CHAPTER 7 THE PROTOTYPICALITY EFFECT AND L2 VOCABULARY LEARNING - Peter Lang
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CHAPTER 7 THE PROTOTYPICALITY
EFFECT AND L2 VOCABULARY
LEARNING
7.1 Introduction
In this chapter, the second specific hypothesis concerning the presence of the
prototypicality effect in L2 vocabulary learning is tested. As surveyed in Section
2.3.2.1 and revisited in Section 5.2, the prototypicality effect is another
characteristic pertaining to the patterns of concept categorization. It captures the
phenomenon that variation in terms of prototypicality of category members
affects people’s cognitive processes regarding the corresponding conceptual
categories. Conceptual categories are observed to exhibit graded structure such
that some category members are more representative of their respective
categories than others. In comparison with non-prototypical members,
prototypical members of a conceptual category are psychologically more salient
in people’s minds. Due to this salient status, prototypical members receive
preferential processing. If it is true that a learner makes use of his or her L1-
based conceptual system when he or she approaches an L2, then it is predicted
that the prototypicality effect will be present in L2 vocabulary learning as it is in
L1 vocabulary learning.
7.2 The working hypothesis and experiment design
In the L1 context, it has been empirically shown that the more prototypical a
category member is, the easier it is incorporated into its category structure and
hence the quicker its label is encoded into memory. It is hypothesized that L2
labels denoting the L1-based prototypical members are retrieved better in terms
of quantity and faster in terms of production order by L2 learners than those
denoting the L1-based non-prototypical members after they are introduced to L2
labels of category members varying in the L1-based category prototypicality.
To test the above hypothesis, three systematic experiments were designed
and conducted.
Experiment 1 was a prototypicality rating task. Since the participants in
these experiments were Chinese learners of English, prototypicality norms for
native speakers of Chinese were established for instances from 14 common
superordinate categories.
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via Victoria University of WellingtonExperiment 2 involved a no-cued-at-input but cued-at-output English word
immediate recall task, which was designed to examine the presence of the
prototypicality effect in participants’ retrieval of newly learned L2 words.
Experiment 3 involved a no-cue-at-input but cued-at-output English word
immediate recall task, which was designed to examine the presence of the
prototypicality effect in participants’ retrieval of familiar L2 words.
The retrieving cues were the corresponding superordinate labels of the to-
be-remembered words. The rationale underlying the use of the superordinate
labels as retrieving cues in the immediate cued recall tasks is as follows: if
Chinese learners rely on their Chinese-based conceptual system in their English
vocabulary learning, then the patterns of Chinese-based concept categorization
will be adopted, usually unconsciously, by the Chinese learners to organize the
newly-learned English words. Due to the psychological salience of prototypical
members, as observed in the L1 context, it was predicted that the given English
superordinate label cues would then trigger participants’ recollection of the
English words denoting the Chinese-based prototypical (abbreviated as Cbp in
the later occurrences) instances better and faster than that of the English words
denoting the Chinese-based non-prototypical (abbreviated as Cbnp in the later
occurrences) instances.
7.3 Normative study: Determining prototypicality
norms for native speakers of Chinese
The test of the hypothesis concerning the presence of the Chinese-based
prototypicality in English vocabulary learning required the determination of a
set of norms from which instances representative of the range of category
members and identifiable to members of the Chinese culture could be selected.
To be specific, reliable norms need to be gathered on Chinese participants’
ratings of the extent to which instances of semantic categories represented their
idea or image of the given category name in the Chinese culture. A
prototypicality rating task was conducted among adult Chinese native speakers,
who were requested to rate groups of category instances in Chinese.
7.3.1 Participants
Two hundred and twenty-five Chinese college students participated in this
experiment. They were all first-year college students in Beihang University,
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via Victoria University of WellingtonBeijing, China and completed the prototypicality rating task in the classroom on
a voluntary basis.
7.3.2 Materials
Efforts in this prototypicality rating task were made to ensure that the categories
and their instances met the following requirements. First, they all had to be
superordinate categories common in Chinese culture, and their respective
instances should be rated reliably by Chinese speakers. Second, the instances in
the superordinate categories had to have a relatively wide range in
prototypicality.
Fourteen superordinate categories with 19 to 46 instances each were used.
The 14 categories in question are all natural language superordinate categories
common in people’s daily life and represent an assortment of category types
ranging from man-made and biological taxonomies to part-whole relationships.
They were: “tools” (42), “flowers” (42), “furniture” (28), “parts of a building”
(30), “vehicles” (22), “musical instruments” (23), “birds” 51 (25), “parts of a
body” (30), “vegetables” (36), “trees” (46), “fruits” (29), “weapons” (31),
“clothing” (26), and “sports” (40). As repetitively shown in the previous studies,
all of these conceptual categories exhibit graded structure in terms of being
organized around a “core meaning” (i.e., a best example or a prototype), with
the judged “prototypicality” of a category instance decreasing as the similarity
between that instance and the prototype diminishes (Rosch 1975a), though the
specific prototype of each given superordinate category may vary from culture
to culture (e.g., Barr & Caplan 1987; Hampton, Dubois, & Yeh 2006; Hampton
& Gardiner 1983; Lin, et al. 1990; Rosch 1975a; Rosch & Mervis 1975;
Schwanenflugel & Rey 1986a). Instances of the above 14 superordinate
categories were adopted from Barr and Caplan (1987) and Schwanenflugel and
Rey (1986a). The English version was translated into Chinese with a standard
English-Chinese dictionary and items in each superordinate category were
checked by two fluent Chinese-English bilinguals 52 to ensure equivalency of
51 Six instances, which were “bobwhite”, “wren”, “pelican”, “condor”, “cowbird”, and
“thunderbird”, were dropped in the data analysis because the Chinese characters in the
Chinese equivalents of those English words were reported “unknown” by many
participants and the items “cowbird” and “thunderbird” were left unrated in many
booklets.
