Processing of lexical and morphological cues in a study abroad context

Acquiring a second language as an adult can be a difficult task, and much research has been conducted to explain the obstacles associated with adult second language acquisition (SLA). Some research has suggested biological (see Birdsong, 2006; DeKeyser & Larsen-Hall, 2005, for a summary), external (Lantolf, 2000; Long, 1996; Swain, 2000), and internal (VanPatten, 2004; Ellis, 2007) factors to account for these difficulties. The Associative-Cognitive theory (Ellis, 2007) suggests that there is no default mechanism determining what cues are processed, and that it is both linguistic characteristics (cue salience, reliability and redundancy) and language experience (early learned cues in the L1 and L2 affect the learning of later learned cues) that guide the processing of L2 cues. There is mounting evidence that native speakers of a morphologically poor language such as English learning a morphologically richer language such as Spanish or Italian as adults use lexical cues (adverbs) before morphological cues (verbs) when both cues provide information about temporal reference within a sentence (Bardovi-Harlig, 1992; Cadierno, Glass, Lee, & VanPatten, 1991; Lee, 1999, 2002; Jiang, 2004; Leeser, 2004; Musumeci, 1989; Rossomondo, 2003); Sagarra & Ellis, personal communication; VanPatten, 1996, 2004). Similarly, native speakers of a morphologically rich language learning another morphologically rich language show preference for morpholoical over lexical cues (Ellis & Sagarra, submitted; Jiang, Novokshanova, Masuda, & Wang, 2008; Liu, Bates, & Li, 1992). In addition to these linguistic and language experience factors, instructors' overuse of lexical items (Dracos, 2009) and underuse of certain morphological forms (Goodall, 2008) poses an additional obstacle for classroom learners' processing of redundant cues.;Previous research suggests that classroom learners with higher working memory capacity are better able to process redundant morhological cues, even at early stages of acquisition (Leeser, 2007; Sagarra, 2007; Sagarra & Ellis, personal communication), than those with lower working memory capacity. Immersion experience and inhibitory control are two other factors that can help classroom learners focus on morphological cues because naturalistic settings expose learners to great amounts of morphological cues and help them suppress their L1 (Linck, Kroll, & Sunderman, 2009). While there is no direct evidence about what role immersion experience and inhibitory control play in the L2 processing of such cues, studies indicate that in a study abroad setting, better working memory (Lafford, 2006; Tokowicz, Michael, & Kroll, 2004; Sunderman & Kroll, 2009) and inhibitory control (Linck, Hoshino, & Kroll, 2008; Linck, Kroll, & Sunderman, 2009) facilitate the L2 processing of linguistic features, suggesting that an immersion experience, working memory capacity, and inhibitory control can also assist in the L2 processing of morphological cues. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the effects of these three factors on how Anglophone learners of Spanish process temporal adverbs and verbs to assign temporal reference. Heeding these studies, the predictions are that immersion experience, working memory capacity, and inhibitory control will help classroom learners to rely on morphological cues.;To test these predictions, English-Spanish adult classroom learners with (n = 36) and without (n = 24) an immersion experience completed 6 screening tasks (a language background questionnaire, a language contact profile (study abroad only), a test of Spanish proficiency, proficiency self-ratings, a verb recognition test, and tense recognition test), an eyetracking task, a working memory test, and an inhibitory control test. The eyetracking task followed a counterbalanced within-subjects design in which participants read 146 sentences in Spanish at their own pace (6 practice, 40 experimental, 100 fillers) and answered a comprehension question after each sentence. All experimental sentences contained a past tense adverb (lexical cue), but half had past tense verbs (morphological cue) (half adverb-verb, half verb-adverb) and half had present tense verbs (half adverb-verb, half verb-adverb). The working memory test consisted of a modified version of Water's & Caplan's (1996b) reading span test and asked participants to read a set of sentences, judge their plausibility, and remember the last word of each sentence. Finally, inhibitory control was measured with the Simon test, which required participants to ignore the position of a target stimulus in order to respond only to its color.;The results for the screening tests revealed that the sample pool was homogeneous in terms of L2 proficiency and knowledge of the target verbs and tenses. The findings of the eyetracking task indicated that classroom learners without an immersion experience use lexical cues to reslve a tense conflict, whereas those with an immersion experience show a decreased reliance on lexical cues accompanied by an increased reliance on morphological cues. These data suggest that an immersion experience helps classroom learners acquire native-like processing patterns. This relates to the Associative-Cognitive theory by showing that both linguistic and language experience based factors affect SLA. The results of the reading span test revealed that working memory capacity modulates the processing of morphological cues in study abroad learners but not in non-study abroad learners. When in the study abroad setting, the learners with higher working memory capacity are able to focus on the morphological cues when lexical cues are absent. Finally, the results of the Simon test showed that inhibitory control was not a determinant factor in the processing of lexical or morphological cues for any of the groups. This may be attributed to the data being collected after the study abroad group learners had returned from their immersion experience. Taken as a whole, the findings of this dissertation suggest that immersion experience and the combination of immersion experience and working memory help adult classroom learners attend to morphological cues in the input.