THE LEARNING STRATEGY OF THE TOTALPHYSICAL RESPONSE: SOME AGE DIFFERENCES

JAMES J. ASHERBEN S. PRICE

San Jose State College

There is a common belief that children arc better able than adults to leam aforeign language. This belief may be an illusion if children living in a for-eign country leam the new language through phy activity while their par-ents try to leam independently of physical behavior.

Using Russian, this study compared the listening comprehension of8-, 10- and 14-year-old children, and college adults when each S was inphysical action during retention tests. The results showed that (a) theadults were superior to the children of any age group af p < .0005; (b)the youngest children, the 8-year-olds, had the poorest retention; and(c) the 10- and 14-year'old children were intermediate between the adultsand tJw 8-year-olds.

Tbere is an almost irrefutable belief that children are better able thanadults to leam a foreign language. This belief may be the result of acommon observation that when children live in a foreign country theyacquire speaking fiuency of a new language while tbeir parents are re-tarded in understanding and vocahzing.

It may be that children outperform adults in foreign language com-prehension because tbe new language is leamcd through play activity inwhicb the child makes action responses. For tbe child, the second languagetends to be synchronized witb physical responses ("Come on, Sam. Let'sride our bikesl"). The adult, by contrast, tries to manipulate the foreign

This study was supported by a research contract from the Personnel andTraining Branch of the Office of Naval Research (NONR-4817[00], NR-154-257/12-8-64). Reproduction in whole or part is permitted for any purpose ofthe U.S. government. Appreciation is expressed to Drs. Rose Cinsberg andCene R. Medinnus for their valuable suggestions in reviewing this paper. Au-thor Asher's address: Psychology Department, Child Research Center, San JoseState CoUege, San Jose, California.

CHILD DEVELOPMENT

language quite independently of physical behavior. The adult tends to bephysically static when he receives or transmits the new language ("It's abeautiful day today, isn't it?").

If the child in a foreign country uses an action response but theadult does not, this may partially explain why children become more fluentthan adults. An intriguing question then is, how do adults compare withchildren when both apply action responses in controlled situations?

In previous research (Asher, 1964; 1965; 1966; Kunihira & Asher,1965) with a technique called the "Leaming Strategy of the Total PhysicalResponse," it has been demonstrated that when adults team listening com-prehension of either Russian or Japanese there is a highly signifieant differ-ence in retention (p < .0005) if the adults are in action rather thanpassively writing English translations. For short-term experiments, it wasfound that dramatie differences in nnderstanding complex utterances in aforeign language are associated with action of Ss during retention tests,but not necessarily during training. For example, there were no significantdifferences when, in training, adult Ss listened to Russian commands andacted along with a model or merely sat and observed a model act. However,listening comprehension scores were vastly superior at p < .0005 when eacbS individualty listened to Russian commands and physically acted duringretention tests, rather than sitting down, listening to Russian commands,and writing English translations.

In the study to be described next, the listening comprehension forvarious complexities of Russian utterances was compared for children whoseaverage ages were 8 years-1 month, 9 years-9 months, and 13 years-8months. Also inctuded in the comparison were college adults between theages of 18 and 21 . The ehitdren and adutts had identical training, andaction responses were required of each S during retention tests.

METHOD . :

Subfects

The children (N = 96) were drawn from the second, fourth, andeighth grades of a public school^ in San Jose, Catifornia. The adults(N ~ 37) were college students recruited from xjndergraduate generalpsychology courses at San Jose State College. None of the children oradults had prior training or exposiire to Russian. The Ss from the 8-year-olds to adults were divided into two groups at each age level. The twogroups, calted an "act-act group" and an "observe-act group," will be

^ Appreciation is expressed to Mr. William M. Phelps and the school per-sonnel of the Blackford School in San Jose, California.

1220

JAMES J. ASHER AND BEN S. PRICE

described next. The average IQ for the cbildren in each group as measuredby the Califomia Test of Mental Maturity was 115 for tbe 8-year-olds,113 for the 10-year-olds, and 114 for the 14-year-old children.

Procedure

The act-act group.—In Unit I of the training, two Ss sat on eacbside of E and were instructed that a voice on tape would utter a commandin Russian. When tbe Ss beard tbe Russian utterance, tbey were to doexactly what the instructor did. In the 3 minutes of training, Ss and tbeadult model pbysically responded to the following Russian commands:stand, sit, walk, stop, tum, squat, and run. Each utterance was presentedten times in a sequence whicb was varied so tbat Ss did not simplymemorize a fixed pattem of bebavior.