52 The experimenterwais very grateful to Ms. Yingli Chang, PhD student at the Faculty of
Social Work, HKU, and Ms. Lu Lu, PhD student at the Faculty of Education, HKU,
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via Victoria University of Wellingtonterms. Those items that did not have corresponding equivalents in Chinese and
those items whose Chinese equivalents contained Chinese characters at low
levels of frequency were removed from the original data (see Appendix 7.1 for a
sample of the category instances presented).
Due to time constraints, each participant received instances of 2 or 3
superordinate categories out of the selected 14 ones. Testing booklets consisted
of (1) a cover sheet, (2) an instruction page, and (3) 4 to 5 pages of to-be-rated
category instances, each page headed by a superordinate category name
followed by the list of selected instance items arranged in a column in a random
order. Furthermore, below each instance on the 4 or 5 item-listed pages was the
scale of 0 to 8 for the rating of prototypicality. All the superordinate category
names and the instances concerned were in Chinese.
7.3.3 Procedure
The instructions for this prototypicality rating task were mainly adapted from
Rosch (1975a), with a reversal of the poles on Rosch’s 1 to 7 scale and an
addition of three modifications borrowed from Hampton and Gardiner (1983) to
make the task clearer for the participants. The poles on Rosch’s 1 to 7 scales
were reversed so that 7 represented a very good example of a category and 1 a
very poor example. The three modifications added were: (1) participants were
given a first separate rating response, that is 0, for denying that an item belonged
to the given superordinate category; (2) participants were given a second
separate response, that is 8, for reporting that they did not know the Chinese
characters in a given item and hence could not rate it; (3) instructions stressed
that one’s likes or dislikes should not be used as a basis for the judgment.
Instances were grouped by their respective superordinate categories and
randomized within each group in the rating booklets. All the instructions were
read out and explained to the participants in Chinese before they started to rate
the given items.
The instructions read as follows.
In the following pages you will find lists of instances from two or three categories.
The given items on each page are grouped by the category name written on the top
of the page. Your task is to decide whether each item is a good or a bad example of
the category.
Let’s take the category “Things used to write” as an example. Both pens and
sticks can be used to write, and hence both are instances of the category “Things
who had generously taken their time to check the Chinese translatione quivalents of the
category items.
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via Victoria University of Wellingtonused to write”. But, most people will say that pens are very typical examples of the
category “Things used to write” and are much more typical than, say, sticks, which I
would, and I think most people would too, classify as very atypical examples. In
short, some items of a category are representative of the category. They are the ones
you will immediately list when you are requested to name some examples of the
category. But some items are very poor examples of the category. Your task is to
judge how good or bad the given items are as an example of the given category.
Please do keep in mind that you are expected to rate the given items according
to how good or typical the items are as examples of the corresponding categories
instead of how you like them or not. For example, you may like using sticks to write
on the sand ground and hate using pens to write on the paper, but sticks are still very
poor examples of the category “Things used to write”.
On the third page of the booklet, you will find the key to the rating method you
must use. You will have to rate each item along a scale going from 7 to 1, where 7
represents a very typical instance of a category (in other words, you feel that the
item is a very good example of the given category), and 1 represents a very atypical
instance (or you feel that the item fits very poorly with your idea or image of the
category). Borderline cases, such as items which sometimes belong to the category
named, but not always, should be given a 1. Use the numbers in between of the 7-
point scale to indicate intermediate judgments. 4 means that the item fits moderately
well. 6 and 5 means that the item fits relatively well and quite well respectively;
while 3 and 2 means that the item fits relatively poorly and quite poorly
respectively. If you, in any case, do not think one item is an instance of the given
category, please circle 0. If you do not know the Chinese characters in an item,
please circle number 8.
Please do not worry about why you feel that something is or is not a good
example of the category. Do not worry about whether it is just you or people in
general who feel that way. Just mark it the way you see it.
Participants participated in this rating task on a class basis. Having received the
instructions and an elaboration of the 7-point scale by means of the instances
from the category “Things used to write”, they were told to rate the given items
in the booklets at their ease and not to consult with others. They all completed
the booklets in the classroom within 10 minutes.
Of the 225 booklets distributed, 225 were returned. Since each participant
rated only instances from 2 or 3 superordinate categories, the exact numbers of
participants contributing to each of the 14 superordinate categories were as
follows: “tools” (27), “flowers” (27), “furniture” (33), “parts of a building” (27),
“vehicles” (35), “musical instruments” (35), “birds” (27), “parts of a body” (33),
“vegetables” (35), “trees” (33), “fruits” (70), “weapons” (33), “clothing” (27),
and “sports” (35). There were no blank booklets or booklets in which all the
numbers circled were the same. But there were some booklets which had some
items unrated. All the booklets with unrated items were eliminated from the data
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via Victoria University of Wellingtonanalysis. Table 7.1 summarizes the number of booklets collected and that of
booklets with valid data for each superordinate category.
Table 7. 1: The number of booklets collected and the valid data for each superordinate
category
superordinate categories n n
(collected booklets) (valid booklets)
“tools” 27 15
“flowers” 27 21
“furniture” 33 28
“parts of a building” 27 25
“vehicles” 35 32
“musical instruments” 35 26
“birds” 27 20
“parts of a body” 33 30
“vegetables” 35 22
“trees” 33 22
“fruits” 70 40
“weapons” 33 30
“clothing” 27 23
“sports” 35 31
7.3.4 Results
Participants found the task readily understandable and no one questioned or
protested the task. The mean rated prototypicality (abbreviated as PROTOTYP
in the tables) calculated for each of the 14 superordinate categories is presented
in Table 7.253 .
