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SUMMARY:Semantic implicit learning - Albertyna Paciorek\, RCEAL\, Universi
 ty of Cambridge
DTSTART:20110222T160000Z
DTEND:20110222T173000Z
UID:TALK28500@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Chris Cummins
DESCRIPTION:While it has been established that people can learn the regula
 rities in letter or symbol\nsequences without intending to and without bei
 ng aware of what they have learned (known as 'implicit\nlearning')\, there
  is a debate whether this kind of learning contributes to second language 
 acquisition.\nThe debate seems particularly contentious with regards to le
 arning the meanings of words\, because\nunlike learning sequences of lette
 rs etc. this involves forming mappings between different domains\nof infor
 mation. Can L2 learners infer anything about the use of new words without 
 being specifically\ninstructed? If so\, is this knowledge always explicit?
  The resolution will crucially depend upon accurate\nmeasurement of implic
 it knowledge.\n\nI address these issues in the context of learning the sem
 antic collocational patterns of\nnovel verbs. In the presented experiments
  novel verbs regularly took either an abstract or a concrete\nnoun as a co
 mplement. The results suggest that people indeed unconsciously extract suc
 h semantic\ngeneralisations about verb usage.\n\nI will present two series
  of experiments. In the first series\, familiarity judgements were used\na
 s a measure of learning and subjective report as a measure of awareness. T
 he results suggest that\nparticipants were likely to mistakenly think that
  they had seen word pairs which did not occur in the\ntraining part\, but 
 did follow the semantic regularity. This held true when participants repor
 ted no\nawareness of any regularity in the stimuli.\nIn the second series 
 of experiments reaction-times were used as an indication of learning\,\nan
 d subjective report as a measure of awareness. The reaction-times to the s
 timuli violating the\ninitial regularity showed a significant slow-down\, 
 even when participants claim not to have realised\nany regularity. The fin
 dings confirm that learners’ behaviour can be directly influenced by imp
 licit\nsemantic knowledge of collocational patterns. The benefit of this p
 aradigm is that it ensures\nautomaticity both at encoding and at retrieval
  of the task-relevant information\, therefore minimising the\ninterference
  with explicit control.\n\nI conclude that people can pick up usage patter
 ns of new verbs without intending and without\nbeing aware. I will discuss
  these results in the light of the theories of SLA and implicit learning.
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
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