Video Game Helps Neuroscientists Understand Second Language Learners
Video Game Helps Neuroscientists Understand Second Language Learners
Video Game Helps Neuroscientists Understand Second Language Learners
By Caroline Sheedy
May 19, 2020
Summary
The player starts to learn where ships are coming from based on what they hear, earning a higher score and, incidentally, a better way to perceive tonal differences.
The space invaders in this online game are helping the player with a lesson in Mandarin Chinese.
Part of a research study supported by the National Institutes of Health and led by auditory neuroscientist Lori Holt and psycholinguist Seth Wiener, the game could help scientists understand how second language learners learn a new language, and could even help them learn it faster.
"Incidental learning happens when the learner doesn't pay attention to the thing that they're trying to learn," explained Tim Murphy, a graduate student in Holt's Department of Psychology lab and a Neuroscience Institute Presidential Fellow.
"When people are consciously trying to learn these sounds and think about them, for whatever reason, it's very difficult. The game helps them learn these foreign language sounds in a way that allows them to generalize to understand sounds that they haven't heard before."
Murphy said that results indicate that students who play the game were better able to categorize Mandarin tones relative to students who only learned in a traditional classroom.
What's more, they are starting to see data that suggests that game players not only can differentiate between these sounds better, but can produce the sounds better when they practice speaking Mandarin.
In March, the university community learned they would finish the semester remotely as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.
"Students who have been playing the game all semester come into our lab on three consecutive days, and we are able to see what they learned."
With a lot of hard work in the weeks leading up to the end of the semester Murphy was able to transfer his research tasks online and successfully collect data from his classroom learners.
Reference
Sheedy, C. (2020, May 19). Video Game Helps Neuroscientists Understand Second Language Learners - News - Carnegie Mellon University. Retrieved May 22, 2020, from https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2020/may/video-game-for-second-language-learners.html