53 The detailed description of the mean prototypicality of each instance in each category
can be provided by the author upon request.
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via Victoria University of WellingtonTable 7. 2: Number of valid booklets (n), prototypicality means, and standard deviation for
mean prototypicality in each of the 14 superordinate categories
superordinate categories N PROTOTYP Std. Deviation
mean
“sports” 31 5.11 0.67
“musical instruments” 26 5.10 1.03
“fruits” 40 5.07 0.75
“weapons” 30 4.89 0.69
“parts of a body” 30 4.89 0.76
“tools” 15 4.83 0.91
“vehicles” 32 4.82 0.69
“parts of a building” 25 4.62 0.71
“furniture” 28 4.32 0.80
“trees” 22 4.22 0.96
“vegetables” 22 4.09 0.75
“flowers” 20 4.09 0.87
“birds” 20 4.02 0.95
“clothing” 23 3.97 0.71
PROTOTYP means 14 4.57 0.44
for all the 14 categories
Valid n (List wise) 14
7.3.5 Reliability
To assess the inter-rater reliability of the prototypicality ratings, the method of
split-half correlation54 was used. Participants who provided valid data for each
superordinate category were divided at random into two equal groups and the
split-half correlation value was obtained for each category. Table 7.3 shows the
inter-rater reliability coefficients for prototypicality ratings for each
superordinate category. Table 7.4 displays the range of points in mean
prototypicality scores across instances in each superordinate category.
54 A split-half coefficient is a correlation coefficient calculated between scores on two
halves of a test. It is taken as an indication of the reliability of the test. Here, this split-
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via Victoria University of WellingtonTable 7. 3: The inter-rater reliability coefficients for prototypicality ratings for each
superordinate category
Inter-rater Reliability r (PROTOTYP
superordinate category
ratings)
“tools” 0.94
“flowers” 0.97
“furniture” 0.98
“parts of a building” 0.81
“vehicles” 0.98
“musical instruments” 0.98
“birds” 0.98
“parts of a body” 0.92
“vegetables” 0.96
“trees” 0.98
“fruits” 0.98
“weapons” 0.98
“clothing” 0.98
“sports” 0.98
means 0.96
The split-half reliabilities, as shown in Table 7.3, were uniformly high,
ranging from 0.81 to 0.98 with a mean of 0.96 (all values were significant, p <
0.01). These high inter-rater split-half reliabilities indicate a high degree of
agreement among the participants to the prototypicality of individual instances
of the given superordinate categories. Participants were consistent in their
judgments concerning how good or poor a given instance is as an example of the
given category.
half coefficient is adopted to assess the inter-rater reliability of the prototypicality
ratings.
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via Victoria University of WellingtonTable 7. 4: The range of points in mean prototypicality scores across items in each
superordinate category
superordinate category maximal mean minimal mean range
“tools” 6.53 1.60 4.93
“flowers” 6.95 0.71 6.24
“furniture” 6.79 1.78 5.01
“parts of a building” 6.16 2.80 3.36
“vehicles” 6.97 1.66 5.31
“musical instruments” 6.73 1.58 5.15
“birds” 6.45 0.45 6.00
“parts of a body” 6.77 2.80 3.97
“vegetables” 6.91 0.55 6.36
“trees” 6.64 0.55 6.09
“fruits” 6.93 1.60 5.33
“weapons” 6.83 1.53 5.30
“clothing” 6.78 0.48 6.30
“sports” 6.90 0.45 6.45
As shown in Table 7.4, a minimum range of 3.36 points is observed in mean
prototypicality scores across items for each superordinate category. This
statistical datum of 3.36 safely suggests that participants were able to make
meaningful judgments about the degree to which instances are representative
members of their respective categories.
To sum up, given the high degree of inter-rater agreement and the minimum
range of 3.36 points in mean prototypicality scores, the mean prototypicality
rating obtained for each instance could be regarded as a reasonable reflection of
a common judgment within the group of Chinese participants and hence ready to
be used in the proceeding experiments.
7.4 A no-cued English-word-learning and immediate
cued-recall task: The function of the L1-based
prototypicality in a cued-recall task with new L2
words
7.4.1 Participants
Thirty-six sophomores from Beihang University, Beijing, participated in this
experiment on a voluntary basis and were all naïve to the hypothesis under
investigation. They were all native Chinese speakers. They started learning
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via Victoria University of WellingtonEnglish in their junior middle school through classroom instructions and their
exposure to English was mainly confined to classroom instructions.
7.4.2 Stimuli materials and procedure
Stimuli materials were composed of (1) an instruction sheet (see Appendix 7.2);
(2) two to-be-remembered lists of English words serving as the learning
material, with each list containing 8 55 words (see Appendix 7.3); (3) some
arithmetic calculations (see Appendix 7.4), which served as a buffer clearing
task between the presentation of the last item in the to-be-remembered list and
the commencement of the cued-recall task; and (4) an Answer Sheet (see
Appendix 7.6) on which the participants were instructed to write down, on the
basis of the given cues (see Appendix 7.5), the words they could recall.
Sixteen English words were used in this no-cue English word learning and
immediate cued recall task, with half of the list consisting of prototypical
members and the other half of nonprototypical ones. These 16 target words were
8 sets of paired prototypical-nonprototypical English category labels.
