Shouldn’t learning be about long-term outcomes? A “desirable difficulties” approach is driven by identifying learning situations that present a paradox: desirable difficulties produce immediate costs that translate in greater learning gains in the long-term.
By making the learning conditions slightly more challenging (e.g., by manipulating the input provided), learners experience some relative difficulties. These costs are detectable in a number of ways – slower performance, subjective difficulty, lower scores in immediate tests. In many cases, after a short delay (e.g., after a few days) learners in “desirably difficult” learning conditions outperform the peers who “had it easy”, but for whom a seeming learning advantage turns into a disadvantage in the long-run.
One particular aim of this work is to understand the cognitive processes involved in learning linguistic structures that are in conflict with the native language, as well as the learning conditions that optimize learning. I do this by using behavioral methods, eye-tracking and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as tools to understand the types of costs and gains derived from different learning conditions.
Pulido, Manuel F. (2022). Why are multiword units hard to acquire for late L2 learners? Insights from cognitive science on adult learning, processing and retrieval. Linguistics Vanguard. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2021-0043
Pulido, Manuel F. (2021). Native language inhibition predicts more successful second language learning: Evidence of two ERP pathways during learning. Neuropsychologia, 152, 107732. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107732
Pulido, Manuel F. & Paola E. Dussias (2020). Desirable difficulties while learning collocations in a second language: Conditions that induce L1 interference improve learning. Bilingualism: Language & Cognition. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1366728919000622 Download Eprint