ArticleScientific reports2020
The effects of contextual diversity on incidental vocabulary learning in the native and a foreign language.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Temporal organization of song modulates vocal learning.iScience · 2025Article
- VOC-ADO: A lexical database for French-speaking adolescents.Behavior research methods · 2025Article
- When is a word in good company for learning?Developmental science · 2024Article
- Diversity of narrative context disrupts the early stage of learning the meanings of novel words.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2023Article
- Learning Spelling From Meaning.Experimental psychology · 2023Article
- Environment Context Variability and Incidental Word Learning: A Virtual Reality Study.Brain sciences · 2022Article
- Does narrator variability facilitate incidental word learning in the classroom?Memory & cognition · 2022Article
- Incidental vocabulary learning with subtitles in a new language: Orthographic markedness and number of exposures.PloS one · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
Vocabulary learning occurs throughout the lifespan, often implicitly. For foreign language learners, this is particularly challenging as they must acquire a large number of new words with little exposure. In the present study, we explore the effects of contextual diversity-namely, the number of texts a word appears in-on native and foreign language word learning. Participants read several texts that had novel pseudowords replacing high-frequency words. The total number of encounters with the novel words was held constant, but they appeared in 1, 2, 4, or 8 texts. In addition, some participants read the texts in Spanish (their native language) and others in English (their foreign language). We found that increasing contextual diversity improved recall and recognition of the word, as well as the ability to match the word with its meaning while keeping comprehension unimpaired. Using a foreign language only affected performance in the matching task, where participants had to quickly identify the meaning of the word. Results are discussed in the greater context of the word learning and foreign language literature as well as their importance as a teaching tool.
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Registered trials
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