Specifically speaking, each English label which denoted a category member
55 It has long been documented that a person’s short-term memory is limited in terms of
the number of items that could be held in the store at one time (e.g., Miller 1956). Miller
suggested that a capacity of “seven plus or minus two” items was the capacity of the
store. Some other studies have showed that memory span vary with the type of material
that must be remembered. For example, Baddeley, Thomson and Buchanan (1975)
found that memory span was larger for short words than for long words, when span was
measured in terms of the number of items. Since the English word learning here
involved the short-term memory capacity, a pilot study was conducted among three
groups of altogether 15 students. One purpose of this pilot study was to answer the
question of how many words should be given to the participants in one to-be-
remembered word list in the main study. The three groups were given 6, 8, and 10
words in one list respectively. The results showed that participants in all three
conditions successfully retrieved 90.0% of the concepts under the target words. But
when the correctness of the target English words in the participants’ responses was
taken into account, participants in the 6-word and 8-word conditions correctly wrote
down 93.3%, and 80.0% respectively of the target words, while participants in the 10-
word situation retrieved only 62.0%. In the post-interview after the pilot study,
participants in the 6-word and 8-word situations reported that they felt comfortable with
the number of the new English words in the learning session while most participants of
the 10-word situation reported that the task of memorizing 10 new words made them
feel nervous. Taking into consideration the results obtained both from the pilot study
and the post-task interview, the experimenter decided to use 8-word lists in the main
study.
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via Victoria University of Wellingtonrated prototypical on the basis of the Chinese prototypicality norms had its
match which was rated nonprototypical from the same category on the basis of
the same Chinese norms. The following is a detailed description of the target
word selection.
The 8 pairs of English words were selected from 8 of the 14 rated
superordinate categories in Section 7.3. The 8 categories were “birds”, “trees”,
“fruits”, “musical instruments”, “tools”, “vegetables”, “flowers”, and
“furniture”. From each of the 8 superordinate categories, pairs of English labels
designating Cbp and Cbnp members were constructed under the following
criterion that a difference in terms of category prototypicality existed between
the paired category instances. Operationally, the two paired instances were from
the same superordinate category, with the stipulation that the prototypicality
means of a potential Cbp member being above 5.50 and that of a potential Cbnp
member being below 4.50. The difference in category prototypicality between
paired category instances was the variable under investigation.
In order to minimize a skewing of the results due to elements other than
category prototypicality (i.e. the variable under investigation), two factors were
controlled in the construction of the potential Cbp-Cbnp pairs for the to-be-
remembered word list.
The first factor was the ease of word retrieval at the linguistic level. To
balance the ease of word retrieval, three possible interfering variables at the
linguistic level were controlled. The first linguistic variable was participants’
familiarity with the target English words. Word frequency, which is normally a
controlled variable in recall tasks (e.g., Bjorklund & Thompson 1983, Rosch
1973), was not a problem in this experiment since all the target words were
unknown to the participants. To guarantee that all the English words used in this
experiment were unknown to the participants, a 72-English-word vocabulary
survey (see Appendix 7.7) was conducted two weeks before the no-cue English-
word-learning and immediate cued-recall task. In that survey, participants were
asked to mark out the words they already knew and those they did not. The
second linguistic variable was the word length of the paired English labels. The
maximum difference between the paired words was two letters. The third
linguistic variable was the pronunciation of the target words. They all could be
easily pronounced based on the written forms.
The second factor was concerned with the ease of word retrieval at the
categorization level. To rule out the possible influence caused by levels of
categorization, all the target English words designated the instances at the basic
level of categorization. The reason to take this factor into consideration is that
people’s recall performances are different among words at different levels of
categorization. Under neutral contexts, people tend to name things at the basic
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via Victoria University of Wellingtonlevel of categorization in both L1 (e.g., Rosch, et al. 1976) and L2 contexts (e.g.,
Xia & Wolf 2009).
To sum up, the matched pairs of Cbp-Cbnp English labels in this experiment
were balanced in terms of ease of retrieval at the linguistic level as well as at the
categorization level. If there were no L1-based prototypicality effects in L2
vocabulary learning, then the chance would be equal for the Chinese participants
to recollect in the cued-recall task English labels of the Cbp members and those
of the Cbnp members.
Sixteen words were selected from the eight superordinate categories, as
shown in Table 7.5. Out of the 16 words, two 8-word lists were constructed for
the no-cue English-word-learning and immediate cued-recall task. For each
word list, participants were expected to complete the following three tasks
consecutively: (1) memorizing the meaning and spelling of the given 8 new
English words in the word learning section, (2) doing two arithmetic
calculations in the arithmetic calculation section, and (3) recollecting the
previously-presented 8 English words according to the cues given in the cued-
recall section. The 8 target English words in each list were presented to the
participants one by one at intervals of 4056 seconds. After the presentation of the
last (i.e., the eighth) word in each list, two arithmetic problems were given.
Participants were told to calculate them and write the answers down on the
Answer Sheet within 30 seconds. After the arithmetic task, retrieving cues in the
form of “Words from ‘a category’” (e.g., “Words from ‘Fruits’”), were
presented on the screen and participants were given two minutes to write down
what they had learned in the previous word learning section. After two minutes,
words in the second word list were given and participants were expected to
follow the same procedure as they did in dealing with the words in the first word
list.
56 Another purpose of the previously-mentioned pilot study (see Footnote 55) was to find
the suitable presentation duration for each target word. The three groups of participants
were asked to learn and remember one list of 8 words at intervals of 30 seconds, 40
seconds, and 50 seconds respectively. There was no significant difference in terms of
the recall performances of the three groups. Participants in the 30-second, 40-second,
and 50-second duration groups correctly recalled, respectively, 80.0%, 80.0%, and
77.5% of the to-be-remembered English words. But in the post-test interview,
participants from the 30-second duration group reported that they had the feeling of
being in a rush in the word learning section and participants from the 50-second
duration group reported that in some cases they had to wait for the appearance of a new
word. Based on the above information, the duration of 40 seconds was considered to be
suitable for the presentation of one new word in the formal study.
