Program) 2014-09-09T16:36:58Z 2014-09-09T16:36:58Z 2014-07 2013-12 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 1932-6203 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/89237 Finn, Amy S., Taraz Lee, Allison Kraus, and Carla L. Hudson Kam. “When It Hurts (and Helps) to Try: The Role of Effort in Language Learning.” Edited by Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells. PLoS ONE 9, no. 7 (July 21, 2014): e101806. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7717-3562 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0101806 PLoS ONE Creative Commons Attribution http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf Public Library of Science Public Library of Science |
| spellingShingle | Finn, Amy Sue Lee, Taraz Kraus, Allison Hudson Kam, Carla L. When It Hurts (and Helps) to Try: The Role of Effort in Language Learning |
| title | When It Hurts (and Helps) to Try: The Role of Effort in Language Learning |
| title_full | When It Hurts (and Helps) to Try: The Role of Effort in Language Learning |
| title_fullStr | When It Hurts (and Helps) to Try: The Role of Effort in Language Learning |
| title_full_unstemmed | When It Hurts (and Helps) to Try: The Role of Effort in Language Learning |
| title_short | When It Hurts (and Helps) to Try: The Role of Effort in Language Learning |
| title_sort | when it hurts and helps to try the role of effort in language learning |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/89237 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7717-3562 |
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