A Psycholinguistic Study of Individual Differences in Second Language Sentence Interpretation

• Main Author: Copeland, Chary-Sy Tanya
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2022
• Subjects: Bilingual education; Cognitive psychology; Foreign language education; Foreign language instruction; Individualized Instruction; Language Acquisition; Language Proficiency; Linguistics; Modern language; Monolingualism; Native Language
• ISBN: 9798841775324

Second language acquisition has been observed to be variable in its outcome such that, unlike native speakers, all second language learners do not achieve total success. Second language acquisition is made of macro and micro processes. External and internal (e.g., age, individual differences) factors are assumed to affect language processing in theoretical models like the Competition Model and VanPatten’s Model of Input Processing, particularly for language features that are marked or not available in the native or first language like object fronted or inverted word order sentences. Many studies have addressed universals of second language processing and the processing strategies used by L2 learners to interpret object-verb-subject (OVS) and subject-verb-object (SVO) sentence types. Fewer studies have investigated if and/or how individual differences like working memory and inhibitory control ability affect sentence interpretation. The goal of this study was to examine the role of these cognitively based individual differences (working memory and inhibitory control) on second language sentence interpretation for two groups of second language learners of Spanish as compared to a group of native Spanish speakers. Participants (N = 87) completed two working memory span tasks (reading and operation span), a measure of inhibitory control (the Simon task), and a sentence interpretation task. The results suggest that there is an effect for proficiency level on L2 sentence interpretation for OVS sentences; a relationship between working memory and L2 sentence interpretation for L2 intermediate learners; and a relationship between inhibitory control ability and L2 sentence interpretation for L2 intermediate and L2 advanced learners in opposite directions.