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via Victoria University of WellingtonTable 7. 5: The 16 target English words for the no-cued English-word-learning and
immediate cued-recall task
superordinate Cbp PROTOTYP Cbnp PROTOTYP
category members means members means
“birds” vulture 5.80 rooster 4.60
“trees” willow 6.64 hickory 4.27
“fruits” mandarin 6.00 raspberry 2.15
“musical instruments” flute 6.73 cymbal 3.38
“tools” vise 6.40 screw 4.00
“vegetables” celery 6.73 gourd 3.55
“flowers” peony 6.86 crocus 2.81
“furniture” stool 5.68 stereo 2.75
means 6.36 means 3.44
Note: all the PROTOTYP means are for the corresponding Chinese items from the Chinese norms obtained in Section 7.3.
The eight words in each of the two word lists were presented in random
order to the participants, with the stipulation that not more than two items of
either classification type (i.e., Cbp or Cbnp), or two items from the same
superordinate category be presented consecutively. The order of the
superordinate labels presented as cues in the recall section was carefully
generated, with the additional stipulation that the superordinate category label to
which the last target to-be-remembered item belonged not be the first retrieving
cue presented to solicit recall performances from the participants.
The experiment was conducted in a classroom. Each target English words,
accompanied by one Chinese equivalent, was placed in the center of the
PowerPoint flash in font 130 and projected onto a big screen. The Chinese
equivalents were given to help the participants understand the meaning of the
English words. A trial list was given to guarantee that participants understood
what they were expected to do in the experiment. Table 7.6 is a summary of the
whole procedure in this experiment.
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via Victoria University of WellingtonTable 7. 6: A summary of the procedure in the English-word-learning and immediate cued-
recall task
procedure material duration
the pre-test a 72-English-word 10 minutes
vocabulary survey (two weeks before
the recall test)
the English word a practice section instructions and a 5'
learning and 4-word trial list
immediate cued- List 1 word 8 English labels 40'' per word
recall task learning section from 4 categories
(two weeks later)
List 1 arithmetic 2 arithmetic 30''
calculation section calculations
List 1 immediate 4 categories 2'
cued-recall section serving as cues in
the form of
“Words from ‘a
category’”
List 2 word 8 English labels 40'' per word
learning section from 4 categories
List 2 arithmetic 2 arithmetic 30''
calculation section calculations
List 2 immediate 4 categories 2'
cued-recall section serving as cues in
the form of
“Words from ‘a
category’”
' means ‘minute’; '' means ‘second’.
7.4.3 Data conversion
As discussed in Section 2.3.2.1, the manifestation of the prototypicality effect in
L1 vocabulary learning is that words denoting the prototypical members of a
category are faster and better retrieved than those denoting the non-prototypical
members. To verify the prediction that this variation in the L1-related category
prototypicality in a learner’s mind exerts a similar influence upon his or her L2
vocabulary learning, all the successfully recalled English words in the no-cued
recall task were converted into either Cbp or Cbnp responses and analyzed via
the following two means. First, mean counts of Cbp and Cbnp responses were
calculated respectively and compared to examine whether English words
denoting the Cbp members are better or more frequently recalled. Second,
frequencies of Cbp and Cbnp members in participants’ first responses to each of
the eight superordinate label cues was drawn and analyzed to examine whether
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via Victoria University of WellingtonEnglish words denoting the Cbp members are retrieved prior to those of the
Cbnp ones.
7.4.4 Results and discussion
7.4.4.1 Mean number of Cbp and Cbnp English responses
To address the question of whether Chinese participants recalled English words
signifying Cbp instances to a greater extent than those signifying Cbnp ones, the
mean number of English words recalled by prototypicality was calculated and
compared (see Table 7.7).
Table 7. 7: The mean number of recalled English labels by prototypicality
N=36
category number of the to-be- successfully recalled words
labels remembered words (means)
(in total)
Cbp Cbnp Cbp Cbnp T-test Sig.
(2-tailed)
16.00 8.00 8.00 6.72 4.39 7.56 0.000
Taking a look at the mean statistics in Table 7.7, one sees that, on the whole,
participants recalled much more English words of Cbp instances (Prototypicality
M=6.35; Recall M=6.72) than those of Cbnp instances (Prototypicality M=3.44;
Recall M=4.39). A related-samples T test was run to compare the means of
successfully recalled labels of Cbp and Cbnp members. The result shows that
the difference between the two means is statistically significant (T (7.56, 35), p
< 0.05). In the English-word-learning section, Chinese learners of English were
instructed to learn by themselves sets of paired new English labels varying in
degree of prototypicality which had already been established in the process of
their Chinese vocabulary acquisition. The above results showed the recall
performances of the Chinese participants were much better with English labels
for Cbp members than with English labels for Cbnp members.
One prediction derived from the hypothesis is that English words denoting
Cbp members will be recalled better in terms of quantity. This prediction is
statistically supported. Chinese participants, upon seeing the given English
superordinate label cues, recalled English words of the Cbp members to a
greater degree than those of the Cbnp ones. This finding is in accordance with
the observation of the studies involving recall tasks in the L1 context that
category prototypicality is closely related to ease of encoding items into memory
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via Victoria University of Wellingtonfor recall in both adults (e.g., Greenberg & Bjorklund 1981) and children (e.g.,
Bjorklund & Thompson 1983). Given that the to-be-remembered words were L2
words, this finding indicates what underlies the cued recall performances of
these Chinese participants is the Chinese-based patterns of concept
categorization. The psychological salience of the Cbp members gives a similar
priority to their corresponding English labels as it does to their Chinese labels.
