Gkresia Nikolaidi

Prof. Quintero

IDS2651

21-10-22

How do social contact and transient exposure affect a child's ability to learn a
foreign language?

Background: The hunt for solutions has increased as greater interest in comprehending how
memory works. One could question whether the numerous and frequent exposures to visual
imagery in our surrou have increased. Infants, for example, distinguish native language
phonetic categories based on the distributional properties of the speech they hear
and discern transitional probabilities between syllables via learning algorithms this may be
influenced and profoundly impacted by exposure to their native language by the end of
their first year of life. On the other hand, other animal species, such as songbirds, have also
shown that social engagement increases communicative learning.

Method: The research was carried out in the university's departments of: ‘mind, brain, and
learning’, as well as speech and hearing sciences, in Washington, a city in the United States
where most people speak English. For this study, scientists focused their investigation on
babies aged 6 to 10 months. They randomly divided the experiment's participants into two
groups. The head-turn paradigm was a controlled condition- This refers to the rotation of
our heads in response to a stimulus, which might range from noise to visual images or even
smell. Used to guarantee that both groups of newborns were equally adept at distinguishing
a native phonetic contrast and that the experiment would have different results in the same
condition with modifications to increase its accuracy.

32 full-term infants were the main research subjects for specialists. In this study, the
participants were split into two groups of 16 newborns each, with a controlled condition
that there were 8 boys in each of the two 3 for 2 different experimental procedures tested.
In the first experiment, twelve, 25-minute language sessions were held with the infants over
the course of four weeks for one of the experimental procedures. A native Mandarin or
English speaker played with a toy for 15 minutes and read for 10 minutes with the
participants to see if the phonetic acquisition is induced initially by exposure to a foreign
language. Finally, the experimental group went through the experiment focusing solely on
language. Experiment 2's auditory-visual and auditory-alone conditions demonstrated that
the foreign-language intervention had no effect on phonetic perception.
In addition, these subjects were introduced by computers, and the sounds generated had
specific consonants (a distinction between Mandarin and Chinese pronunciations, which do
not exist in English). In a second experiment, we examined how social interaction affects
the learning of pronunciation from a foreign language. There were several language
exposure sections. tested children with the same Mandarin speech stimuli as Whether
learning by contact with a foreign language occurs without social contact at this age. Here,
an assistant observed the neonates on a video monitor outside the anechoic chamber and
rated visual arousal during the 12 exposure periods on a 5-point scale.

Results:

First-hand exposure to Mandarin Chinese at the age of nine months reverses the normal
decline in the perception of foreign-language speech, according to the study. When these
infants were ten to twelve months old, there was a 65% correct chance that they were
exposed to Chinese while there was only a 53% correct chance that they were exposed to
English. This illustrates how more newborns who were exposed to Mandarin learned in
comparison to kids who were exposed to English.

In the second experiment, results suggest that listening to and watching DVDs does not
improve babies' vocal learning. Television exposure does not help you learn more difficult
language concepts such as phonetics and grammar. Learning Chinese as a foreign language
is impossible without the presence of live speakers. Only 53% of audiovisual exposures
were seen compared to 52% of auditory exposures.

The third experiment showed that the same Mandarin discrimination test scored 68% for
monolingual Chinese learners and 53% for English learners.

Implications:

We can conclude that exposure to foreign languages can cause language phonetic
constraints to be postponed. Even while subsequent research has focused more exclusively
on sound, they have proven that when there aren't many artificial language signals present,
young infants may acquire new knowledge through audio-only exposure. After comparing
studies and our own lived experiences, we may infer that social connection has a higher
impact on our reaction to a certain scenario than artificial exposition, despite the fact that
they both influence language and behavior. Despite the fact that studies have already
established a link between sound exposure and recognition, it is exciting to confirm that
something as fundamental as language skill has a major influence on the working memory
model.