Enhancing lexical tone learning for second language speakers: effects of acoustic properties in Mandarin tone perception.

Understanding the challenges faced by second language (L2) learners in lexical tone perception is crucial for effective language acquisition. This study investigates the impact of exaggerated acoustic properties on facilitating Mandarin tone learning for English speakers. Using synthesized tone stimuli, we systematically manipulated pitch contours through three key modifications: expanding the fundamental frequency (F0), increasing F0 (female voice), and extending the overall duration. Our objectives were to assess the influence of F0 expansion, higher F0, longer duration, and varied syllables on Mandarin tone learning and generalization. Participants engaged in a non-adaptive trial-by-trial tone identification task. Mixed-effects logistic regression modeling was used to analyze accuracy across learning phases, acoustic factors, and tones. Findings reveal improvements in accuracy from training to testing and generalization phases, indicating the effectiveness of perceptual training to tone perception for adult English speakers. Tone 1 emerged as the easiest to perceive, while Tone 3 posed the most challenge, consistent with established hierarchies of tonal acquisition difficulty. Analysis of acoustic factors highlighted tone-specific effects. Expanded F0 was beneficial for the identification of Tone 2 and Tone 3 but posed challenges for Tone 1 and Tone 4. Additionally, longer durations also exhibited varied effects across tones, aiding in the identification of Tone 3 and Tone 4 but hindering Tone 1 identification. The higher F0 was advantageous for Tone 2 but disadvantageous for Tone 3. Furthermore, the syllable ma facilitated the identification of Tone 1 and Tone 2 but not for Tone 3 and Tone 4. These findings enhance our understanding of the role of acoustic properties in L2 tone perception and have implications for the design of effective training programs for second language acquisition.

Optimizing practice scheduling requires quantitative tracking of individual item performance.

Decades of research has shown that spacing practice trials over time can improve later memory, but there are few concrete recommendations concerning how to optimally space practice. We show that existing recommendations are inherently suboptimal due to their insensitivity to time costs and individual- and item-level differences. We introduce an alternative approach that optimally schedules practice with a computational model of spacing in tandem with microeconomic principles. We simulated conventional spacing schedules and our adaptive model-based approach. Simulations indicated that practicing according to microeconomic principles of efficiency resulted in substantially better memory retention than alternatives. The simulation results provided quantitative estimates of optimal difficulty that differed markedly from prior recommendations but still supported a desirable difficulty framework. Experimental results supported simulation predictions, with up to 40% more items recalled in conditions where practice was scheduled optimally according to the model of practice. Our approach can be readily implemented in online educational systems that adaptively schedule practice and has significant implications for millions of students currently learning with educational technology.

SKOPE-IT (Shareable Knowledge Objects as Portable Intelligent Tutors): overlaying natural language tutoring on an adaptive learning system for mathematics.

BACKGROUND: This study investigated learning outcomes and user perceptions from interactions with a hybrid intelligent tutoring system created by combining the AutoTutor conversational tutoring system with the Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces (ALEKS) adaptive learning system for mathematics. This hybrid intelligent tutoring system (ITS) uses a service-oriented architecture to combine these two web-based systems. Self-explanation tutoring dialogs were used to talk students through step-by-step worked examples to algebra problems. These worked examples presented an isomorphic problem to the preceding algebra problem that the student could not solve in the adaptive learning system. RESULTS: Due to crossover issues between conditions, experimental versus control condition assignment did not show significant differences in learning gains. However, strong dose-dependent learning gains were observed that could not be otherwise explained by either initial mastery or time-on-task. User perceptions of the dialog-based tutoring were mixed, and survey results indicate that this may be due to the pacing of dialog-based tutoring using voice, students judging the agents based on their own performance (i.e., the quality of their answers to agent questions), and the students' expectations about mathematics pedagogy (i.e., expecting to solving problems rather than talking about concepts). Across all users, learning was most strongly influenced by time spent studying, which correlated with students' self-reported tendencies toward effort avoidance, effective study habits, and beliefs about their ability to improve in mathematics with effort. CONCLUSIONS: Integrating multiple adaptive tutoring systems with complementary strengths shows some potential to improve learning. However, managing learner expectations during transitions between systems remains an open research area. Finally, while personalized adaptation can improve learning efficiency, effort and time-on-task for learning remains a dominant factor that must be considered by interventions.

Testing Theories of Transfer Using Error Rate Learning Curves.

We analyze naturally occurring datasets from student use of educational technologies to explore a long-standing question of the scope of transfer of learning. We contrast a faculty theory of broad transfer with a component theory of more constrained transfer. To test these theories, we develop statistical models of them. These models use latent variables to represent mental functions that are changed while learning to cause a reduction in error rates for new tasks. Strong versions of these models provide a common explanation for the variance in task difficulty and transfer. Weak versions decouple difficulty and transfer explanations by describing task difficulty with parameters for each unique task. We evaluate these models in terms of both their prediction accuracy on held-out data and their power in explaining task difficulty and learning transfer. In comparisons across eight datasets, we find that the component models provide both better predictions and better explanations than the faculty models. Weak model variations tend to improve generalization across students, but hurt generalization across items and make a sacrifice to explanatory power. More generally, the approach could be used to identify malleable components of cognitive functions, such as spatial reasoning or executive functions.

iMinerva: a mathematical model of distributional statistical learning.

Statistical learning refers to the ability to identify structure in the input based on its statistical properties. For many linguistic structures, the relevant statistical features are distributional: They are related to the frequency and variability of exemplars in the input. These distributional regularities have been suggested to play a role in many different aspects of language learning, including phonetic categories, using phonemic distinctions in word learning, and discovering non-adjacent relations. On the surface, these different aspects share few commonalities. Despite this, we demonstrate that the same computational framework can account for learning in all of these tasks. These results support two conclusions. The first is that much, and perhaps all, of distributional statistical learning can be explained by the same underlying set of processes. The second is that some aspects of language can be learned due to domain-general characteristics of memory.

Using a model to compute the optimal schedule of practice.

By balancing the spacing effect against the effects of recency and frequency, this paper explains how practice may be scheduled to maximize learning and retention. In an experiment, an optimized condition using an algorithm determined with this method was compared with other conditions. The optimized condition showed significant benefits with large effect sizes for both improved recall and recall latency. The optimization method achieved these benefits by using a modeling approach to develop a quantitative algorithm, which dynamically maximizes learning by determining for each item when the balance between increasing temporal spacing (that causes better long-term recall) and decreasing temporal spacing (that reduces the failure related time cost of each practice) means that the item is at the spacing interval where long-term gain per unit of practice time is maximal. As practice repetitions accumulate for each item, items become stable in memory and this optimal interval increases.

Practice and forgetting effects on vocabulary memory: an activation-based model of the spacing effect.

An experiment was performed to investigate the effects of practice and spacing on retention of Japanese-English vocabulary paired associates. The relative benefit of spacing increased with increased practice and with longer retention intervals. Data were fitted with an activation-based memory model, which proposes that each time an item is practiced it receives an increment of strength but that these increments decay as a power function of time. The rate of decay for each presentation depended on the activation at the time of the presentation. This mechanism limits long-term benefits from further practice at higher levels of activation and produces the spacing effect and its observed interactions with practice and retention interval. The model was compared with another model of the spacing effect (Raaijmakers, 2003) and was fit to some results from the literature on spacing and memory.