Working Memory and L2 Noun Class Learning

摘要

Working memory and verbal short-term memory are important cognitive factors in second language grammar learning with working memory involved in learning agreement patterns and verbal short-term memory involved in learning morphosyntactic structures. The aim of this exploratory study was to determine the role of working memory and verbal short-term memory in learning phonological noun class categories which rely on agreement patterns involving morphosyntactic structures. 21 Japanese native-speakers participated in an experiment that targeted copula-noun agreement pattern based on the phonological form of a noun's second mora. A spearman's correlation analysis revealed a moderate positive correlation between working memory and generalization scores, r_s = .53, n = 21, p < .05. No significant correlations between verbal short-term memory and the generalization test was found. The results demonstrate that working memory plays a significant role in learning phonological noun class categories while verbal short-term memory does not.