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Within the United States, millions of adults find it beneficial or even necessary to learn a second language for personal, business, and government related purposes. Yet, second language learning is a complex and challenging endeavor that results in a great deal of variability in learning outcomes. Some learners reach acceptable levels of proficiency for their purposes whereas other learners do not. Nonetheless, the factors that explain the varying levels of success in adult second language learning are still not fully understood. One way in which researchers work to explain who is expected to be successful when learning a second language is to identify the set of individual factors that are associated with successful adult second language learning. This dissertation project investigates two cognitive factors that have been shown to play a role in bilingualism and that have also recently been proposed to contribute to second language learning. The first factor, inhibitory control, is defined as an individual's ability to deliberately suppress automatic responses and has been shown to be key for bilingual language control. The second factor, language flexibility, refers to an individual's ability to tolerate changes to their first language and is evident in bilingual language processing. The dissertation will examine the role of these factors in second language learners as they become bilingual. To do so, we will first assess second language proficiency with multiple measures in adult learners of Spanish who are at early, intermediate, or late stages of learning the language. Second, behavioral measures will be taken of learners' inhibitory control ability, and brain-based, electrophysiological measures will assess language flexibility by examining the extent to which their developing Spanish affects their first language processing. Finally, these sets of data will be analyzed to examine to what extent inhibitory control abilities and language flexibility predict the level of proficiency that the learners achieve. The findings from the study are expected to have broad implications for theory and practice. The research will inform our theoretical understanding of the underlying cognitive and brain mechanisms that contribute to the complex task of learning a second language. This increased understanding about how languages are learned, in turn, will inform methodological approaches for teaching second languages. For example, instructional materials can be designed that leverage or support individual learner characteristics such as their inhibitory control ability. This project will also provide invaluable hands-on experience to graduate and undergraduate research assistants in areas including research design, data analyses of cognitive and brain-based, electrophysiological data, and data interpretation. Finally, given that the institution where this research will take place has a diverse student population, it will involve students from groups who are often underrepresented in higher education, many of whom are second language learners themselves.

This registered component includes the protocol, materials, and references for a multi-site replication examining the effects of attention to form on second language comprehension.

This OSF page is a repository for the data and analysis files used in the manuscript titled "The Reliability and Validity of Procedural Memory Assessments Used in Second Language Acquisition Research" (Buffington, Demos, and Morgan-Short, 2021). To reproduce the results in this paper, download the files in the ProcMemoryAssessL2 folder below. Then, open the "README.txt" file to learn about how the data and analyses are organized. Most of the analyses are in the PMLangAnalysis.R file (though some analyses are in the Excel workbooks). To run the R file, make sure that all of the files in the ProcMemoryAssessL2 folder are saved in the same folder on your computer. You can then run the R script from your desktop. Alternatively, you may wish to run the analyses from RStudio Cloud (https://rstudio.cloud/), especially if you currently use a different version of R than the one used here.

Learning new languages is a complex cognitive task involving both implicit and explicit processes. Batterink, Oudiette, Reber, and Paller (2014) report that participants with vs. without conscious awareness of a hidden semi-artificial language regularity showed no significant differences in grammar learning, suggesting that implicit/explicit routes may be functionally equivalent. However, their operationalizing of learning via median reaction times might not capture underlying differences in cognitive processes. In a conceptual replication, we compared rule-aware (n=14) and rule-unaware (n=21) participants via drift-diffusion modeling, which can quantify distinct subcomponents of evidence-accumulation processes (Ratcliff & Rouder, 1998). For both groups, grammar learning was manifested in non-decision parameters, suggesting anticipation of motor responses. For rule-aware participants only, learning also affected bias in evidence accumulation during word reading. These results suggest that implicit grammar learning may be manifested through low-level mechanisms whereas explicit grammar learning may involve more direct engagement with encoded target meanings.

Contains all materials related to Faretta–Stutenberg, M., & Morgan–Short, K. (2011). Learning without awareness reconsidered: A replication of Williams (2005). In G. Granena et al. (Eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 2010 Second Language Research Forum: Reconsidering SLA Research, Dimensions, and Directions (pp. 18–28). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

Although it is widely known that high-pass filters can reduce the amplitude of slow ERP components, these filters can also introduce artifactual peaks that lead to incorrect conclusions. To demonstrate this and provide evidence about optimal filter settings, we recorded ERPs in a typical language processing paradigm involving syntactic and semantic violations. Unfiltered results showed standard N400 and P600 effects in the semantic and syntactic violation conditions, respectively. However, high-pass filters with cutoffs at 0.3 Hz and above produced artifactual effects of opposite polarity before the true effect. That is, excessive high-pass filtering introduced a significant N400 effect preceding the P600 in the syntactic condition, and a significant P2 effect preceding the N400 in the semantic condition. Thus, inappropriate use of high-pass filters can lead to false conclusions about which components are influenced by a given manipulation. The present results also lead to practical recommendations for high-pass filter settings that maximize statistical power while minimizing filtering artifacts.