New English labels denoting the Cbp members are easier to retrieve than those
denoting the Cbnp members.
7.4.4.2 The frequency of Cbp and Cbnp items within individual
superordinate categories
To examine the order of participants’ instance production to each given
superordinate label cue, the frequency of Cbp and Cbnp items in the first
recalled words across superordinate categories was drawn. Table 7.8 presents
the proportion of Cbp and Cbnp responses in participants’ first responses to the
8 given superordinate cues.
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via Victoria University of WellingtonTable 7. 8: Frequencies of Cbp and Cbnp words in participants’ first recall responses to each
cue
N = 36
categories Cbp Cbnp missing total Chi- df. Asymp.
counts counts values square Sig.
(%) (%) (%)
“birds” 27 7 2 36 11.77a 1 0.001
(75.0%) (19.4%) (5.6%)
“trees” 27 5 4 36 15.13b 1 0.000
(75.0% ) (13.9%) (5.5%)
“fruits” 77.8% 8.3% 13.9% 36 20.16c 1 0.000
(28) (3) (5)
“musical 25 6 5 36 11.65d 1 0.001
instruments” (69.4%) (16.7%) (13.9%)
“tools” 21 14 1 36 1.40e 1 0.237
(58.3%) (38.9%) (2.8%)
“vegetables” 25 3 8 36 17.29f 1 0.000
(69.4%) (8.3%) (22.2%)
“flowers” 14 20 2 36 1.06g 1 0.303
(38.9%) (55.6%) (5.6%)
“furniture” 24 7 5 36 9.32h 1 0.002
(66.7%) (19.4%) (13.9%)
total 8 191 65 32 288 62.02i 1 0.000
categories (66.3%) (22.6%) (11.1%)
Notes:
a: 0 cells (.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 17.0.
b: 0 cells (.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 16.0
c: 0 cells (.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 15.5.
d: 0 cells (.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 15.5.
e: 0 cells (.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 17.5.
f: 0 cells (.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 14.0.
g: 0 cells (.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 17.0.
h: 0 cells (.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 15.5.
i: 0 cells (.0%) have expected frequencies less than 5. The minimum expected cell frequency is 128.0.
As shown in Table 7.8, 66.3% of the participants’ first responses to the eight
retrieving cues were English labels signifying the Cbp category members. The
chi-square test result, 2(1, N = 36) = 62.02, p < 0.05, shows that the number of
recalled English words designating Cbp members is significantly larger than that
of recalled English words designating Cbnp members. This finding is in
consistency with the observation obtained in studies of category development
which shows that people incorporate more typical instances into their category
structures prior to atypical ones (e.g., Bjorklund, Thompson, & Ornstein 1983;
Rosch 1975a; White 1982). This result confirms the prediction of the
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via Victoria University of Wellingtonhypothesis, which states that L2 words for the Cbp members will be retrieved
prior to those for the Cbnp members.
Nevertheless, as the last row in Table 7.8 shows, participants’ total first
responses to the eight retrieving cues are far from being exclusive labels of Cbp
members. Apart from 11.1% of missing responses, 22.6% of the successfully
recalled English words in participants’ first responses to the cues were English
labels of the Cbnp members. This percentage calls for an analysis into
participants’ responses to each of the eight superordinate cues.
An interesting phenomenon is revealed when a closer look is taken at the
frequency statistics in each of the eight categories in Table 7.8. It is not a
uniform case across individual categories that the number of the recalled English
words denoting the given Cbp members is significantly higher than that of the
recalled English words denoting the given Cbnp members. In each of the six
categories of “birds”, “trees”, “fruits”, “musical instruments”, “vegetables”, and
“furniture”, the number of the Cbp responses is significantly larger than that of
the Cbnp responses (with all p < 0.05): [ 2(1, N = 36) = 11.77, p = 0.001] in the
category “birds”, [ 2(1, N = 36) = 15.13, p < 0.05] in the category “trees”, [ 2(1,
N = 36) = 20.16, p < 0.05] in the category “fruits”, [ 2(1, N = 36) = 11.65, p =
0.001] in the category “musical instruments”, [ 2(1, N = 36) = 17.29, p < 0.05]
in the category “vegetables”, and [ 2(1, N = 36) = 9.32, p = 0.002] in the
category “furniture”. These Chi-Square statistical values indicate that Chinese
participants, upon seeing the given superordinate category cues, exhibited a
strong tendency to recollect English labels signifying the given Cbp members
prior to those signifying the given Cbnp members. Nevertheless, in the
categories of “tools” [ 2 (1, N = 36) = 1.40, p = 0.237] and “flowers” [ 2 (1, N =
36) = 1.06, p = 0.303], the Chi-Square statistical results exhibit that there is no
significant difference between the Cbp and Cbnp responses. In other words,
upon seeing the retrieving cues (i.e., “Words from ‘Flowers’” and “Words from
‘Tools’”), Chinese participants’ performances were equal in terms of recalling
English words signifying the given Cbp members (i.e., “vise” for “tools” and
“peony” for “flowers”) and English words signifying the given Cbnp members
(i.e., “screw” for “tools” and “crocus” for “flowers” ).
One speculation57 for the lack of uniformity in terms of the presence of the
prototypicality effect across the eight superordinate categories is concept
familiarity, as reflected in instantiation frequency. Instantiation frequency is the
frequency with which a particular exemplar is listed as an instance of its
57 The reason to use the word “speculation” here was because the following analysis was
based on the experimenter’s informal interview with some of the participants after the
cued-recall task.
