Poster C83, Wednesday, August 21, 2019, 10:45 am – 12:30 pm, Restaurant Hall
The Effects of Extensive Reading on Second Language Listening Proficiency: an fNIRS Study
Katsuhiro Chiba1, Atsuko Miyazaki2, Satoru Yokoyama3;1Bunkyo University, Japan, 2RIKEN, Japan, 3Chiba Institute of Science, Japan
Extensive reading (ER) has long been recognized as an effective means of enhancing L2 proficiency, and studies have reported positive effects on various aspects of L2 acquisition, in particular, increases in reading speed, comprehension, and even listening proficiency (Chiba & Yokoyama, 2016). As prefrontal cortex activation was reported to change due to task difficulty level and proficiency (Chiba, 2016; Takeuchi et al., 2012;), this research aims to determine whether eight months of ER training intervention affects listening ability and the amount of change in blood flow of the prefrontal cortex. In this study, we measured cerebral blood flow using NIRS (two channels, wave length of 810 nm, sampling frequency 10 Hz; NeU corp.) while twenty-four healthy right-handed college freshmen performed listening tasks at three time points: at the start of an ER program within an English course of their university (pre), after having read approximately 150,000 words (post1), and after having read about 300,000 words (post2). In addition, we collected TOEIC L/R scores and reading speed data by using reading tasks. Both behavioral data and NIRS data were analyzed by GLMM. TOEIC reading scores showed no significant difference between the three time points. Regarding the listening scores, the pre scores were lower than those of post1 and post2 respectively, but there was no difference between the scores of post1 and those of post2. The reading speed of post1 was faster than that of pre, and post2 was faster than post1. In the listening task, comprehension question accuracy rate (AR) showed no significant difference between the three periods. The response times (RT) showed a significant decrease from pre to post1, but none after that point. With regard to the NIRS data, post1-right showed a significant increase from pre-right. Post2-left and post2-right showed significant decreases from post1-right. Activation increase of post1-right compared to that of pre-left was marginally significant. Other contrasts showed no difference. In conclusion, ER was found to enhance listening ability in TOEIC scores and RT. In addition, there were differences in blood flow. From pre to post1, there was no differnce in AR, but RT became faster, and the t-Hb increased in post1-right from that of pre-right. Previous studies suggested that cognitive training accelerates processing speed and leads to increases in activation of the prefrontal cortex (Takeuchi et al., 2011). Compared with the pre stage, at which students had no ER experience, 150,000 words of ER training might enable cognitive processing in the prefrontal cortex. This can be considered to be training effect. However, from post1 to post2, there was no change of AR or RT, but t-Hb decreased. Poldrack (2000) claimed that activation decrease is an increase of neural efficiency. Therefore, these post1 to post2 results can be interpreted as an indication that 300,000 words of ER training enabled neural efficiency, in other words, the same cognitive performance with reduced brain activity. However, the reason why siginificant changes were observed in only the right channel requires further research.
Themes: Reading, Perception: Auditory
Method: Functional Imaging