Exposure to accents helps children learn words: Study

Washington [US], October 12 : Children of primary school age can benefit from long-term experience with multiple accents when learning words in unfamiliar accents from other children Bilingualism, on the other hand, did not lead to corresponding effects in vocabulary learning.
University of Freiburg's study on vocabulary acquisition uses novel game-based design. "Until now, there was a lack of studies on the influence of regional and foreign accents on children's learning of new words," says Hanulikova. To fill this gap, the researchers had 88 Freiburg children aged seven to eleven play a computer game based on the popular card game "Spot It!," which is known as "Dobble" in Germany. In the game, two identical objects on different playing cards have to be discovered and named as quickly as possible. For the study, the children played the game on the computer with virtual peers. They spoke either standard German or German with a Swiss or Hebrew accent. The game included six terms that are usually unknown to children of elementary school age.
All 88 children who participated in the study were German speakers, some of them bilingual or multilingual. The researchers also asked how often per week each child hears regional and foreign accents. The evaluation of the experiment showed that the children benefited from long-term experience with different accents: children with this experience found it easier to learn unfamiliar words from other children who spoke unfamiliar accents in this virtual game situation.
This effect occurred especially when children heard both regional and foreign accents in their daily life. Whereas experience with regional accents alone also predicted learning, children who had experience with foreign accents showed, at least in tendency, similar effects. Bilingualism had no corresponding effect.
Further studies are thus needed to investigate in more detail what type of experience in children's vocabulary acquisition leads to which effects -- and how these might differ from the learning of new words by adults, says Hanulikova. The study's newly developed, game-based design is a particularly suitable tool for this purpose, she says. "The children learn from other children while playing, not from adults, the latter being the focus of almost all studies to date. In addition, children are required to say and use these words in interaction, not to just passively recognize them. In this way, the experimental design resembles natural learning in everyday life."