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via Victoria University of Wellingtoncategory by the people in a particular environment (e.g., Barsalou 1985, 1987;
Lin, et al. 1990). The chosen Cbp members in the to-be-learned lists for the
categories of “birds”, “trees”, “fruits”, “musical instruments”, “vegetables”, and
“furniture”, namely “vulture”, “mandarin”, “flute”, “celery”, and “stool”, are all
very often listed as an instance of their respective categories in participants’
daily life; whereas their matched Cbnp members, namely “rooster”, “raspberry”,
“cymbal”, “gourd”, and “stereo”, are very infrequently listed as an instance of
their respective categories in participants’ daily life. There exists a contrast in
terms of the level of instantiation frequency between the paired members of the
six categories concerned in the Chinese culture. This contrast, however, does not
exist between the paired members in the categories of “flowers” and “tools”.
The paired members in the category “flowers”, namely “peony” and “crocus”,
are both remote from participants’ everyday life and hence from their daily
communication. People who do not have particular interest in flowers and who
have very limited exposure to flowers usually do not call a type of flower by its
generic name. Instead, they usually use the life form label, namely “flower”, as a
basic term in their daily language (Kövecses 2006, p. 42). In participants’ daily
life, the frequency with which “peony” (i.e., the Cbp member in the matched
pair) is listed as an exemplar of “flowers” is as low as the frequency with which
“crocus” (i.e., the Cbnp member in the matched pair) is listed as an exemplar of
“flowers”. In the category “tools”, such a contrast does not exist between the
paired members of “vise” and “screw” either. But different from the situation in
the matched pair of “peony” and “crocus” in the category “flowers”, vises and
screws are two types of common things in participants’ daily life. Screws,
though rated as a Cbnp example of the category “tools”, are frequently seen and
commonly used in participants’ daily life because a person can always actively
do something with them. In view of the above analysis, one speculation raised is
that the manifestation of the prototypicality effect in the form of prototypical
members being retrieved prior to non-prototypical ones may be influenced by
the presence or absence of a contrast in terms of instantiation frequency between
the paired target labels. Of course, more empirical research is called for to verify
this speculation.
7.4.5 A summary of the findings in the no-cued English-
word-learning and immediate cued-recall task
To sum up, the hypothesis concerned is statistically supported. Variation in
prototypicality of the L1-based category members does exert a similar influence
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via Victoria University of Wellingtonupon learners’ L2 vocabulary learning as it does upon their L1 vocabulary
learning.
First, in the no-cued English-word-learning and immediate cued-recall task,
Chinese learners, after being exposed to new English labels of paired category
examples varying in Chinese-based prototypicality, retrieved much more
English labels of the Cbp members than those of the Cbnp members. This
finding, in harmony with the observation in L1 contexts that category members
with a high level of prototypicality receive preferential processing, confirms the
presence of the prototypicality effect in L2 vocabulary learning.
Second, the overall frequency distribution of the given Cbp and Cbnp labels
in participants’ first responses to the given superordinate cues shows that
Chinese learners, upon seeing the given cues, were much more ready to retrieve
the newly-learned English labels denoting the Cbp members than those denoting
the Cbnp members. The presence of the prototypicality effect, as manifested in
the form of prototypical instances labels being retrieved prior to non-
prototypical ones, is observed. But, this manifestation of the prototypicality
effect in L2 vocabulary learning seems to be influenced by the presence of a
contrast in the level of instantiation frequency between the paired instances.
In a word, the psychological salience of the prototypical category members,
obtained throughout a person’s L1-based experience, does play a role in his or
her L2 vocabulary learning. L2 labels which denote the L1-based prototypical
members are retrieved better in terms of quantity and faster in terms of
production order than those which denote the L1-based non-prototypical
members.
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via Victoria University of Wellington7.5 A no-cue-at-input but cued-at-output English
word immediate recall task: The function of the L1-
based prototypicality in a cued-recall task with well-
known L2 words58
7.5.1 Participants
Fifty-six sophomores from the Beihang University, Beijing, participated in this
experiment on a voluntary basis. They were all native speakers of Chinese. They
started learning English in their junior middle school through classroom
instruction and their exposure to English was mainly confined to classroom
instruction.
7.5.2 Stimuli materials
Stimuli materials in this experiment were composed of (1) an instruction sheet;
(2) one to-be-remembered list of English words for the no-cue-at-input but cued-
at-output recall task; (3) some arithmetic calculations serving as a buffer
clearing task between the presentation of the last item in the to-be-remembered
list and the commencement of the cued recall task; and (4) an Answer Sheet on
which the participants were instructed to write down, on the basis of the given
cues, the words they could recall and the answers to the arithmetic questions.
One 32-English-word list was constructed and used in this no-cue-at-input
but cued-at-output English recall task. These 32 English words were 16 sets of
paired category labels, with half of the list consisting of Cbp members and the
other half of Cbnp members. The following is a detailed description of the target
word selection.
The 16 pairs of English labels were selected from 7 of the 14 rated
superordinate categories from the Chinese prototypicality norms obtained in
Section 7.2.1. The 7 categories were “clothing”, “furniture”, “sports”, “parts of a
body”, “fruits”, “parts of a building”, and “weapons”. From each of the 7
58 The result of this study has been presented in an article titled Category typicality effects
in foreign language acquisition: The role of L1-based typicality in L2 semantic
organization (Xia & Leung 2012) which is collected in the volume New Trends and
Methodologies in Applied English Language Research II (Tizon-Couto, Tizon-Couto,
Pastor-Gomez, & Rodriguez-Puente 2012). The author is very grateful for Dr. Janny
Leung and the anonymous reviewers of the article for their insightful suggestions and
comments.