Tben a retention test was individually administered, followed by UnitII of training for nine minutes in which the Russian was increased to thiscomplexity: Walk to the door; walk to the window; walk to the chair;walk to the table; run to the door; run to the window; run to tbe chair;run to tbe table.

The session ended witb a retention test, and 24 bours later Ss re-turned for another retention test and Unit III of training. For 6 minutes,Ss and the model acted in response to Russian commands, such as: Pickup the pencil; put down the pencil; pick up the book; put down tbebook; pick up tbe paper; put down the paper; pick up the paper andpencil; put down the pencil, book, and paper.

In tbe retention test, S physically responded to Russian utteranceswhich tbey had heard in training, but tbey also heard novel Russiancommands. Novelty was defined as the recombination of elements intosentences never experienced in training, as far example: Run to the table,and pick up the paper; pick up the pencil, and walk to the window;run to the chair, and put down the book.

Forty-eigbt bours later, Ss returned for another retention test andtlien 732 minutes of Unit IV training, which consisted of the recombinationand expansion of learned patterns, such as: Pick up the paper and pencil,and put them on the chair; run to tbe table, put down tbe paper, andsit on the cbair; walk to tbe door, pick up the pencil, put it on thetable, and sit on the chair.

At the end of tbis training there was anotber retention test, and 2weeks later Ss retumed for a final retention test. The total amount oftime in small-group training was 25!2 minutes as compared witb almostan equal amount of time in individual retention tests of 19 minutes.

Observe-act group.—^The conditions were exactly the same as thosefor the act-act group, except that these Ss were instructed to sit silentlyin their chairs, listen to the Russian commands, and imagine tbat they

1221

CHILD DEVELOPMENT

were acting along with tbe model. Only the model perfonned while the Ssobserved his behavior.

However, during the retention tests each S listened individualty tocommands in Russian and showed his understanding by acting (e.g., if thecommand in Russian was, "Walk to the chair and sit dovra," S indicatedcomprehension by physically walking to a chair and sitting down).

RESULTS

We expected to find that the children and adults in the act-act situa-tion would perform simitarty to the Ss in the observe-act situation. Thereason is that prior research has shown that physical action during retentiontests facilitated leaming. Since Ss in the act-act group and observe-actgroup all were in physical action during the recall tests, we expected nodifference between treatments. The observe-act condition may then beviewed as a replication, in a sense, of the act-act; and, therefore, if theperformance pattern is similar, this is an indieation of reliability.

Indeed, Figures 1-5 show that children and adults in the act-acttreatment perform quite like the children and adults in the observe-acttreatment.

The difference in retention of the Russian was between age groups.Adults performed near the maximum possible score in comprehension of

O(/I

o>^ <

j j

a.

100-

90-

8 0 .

7 0 .

60-

5 0 .

40-

30-

20-

10-

0_

ACT-ACT OBSERVE-AC!

10 14 ADULTSYEARS YEARS YEARSOLD OLD OLD

8 10 14 ADULTSYEARS YEARS YEARSOLD OLD OLD

FIG. 1.—Retention of single Russian words.

1222

JAMES J. ASHER AND BEN S. PRICE

o

IOO

90.

8YEARSOLD

ACT-ACT OBSERVE-ACT

10YEARS

OLD

FIG. 2.—Retention of short Russian words.

14 ADULTSYEARS

OLD

!00ACT-ACT

- 01

LJ U-r o

o^ CO

Z X

LJ

PERC

Er

9 0 .

8 0 .

7 0 .6 0 .

50

4 0 .

i O .

20 .

10.

0

YEARSOLD

10YEARS

OLD

14YEARS

OLD

ADULTS

OBSERVE-ACT

YEARSOLD

10YEARS

OLD

14YEARS

OLD

ADULTS

FIG. 3.—Retention of long Russian words.

1223

CHILD DEVELOPMENT

O CO

o: oo

1x8CO

u,O -s

UJ

Oo

I X

O

<a:

UJoccUJa.

ACT-ACT OBSERVE-ACT100

8 10YEARS YEARS

OLD OLDYEARS YEARSOLD OLD

14 ADULTSYEARS

OLDFIG. 4.—Retention of novel Russian words.

OBSERVE-ACT100

% 5 0 .

8 10YEARS YEARS

OLD OLD

14YEARS

OLD

8YEARSOLD

10YEARSOLD

14YEARSOLD

ADULTS

FIG. 5.—Retention as measured by the total score from all retention tests.

