原文:Age and amount of exposure to a foreign language during childhood
研究对象:350 healthy right-handed Japanese primary-school children (159 boys)(6–9 years old in the first year), who had been
exposed to English as an FL. They had lived in Japan since birth, had no known disorder had not lived with a native English speaker, had been
born to a native Japanese-speaking mother.
英语获得方式:Their exposure to
English was through one or more of the following means:
(1)
school lessons (10–25 h per year at public schools
and 450–600 h
per year at one private school running an immersion program),
(2) private lessons outside school,
(3) home study, and
(4) contact
with English-speaking acquaintances outside home.
研究时长:3-year
research period
评测:The test measures children’s comprehension of spoken
English.
During the test, the child listened to English sentences
and probe questions, and chose an answer from multiple choices
provided in the form of pictures in the test booklet.
Discussion:
v1: AOFE (age of first
exposure)
v2: HOE (hours of
exposure)
1) We did not find advantages of early AOFE in children’s FL learning.
Before HOE was controlled for, the data seemed to show
that earlier AOFE led to higher English scores and larger N400
amplitudes. However, when HOE was controlled for in multiple
regression analyses, this tendency disappeared.
......
These findings are inconsistent with the expectation that earlier
AOFE leads to advantages in lexical learning and semantic processing
in the auditory modality. There is behavioral evidence that
phonological sensitivity declines as the child gets older (Tahta et al.,
1981).
2) Longer HOE led to significantly higher English proficiency.
..., the N400 kept growing at least up to
2500 h
the finding that later AOFE led to
higher FL proficiency and larger neural responses (with the effects
of HOE statistically controlled) is suggestive. It draws our attention
to the possibility that making exposure more frequent and denser
without lowering AOFE may lead to better results for at least some
aspects of FL learning, than lowering AOFE.