The role of working memory in the incidental vocabulary acquisition /

Many researchers analyzed different cognitive mechanisms involved in the vocabulary acquisition process. This research is a replication of Anna Pelicer Sanchez's study Incidental L2 vocabulary acquisition from and while Reading but it specifically focuses on the correlation between the working memory and incidental vocabulary acquisition. The subject of this analysis is the relationship between working memory and incidental vocabulary acquisition. The research aims at analyzing the success of incidental vocabulary acquisition from reading and how it depends on one’s working memory. To achieve the aim, the following objectives have been set: 1. To review scientific literature on working memory and incidental language acquisition. 2. To conduct a reading experiment to measure incidental vocabulary acquisition. 3. To assess working memory capacity. 4. To analyze the relationship between working memory and incidental vocabulary acquisition. To achieve the objectives an incidental vocabulary learning from reading experiment was conducted. The data were collected from 27 participants and analyzed statistically. One-way ANOVA was used to analyze and compare the results of vocabulary tests. The results revealed a statistically significant variance in test scores, with an F-ratio of 16,83 and a p< .001. In the form recognition task, participants performed significantly better than in the meaning recall task (p <.001). Additionally, there was a significant difference between form recognition and meaning recognition (p = .017). Among all vocabulary tasks, form recognition was the easiest one, with an average score of 4,41 (out of 6), and meaning recall was the most difficult to perform with an average score of 2 (out of 6). As for the relationship between the working memory and vocabulary gains, the Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated. The results indicated no significant relationship between working memory and form recognition task scores (r = .17, p = .396). Moreover, it was revealed that there is a non-significant relationship (r = .381, p = .050) between WM and the meaning recall task, and lastly, the Pearson correlation analysis showed a nonsignificant relationship between WM and the meaning recognition task (r = .317, p = .107). As all correlations were found to be non-significant, we can state that this relationship has to be researched more with a larger sample size and more variety among participants and their linguistic abilities, and backgrounds.

Grantor dc:publisher

Institutional Repository of Vilnius University

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Dulevičiūtė, Raminta,

• incidental, vocabulary acquisition, working memory, learning, veiklioji atmintis, leksiniai vienetai, leksinių vienetų įsisavinimas, mokymasis

Statement dc:rights

• info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Language dc:language

eng

Repository record dc:identifier

https://repository.vu.lt/VU:ELABAETD210586761&prefLang=en_US

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vu.lt:elaba:210586761