Incidental collocational learning from reading-while-listening and the impact of synchronized textual enhancement

The present study explored if textual enhancement would promote incidental learning of collocations from reading-while-listening, and if synchronizing the timing of textual enhancement to the audio could affect the efficacy of textual enhancement. Fifty-six Korean speakers engaged in reading-while-listening of two English stories under one of three conditions: no enhancement, target collocations coloured in red, and target collocations dynamically turning to red in synchronization with the audio. The target collocations were 12 adjective-pseudonoun pairs, and participants’ learning was measured with a series of recall and recognition tests on pseudonoun form, meaning, and collocations, recording both response accuracy and latency. The results from mixed-effects modeling revealed that both colouring conditions promoted receptive knowledge about the target collocations, and synchronized colouring further boosted semantic processing of the pseudonouns. The findings indicate that synchr...