Event-related potentials in the study of L2 sentence processing: A scoping review of the decade 2010-2020

Abstract

Event-related potentials (ERPs) have become widespread in second language acquisition (SLA) research and a growing body of literature has been produced in recent years. We surveyed 61 SLA papers that use ERPs to study L2 sentence processing in healthy late learners. Our main aim was to provide a critical summary of findings from the decade 2010-2020. The qualitative review reveals that proficiency plays a major role in determining ERP components, but its effect is modulated by language similarity and individual differences. The statistical analysis (a multinomial logistic regression) suggests that ERP components are uniquely predicted by learners' proficiency level and the linguistic phenomenon at issue, while no effect of language distance is found. We also made a cursive methodological overview, which evidences several gaps in the literature and raises some concerns on the way proficiency is factorized across studies. The techniqueHigh-temporal resolution experimental techniques, such as Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and Electroencephalography (EEG), reveal that language processing unfolds millisecond-by-millisecond and involves multiple functional processes. EEG records electrical activity coming from postsynaptic potentials by means of electrodes placed on the subject's scalp. Since the propagation of the signal is instantaneous, EEG has an exquisite temporal resolution. On the other hand, given the distance and the variety of tissues -among which grey matter, bones, and skin -that separate signal Page 71 of 236 Language Acquisition Language Acquisition Language Acquisition 4Osterhout and colleagues (Osterhout et al. 2008, McLaughlin et al. 2004, for example, have observe that after a few months of classroom instruction, the same violations (e.g., subject-verb agreement) that initially elicited an N400 start to cause a P600, which is a more native-like pattern.This shift would track a progress towards the attainment of the target language as learners' proficiency grows, and Osterhout et al. ( 2008) call this "proceduralization" or "grammaticalization". This view is compatible with the Declarative-Procedural Model (DPM) of language acquisition proposed by Ullman and Paradis (Ullman 2016(Ullman , 2001Paradis 2009Paradis , 2004. In this framework, two memory systems are distinguished on anatomical, physiological, and functional grounds. The declarative memory system supports explicit knowledge and learning, which, generally, can be verbalized and are accessible to introspection. It is instantiated in temporal networks and regulated by acetylcholine.The procedural memory system deals with implicit, automatized knowledge and learning, which are largely unavailable to awareness. This system is mainly located in the basal ganglia, BA 44, 45, and the supplementary motor area, and its activity is modulated by dopamine. Since dopamine and acetylcholine are competing neurotransmitters, the two systems do not support each other, but rather operate in parallel with different timing. In other words, they can handle the sam...

Simulating event-related potentials in bilingual sentence comprehension: syntactic violations and syntactic transfer

“…In our present work, the reduced P600 for the number compared to tense violation supports a theory of syntactic transfer affecting ERP effects in L2 learners. The model in its present state, however, was unable to produce a strong P600 in response to a grammatical gender violation, in contrast with human participants (Antonicelli & Rastelli, 2022;Caffarra et al, 2015;McLaughlin et al, 2010;Foucart & Frenck-Mestre, 2011;Frenck-Mestre, Foucart, Carrasco-Ortiz, & Herschensohn, 2009;Morgan-Short, 2014;Tokowicz & MacWhinney, 2005). Further work is needed to determine if the Error Propagation account, as implemented in the Bilingual Dual-path model, simulates a strong P600 effect in response to a grammatical gender violation when gender is implemented in the message in the same way as plurality and tense.…”

“…The P600 effect has been used to investigate if secondlanguage (L2) learners show similar ERP effects as native (L1) speakers for morpho-syntactic processing. L2 proficiency is the most important factor determining P600 size (Antonicelli & Rastelli, 2022;Caffarra, Molinaro, Davidson, & Carreiras, 2015;McLaughlin et al, 2010;Morgan-Short, 2014) but similarities and differences between the L1 and L2 often modulate the effect of proficiency. Some ERP studies showed reduced P600 effects, or no P600 effect, for syntactic features that are instantiated differently between languages (Antonicelli & Rastelli, 2022;Liu, Dunlap, Tang, Lu, & Chen, 2017;Morgan-Short, 2014), while others found P600 effects for syntactic L2 features regardless of the (dis)similarity between L1 and L2 (Caffarra et al, 2015;McLaughlin et al, 2010;Morgan-Short, 2014).…”