Diverse cultural backgrounds influence language aptitude and working memory in adult Chinese language learning

Previous studies have discussed the most important factor limiting whether learners can achieve advanced language proficiency. For adults, language aptitude is one of the key factors; for children, it is primarily a matter of early and sustained language experience. However, this study shows that different early cultural backgrounds lead to various levels of linguistic aptitude when learning a foreign language in adulthood. For learners from Non-Chinese-character cultural circles (abbreviated as N4C), phonetic coding ability (PCA), one of the pure linguistic abilities, is the best predictor of Chinese listening proficiency, which can explain up to 51.8% of the difference in listening level. For learners from 4 C, both PCA and executive working memory (EWM), one of the general cognitive abilities, are the best predictors of listening proficiency. Together, they can explain about 41.5% of the difference in Chinese listening level. We speculate that in early stages of language acquisition, pure linguistic abilities are shaped easier than cognitive abilities. For adult learners, whether the native language they learned before the critical period and the foreign language they learned as adults belong to the same cultural circle may impact how well they use their pure linguistic abilities.