How Motor Cortex Supports L2 Acquisition of Spoken Words, Signs, and Characters Via Perception and Production

Summary

Self-production facilitates acquisition of spoken words, signs, and characters from an unfamiliar second language. The proposed work investigates how motor cortex, a key part of the brain enabling body action, supports their acquisition via production as well as perception, providing insight into whether they are learned via mental simulation of the body actions used to produce them. It is hypothesized that activity in motor cortex will differ based on the body part used to produce lexical items (e.g., mouth vs. hands), will be greater for lexical items learned via production than observation, and will differentiate lexical items recognized successfully vs. unsuccessfully.

Eligibility

Age range

18–35 years

Sex

All

Healthy volunteers

Yes

Interventions

• Behavioral
  Self-production

  After participants learn L2 lexical items via hearing or observing them paired with L1 translations, they are prompted to produce them themselves

Location