Working Memory in Second Language Acquisition and Processing

Wen, Zhisheng; Mota, Mailce Borges; McNeill, Arthur

doi:10.21832/9781783093595

Cited by 58 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…On the other hand, the effect of working memory measures on L2 acquisition and processing has been much more controversial (see Juffs, 2004; Wen et al, 2015). McDonald (2006) showed that bilinguals’ grammaticality judgements were affected by low WM capacity, insufficient decoding abilities and slower processing speeds compared to native speakers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Do French–English Bilinguals Pull Verb Particle Constructions Off? Factors Influencing Second Language Processing of Unfamiliar Structures at the Syntax-Semantics Interface

2018

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An important challenge in bilingualism research is to understand the mechanisms underlying sentence processing in a second language and whether they are comparable to those underlying native processing. Here, we focus on verb-particle constructions (VPCs) that are among the most difficult elements to acquire in L2 English. The verb and the particle form a unit, which often has a non-compositional meaning (e.g., look up or chew out), making the combined structure semantically opaque. However, bilinguals with higher levels of English proficiency can develop a good knowledge of the semantic properties of VPCs (Blais and Gonnerman, 2013). A second difficulty is that in a sentence context, the particle can be shifted after the direct object of the verb (e.g., The professor looked it up). The processing is more challenging when the object is long (e.g., The professor looked the student’s last name up). This shifted structure favors syntactic processing at the expense of VPC semantic processing. We sought to determine whether or not bilinguals’ reading time (RT) patterns would be similar to those observed for native monolinguals (Gonnerman and Hayes, 2005) when reading VPCs in sentential contexts. French–English bilinguals were tested for English language proficiency, working memory and explicit VPC semantic knowledge. During a self-paced reading task, participants read 78 sentences with VPCs that varied according to parameters that influence native speakers’ reading dynamics: verb-particle transparency, particle adjacency and length of the object noun phrase (NP; 2, 3, or 5 words). RTs in a critical region that included verbs, NPs and particles were measured. Results revealed that RTs were modulated by participants’ English proficiency, with higher proficiency associated with shorter RTs. Examining participants’ explicit semantic knowledge of VPCs and working memory, only readers with more native-like knowledge of VPCs and a high working memory presented RT patterns that were similar to those of monolinguals. Therefore, given the necessary lexical and computational resources, bilingual processing of novel structures at the syntax-semantics interface follows the principles influencing native processing. The findings are in keeping with theories that postulate similar representations and processing in L1 and L2 modulated by processing difficulty.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Do French–English Bilinguals Pull Verb Particle Constructions Off? Factors Influencing Second Language Processing of Unfamiliar Structures at the Syntax-Semantics Interface

2018

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Section: Findings and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The content video provides a large amount of information input such as pictures, objects, and real scenes (Dehghani and Jowkar, 2012;Pardo-Ballester, 2016;Green, 2017). Compared with context video, it is seen by some to significantly improve the overall understanding level of learners; but it does not help learners understand the uncommon words they listen to and may even interfere with phonological and vocabulary memory (Gathercole and Baddeley, 2014;Wen et al, 2015). Gabeur et al (2020) also argues that the content video input provides more information that is beneficial to listeners' understanding to a certain extent because the scene video only presents the image of the speaker or a fixed scene, the learning process is relatively rigid.…”

Section: Nature Of the Visual Inputmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systematic literature review on audio-visual multimodal input in listening comprehension

2022

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The purpose of this study is to discuss the effects of audiovisual input on second language acquisition (SLA) and the factors that influence the difficulty of audiovisual learning through a systematic literature review. Prior to this systematic review, in this paper, we searched papers on related topics for the past 10 years from 2012 to 2022, and found 46 journal papers that met the research criteria. They can basically represent the scholarly work in this field. The 46 studies were published in journals indexed in Google Scholar, Eric, Scopus, and Wiley Library. Databases were selected according to a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria. The following conclusions are drawn from the literature review: Audiovisual input can provide more authentic language input and more adequate and richer multimodal cultural and situational contexts, which can better promote learners' understanding of the content and stimulate learners' interest in participating in listening comprehension tasks. The influencing factors of multimodal input on listening difficulty include subtitles, video type, and the relationship between the audio and visual input.

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“…Executive function also influences L2 ability development in older preschool children. Theoretically, EF plays a critical role in the process of second-language learning in bilingual children (e.g., Wen, 2012;Wen et al, 2015). For example, if an auditory input of a vocabulary word activates the meaning representation in both languages, it is necessary for children to cognitively enhance the targeted activation and suppress the other.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An intricate relationship between executive function and second‐language ability in a cohort of Uyghur‐Chinese bilingual children

Jin

Kwok

Song

2022

Developmental Science

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The relationship between executive function and second‐language ability remains contentious in bilingual children; thus, the current study focused on this issue. In total, 371 Uyghur‐Chinese bilingual children ranging from 3 to 6 years old were assessed by a battery of tasks measuring language ability (expressive vocabulary tests, receptive vocabulary tests, and phonological awareness of both their first‐language and second‐language) and executive function (working memory, inhibition, and switching). Our results indicated that age is a crucial moderator of the relationship between second‐language ability and executive function. Specifically, executive function unilaterally predicted second‐language ability in children who were 3–4 years old, whereas second‐language ability and executive function bilaterally influenced each other in children who were 4–5 and 5–6 years old. These findings suggest that executive function and second‐language ability have an intertwined and causal relationship among preschool children during development. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed. Research Highlights A counterfactual model showed causality between executive function and second language ability in Uyghur‐Chinese bilingual children. Executive function unilaterally predicted second language ability in the 3‐ to 4‐year‐old age group. Executive function and second language ability bilaterally influenced each other in the 4‐ to 5 and 5‐ to 6‐year‐old age groups.

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Working Memory in Second Language Acquisition and Processing

Cited by 58 publications

References 1 publication

How Do French–English Bilinguals Pull Verb Particle Constructions Off? Factors Influencing Second Language Processing of Unfamiliar Structures at the Syntax-Semantics Interface

How Do French–English Bilinguals Pull Verb Particle Constructions Off? Factors Influencing Second Language Processing of Unfamiliar Structures at the Syntax-Semantics Interface

Systematic literature review on audio-visual multimodal input in listening comprehension

An intricate relationship between executive function and second‐language ability in a cohort of Uyghur‐Chinese bilingual children

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