Word learning in the wild: App-based evidence for valence and concreteness effects

Abstract Second language (L2) learners need to acquire large vocabularies to approach native-like proficiency. Many controlled experiments have investigated the factors facilitating and hindering word learning; however, few studies have validated these findings in real-world learning scenarios. We use data from the language learning app Lingvist to explore how L2 word learning is affected by valence (positivity/negativity) and concreteness of target words and their linguistic contexts. We found that valence, but not concreteness, affects learning. Users learned positive and negative words better than neutral ones. Moreover, positive words are learned best in positive contexts and negative words in more negative contexts. Word and context valence effects are strongest on the learner’s second encounter with the target word and diminish across subsequent encounters. These findings provide support for theories of embodied cognition and the lexical quality hypothesis and point to the linguistic factors that make learning words, and by extension languages, faster.