JAMES J. ASHER AND BEN S. PRICE

Russian while the 8-year-old children were tbe lowest of all groups tested.Intermediate between adults and the 8-ycar-olds were the 10- and 14-year-old cbildren. Tbis generalization beld for single, short, long, or novel Rus-sian utterances.

A statistical analysis was obtained by applying two-tailed t tests. Theresults, presented in Tables 1 and 2, show tbat the adults, on the average

TABLE 1MEANS AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS FOR EACH AGE GROUP

RETENTIONTESTS

2d(JV

x:

GRADE= 16)

SD

4th(N

X

GRADE= 16)

SD

Act-Act

8th GRADE{N = 16)

Group

SD

ADULTSiN = 18)X SD

Single 22.56 7.58 28.93 9.09 32.68 7.54 44.72 2.10Short 41.43 17.86 54.25 16.68 59.25 21.89 87.22 5.47Long 66.68 33.86 95.31 27.76 98.43 37.13 173.33 21.00Novel 34.87 17.61 49.93 16,17 51.68 23.47 103.11 15,81Total 146.31 57.73 191.50 51.56 208.00 67.34 323.61 27.07

Single 21.81 7.16 29.81 10.05 32.50 9.66 43.05 3,29Short 40.81 16.29 46.31 21.35 64.81 21.74 86.42 3.24Long 79.12 28.86 85.25 35.67 106.31 46.05 172.26 19.36Novel 41.50 14.46 41.93 19.31 56.68 29.44 101.68 14.56Total 154.93 49.48 173.75 64.57 220.87 74.34 318.26 23.14

Observe-Act Group

and for any level of language complexity, dramatically excelled the cbildrenof any age group tested. Every t between the adults and any group ofchildien was bigbly significant beyond the .0005 level of confidence. Cen-erally, the 14-ycar-old students were not significantly different in retentionwhen compared witb the 10-year-old students. However the older children,the 14-year-olds, tended to be significantly better than the youngest chil-dren, the 8-year-olds. The 10-year-old children excelled the 8-year-old chil-dren only in the act-act condition.

DISCUSSION

Tbis study suggests that when adults leam a second language underthe same conditions as children, the adults are superior. This generalizationsbould be limited, at this time, to listening fluency. Future studies mayshow that cbildren have an advantage in fidelity of sound production.

The comparison of college adults to children may be blurred some-what because of a selectivity factor for the adults. The college studentsat San Jose State College are selected from among the top one-third ofbigb school graduates in Califomia. Tberefore, we would expect above-

1225

CHILD DEVELOPMENT

3O

Om

CQ u

wnin

a:

1/1 in in I/) OoooooOOOQOooooo

n O O m ooooopoooooooooo

IO IO >O IO loooooooooooooooo

in t~-ooooo

O in in lo IOoooooooooo

1226

JAMES J. ASHER AND BEN S. PRICE

average mental ability for tbe adults. However, it has been sbown byPimsleur (1966) and others that general mental abihty is a hgbt-weigbtvariable in second language leaming, accounting for less than 20 per centof tbe variance.

The second finding was that among children, the older child, the10- or 14-year-old, tended to be significantly better tban tbe 8-year-old inhis understanding of spoken Russian. Sbort attention span has been sug-gested as an explanation for the poor performance of the 8-year-old inunderstanding tbe Russian commands. When the Russian utterance waslong and involved ("Pick up the pencil, walk to the chair, put down thepencil, and run to the window"), one might expect the 8-year-old child tohave difficulty even if the utterance were spoken in English. Short attentionspan seems plausible for complex Russian commands, but this explanationdoes not account for the relatively low scores by tbe 8-year-oId for singleRussian words as "run," "walk," and "sit."

REFERENCES

Asher, J. J. Toward a neo-field theory of behavior. Journal of humanistic Psychol-ogy, 1964, 4, 85-94.

Asher, J. J. The strategy of the total physical response: an application to leamingRussian. International Review of applied Linguistics, 1965, 3, 291-300.

Asher, J. J. The leaming strategy of the total physical response: a review. ModernLanguage Journal, 1966, 50, 79-84.

Kuniliira, S., & Asher, J. J. The strategy of the total physical response: an applica-tion to leaming Japanese. International Review of applied Linguistics, 1965,3, 277-289.

Pimsleur, P. In Albert Valdman (Ed.), Trends in hnguage teaching. New York:McGraw-HiU, 1966. Pp. 175-214.

1227