Memory-card English vowel training for second-language learners: Effects of age and bilingualism for...

This study used a computerized memory-card game to investigate age-related plasticity and bilingualism among Spanish-Catalan bilingual children (6- to 12-years-old) learning British English vowels. As part of their school English classes, children in Spain played an audio version of the common children's card game often called Memory or Concentration: Children clicked on cards that were flipped over in pairs to find matches, English words from vowel minimal pairs (e.g., field-filled) were played when the cards were flipped over, and children needed to match cards that had the same word spoken by two different speakers. Before and after training, children performed a three-alternative forced-choice oddity discrimination task from untrained words and talkers to track phonetic learning. The results demonstrated that training improved vowel perception. However, even though this task was selected to be suitable for young children, older children learned more, particularly those who spoke more than one language at home. There was no evidence for declines in plasticity with age. This gamified training method can be used to study phonetic learning across the lifespan and can be applied in diverse linguistic contexts, but it may not produce the same age effects that are found in more naturalistic learning.