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via Victoria University of Wellingtonsuperordinate categories, pairs of English labels were constructed under the
following criteria. First, the paired instance labels were from the same
superordinate category. Second, a difference in category prototypicality should
exist between the paired instance labels. Operationally, the prototypicality
means of a potential Cbp category member should be above 5.00 and that of a
potential Cbnp category member should be below 4.00. The difference in
category prototypicality between the paired labels was important for category
prototypicality was the variable under investigation. According to the
hypothesis, it was predicted that English labels denoting the given Cbp examples
would be retrieved better in terms of quantity and faster in terms of production
order than those denoting the given Cbnp examples.
In order to minimize skewing of the results due to factors other than
category prototypicality, two factors were controlled in the construction of the
potential Cbp-vs.-Cbnp pairs for the to-be-remembered word list.
The first factor was the ease of word retrieval at the linguistic level. In L1
contexts, one common way to balance the ease of retrieval at the linguistic level
is to control the variable of word frequency (e.g., Bjorklund & Thompson 1983;
Rosch 1973a). In L2 contexts, nevertheless, it is hard to define as well as
measure the frequency level of an L2 word. The alternative way adopted in this
experiment to balance ease of retrieval at the linguistic level was to control
participants’ familiarity with the target English words in the to-be-remembered
list. One criterion abided by in this English word selection was that participants
knew the target English word and could spell it out at any time upon hearing it.
A pre-test English vocabulary survey (see Appendix 7.8 for a 52-English-word
vocabulary survey) was conducted two weeks before the recall task. In this
survey, Chinese participants’ familiarity with an English word was measured at
three levels, which were (1) I know its meaning and can spell it out at any time I
hear it, (2) I know its meaning but can not spell it out, and (3) I do not know the
word. The words in the pre-test vocabulary survey were 26 pairs of Cbp-vs.-
Cbnp English labels. All the 52 labels are “compulsory words to learn” in the
Vocabulary Guideline for the middle school English standard curriculum in
China, Mainland (Qian & Fang 2006). The reasons to select English words
which participants knew since their middle school were as follows: first, these
labels normally signify the most common things in people’s daily life; and
second, they are normally taught first at school and hence usually very familiar
to the participants59.
59 In her private conversations with the English course teachers of the participants in this
experiment, the author was informed that most words used in their students’ writing and
speech were those learned from their middle school English classes.
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via Victoria University of WellingtonThe second factor under control was the categorization level of the target
English words in the to-be-remembered list. The reason to control this factor
was that people’s recall performance differs among words at different levels of
categorization. Under neutral contexts, people tend to name things at the basic
level of categorization in both L1 (e.g., Rosch, et al. 1976) and L2 contexts (e.g.,
Xia & Wolf 2009). All the English words in the to-be-remembered list of this
experiment were labels at the basic level of categorization.
To sum up, the matched pairs of Cbp-vs.-Cbnp English labels for the
construction of the to-be-remembered list in this experiment were balanced in
terms of ease of retrieval at the linguistic level as well as at the categorization
level. If the variation in the Chinese-based prototypicality underlying the
selected English labels does not play a role in Chinese participants’ English
vocabulary learning, then the chance would be equal for Chinese participants to
recollect in the cued-recall task English labels of the Cbp category members and
those of the Cbnp ones.
The pre-test vocabulary survey was conducted among 101 potential
participants. All the participants reported that they knew 44 of the 52 words at
the first level of familiarity. Out of the 44 potential words, 16 pairs were
selected to construct the to-be-remembered list in this experiment. They were
composed of one pair each from “fruits” and “weapons”, two pairs from
“sports”, and three pairs each from “clothing”, “parts of a building”, “furniture”,
and “parts of a body” (see Table 7.9 for a detailed description of the target
English labels selected). The mean prototypicality of the selected Cbnp category
members was 2.44 and that of the matched Cbp ones was 5.94.
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via Victoria University of WellingtonTable 7. 9: The 32 target words from the 7 superordinate categories used in the no-cued-at-
input but cued-at-output English immediate cued-recall task
superordinate Cbp PROTOTYP Cbnp members PROTOTYP
category labels members means means
“fruits” apple 6.93 tomato 3.48
“weapons” gun 6.83 rock 2.30
“sports” volleyball 6.87 computer games 1.61
“sports” swimming 6.81 singing 1.51
“clothing” suit 6.78 tie 1.83
“clothing” shirt 6.43 belt 1.52
“clothing trousers 5.52 shoes 1.35
“parts of a building” window 5.52 lights 4.20
“parts of a building” door 5.48 base 3.16
“parts of a building” room 5.44 corner 2.80
“furniture” bed 6.79 piano 1.93
“furniture” chair 6.40 radio 1.50
“furniture” table 6.15 picture 1.18
“parts of a body” head 6.77 stomach 4.13
“parts of a body” arm 6.30 tooth 3.37
“parts of a body” eye 6.03 hair 3.20
means 5.94 means 2.44
Note: all the PROTOTYP means are for the corresponding Chinese items from the Chinese norms obtained in Section 7.3.
One random presentation order was generated for the to-be-remembered list
in the word presentation section, with the stipulation that not more than two
items of either classification type (i.e., Cbp or Cbnp instances), or two items
from the same superordinate category be presented consecutively. One different
cuing order (that is, the order of the superordinate labels presented as cues in the
recall section) was generated, with the additional stipulation that the
superordinate category label to which the last target item belonged not be the
first retrieving cue presented to solicit recall performances from the participants.
7.5.3 Procedure
The experiment was conducted in a classroom. The target words, placed in the
center of the PowerPoint flash in Font 130, were projected onto a big screen in
the front of the classroom and presented to the participants one by one
consecutively at intervals of 3 seconds. Participants were instructed to complete
the following three tasks consecutively: (1) memorizing as many of the given
English words as possible, (2) doing two arithmetic calculations, and (3)
recollecting the previously-presented English words according to the given cues.
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