ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation
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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: TEMPORAL DISTRIBUTION OF PRACTICE AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN THE ACQUISITION AND RETENTION OF L2 MANDARIN TONAL WORD PRODUCTION Man Li, Doctor of Philosophy, 2017 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Robert M. DeKeyser, Professor, Second Language Acquisition This dissertation investigated the effects of temporal distribution of practice (relatively massed vs. distributed) on the learning and retention of oral Mandarin tonal word production by native English-speaking adults within the theoretical framework of skill acquisition and retention theories. The present study focused on oral production of Mandarin two-syllable words as a function of temporal distribution of practice. It also explored whether the effects of this distribution differ depending on the type of knowledge to be acquired or retained (declarative word knowledge vs. skills in oral production) and on individual differences in cognitive aptitudes (including working memory, phonological short-term memory, declarative memory, procedural memory, and musical aptitude). Eighty native English-speaking adults who did not have any prior knowledge of a tonal language completed all sessions of the study and provided data for analysis. These participants were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions, i.e., Condition A with a 1-day ISI (intersession interval) and a 1-week RI (retention interval), Condition B with a 1-day ISI and a 4-week RI, Condition C with a 1-week ISI and a 1-week RI, and Condition D with a 1-week ISI and a 4-week RI. Each participant came in for five sessions. All participants completed a set of cognitive aptitude tests and underwent the same number and content of training sessions, which differed only on training or testing schedules. The results showed that the effects of ISI and RI differed depending on the type of knowledge/skill to be retained, declarative versus procedural. For the retention of declarative knowledge, RI had a robust effect: the longer the RI, the worse the retention. Spacing, or distributed practice seemed to improve long-term retention of declarative knowledge; however, this ISI effect was much weaker. With regard to procedural knowledge retention, ISI seems to play a role, but not RI, and it was massed practice that had an advantage over distributed practice. Musical aptitude, working memory, and declarative memory ability were found to play facilitative roles in L2 learning of Mandarin tonal word productions. Procedural memory ability was found to interact with ISI and RI for various RT outcome measures. TEMPORAL DISTRIBUTION OF PRACTICE AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN THE ACQUISITION AND RETENTION OF L2 MANDARIN TONAL WORD PRODUCTION by Man Li Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Advisory Committee: Dr. Robert M. DeKeyser, Chair Dr. Nan Jiang Dr. Steven J. Ross Dr. Jared A. Linck Dr. Min Wang © Copyright by Man Li 2017 Acknowledgements I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Robert DeKeyser, for his guidance, unwavering support and warm encouragements throughout this whole process. Thank you Robert for always being available and dependable whenever I had questions or needed help during each stage of this research; without you, this dissertation would not have progressed so smoothly. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Nan Jiang, Dr. Steven Ross, Dr. Jared Linck, and Dr. Min Wang for their support of my dissertation work. I’m deeply indebted to Dr. Nan Jiang who has been a mentor throughout my doctoral study here and for being a skeptical and helpful committee member. I’m also very grateful to Dr. Steven Ross for his guidance and insightful suggestions on statistical analyses for this project as well as earlier projects I conducted here. My deep gratitude also goes to Dr. Jared Linck, whose insightful suggestions and constructive comments turned out to be extremely helpful and useful to me. My gratitude also goes to Dr. Min Wang who served as a committee member for my second qualifying paper and for being the Dean’s representative on my dissertation committee. I’m also grateful to the individuals who shared their aptitude tests with me for my dissertation research. My thanks go to Dr. Robert Slevc who shared the musical ability tests with me, Dr. Michael Dougherty who provided the Shapebuilder and delivered the data to me, Drs. Anita Bowles and Valerie Karuzis for sharing the Pitch STM test, Dr. Katherine Martin for sharing the non-word repetition task, Dr. Scott Kaufman for sharing the SRT task, and Dr. DeKeyser for purchasing the CVMT test for me. I’d also like to thank my two research assistants in Spring 2017, Lia Kaufman and Gavri Schreiber, for their help with scoring two of the aptitude tasks. I’m also grateful to all my participants who completed all five sessions strictly following the specific schedules during their busy semesters. Thanks also go to the individuals who helped doing audio recordings or scoring the outcome task for me. Special thanks go to my friend Jianhui Zhou who made time to listen to me about my design and advised me on conducting statistical analyses. I would also like to thank the individuals whose comments at the early stage helped shape my dissertation project, including Drs. Mike Long, Nan Jiang, Kira Gor and all my fellow SLAers when I ran my ideas at 649R in Spring 2016, and Professors Mei Kong and Jungjung Lee-Heitz in the Chinese program who made time to discuss and share with me the Chinese linguistic structures that they found hard for English native speakers to learn. I’m also grateful to Professors Minglang Zhou, Guiling Hu and Yuli Wang for their mentorship when I worked as a TA in the Chinese program. The teaching experience there further inspired my research interest in studying L2 learning of Mandarin Chinese. ii I’d also like to thank the Language Learning dissertation grant and the SLA research funds that provided the necessary financial support for the extensive data collection for this research. I’m also grateful to the Ann G. Wylie dissertation fellowship from the Graduate School that made it possible for me to work full time on dissertation writing this semester. I’d also like to thank the SLLC and the Ph.D. program in SLA for the financial support for my first four years here at UMD. I’m grateful to my peers too, for the journey we went through together in the SLA program, in particular, Eric Pelzl for all the discussion we had about Mandarin tone learning and instruction which contributed directly to my dissertation research, Yuichi Suzuki for always being so inspiring, Qian Zhou, Kyoko Hillman, Gisela Granena, Susan Benson, Jiyong Lee, Assma and Buthainah Thowaini, Payman Vafee, Sunhee Kim, Eunsoo Kang, Wei Yi, and Qi Zheng. I’m also grateful to the SLLC administration community who provided help when I needed in conducting all my research projects in Jimenez and during my study here at UMD, especially Pamala Deane, Dr. Lauretta Clough, David Watson, Michelle Dove, Josiland Chambers, Yuk Fan Tai, Nicco Cooper, Claire Goebeler, and Jeffrey Maurer. On my academic journey towards my doctoral degree, I’m also grateful to the friends I met at GSU, in particular, Jack Hardy, Yanbin Lu, Liang Guo and Weiwei Yang, Pam Pearson, and Caroline Payant. I’m also grateful to the professors and collaborators I met there, especially Dr. Diane Belcher, Dr. Sara Weigle, Dr. Eric Friginal, and Dr. Viviana Cortes. My gratitude also goes to my M.A. advisor Dr. Xiaoqing Qin who introduced me to the wonderful field of SLA. Finally, my deepest gratitude to my family. To my husband Fuxin, for his understanding, support, encouragements, and help whenever I needed it; to my parents and parents-in-law for their generous help when we most needed it; to Uncle Cai and Aunt Yan for encouraging me to study abroad and pursue my academic goals, and a lot more; and to my daughter who gave me so much joy, love, and understanding during this journey. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... iv List of Tables .............................................................................................................. vii List of Figures ............................................................................................................... x Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 2: Review of the Literature .............................................................................. 6 2.1 Empirical studies on the distribution of practice ................................................ 6 2.1.1 Cognitive and educational psychology ........................................................ 7 2.1.2 Motor skill learning.................................................................................... 17 2.1.3 Second Language Acquisition Research .................................................... 23 2.1.4 Summary .................................................................................................... 35 2.2 Theoretical framework ...................................................................................... 36 2.2.1 Skill acquisition