Temporal dynamics of late second language acquisition: evidence from event-related brain potentials

By Karsten Steinhauer, E. White, John E. Drury. 2009

205 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The ways in which age of acquisition (AoA) may affect (morpho)syntax in second language acquisition (SLA) are discussed. We suggest that event-related brain potentials (ERPs) provide an appropriate online measure to test some such effects. ERP findings of the past decade are reviewed with a focus on recent and ongoing research. It is concluded that, in contrast to previous suggestions, there is little evidence for a strict critical period in the domain of late acquired second language (L2) morphosyntax. As illustrated by data from our lab and others, proficiency rather than AoA seems to predict brain activity patterns in L2 processing, including native-like activity at very high levels of proficiency. Further, a strict distinction between linguistic structures that late L2 learners can vs. cannot learn to process in a native-like manner (Clahsen and Felser, 2006a; 2006b) may not be warranted. Instead, morphosyntactic real-time processing in general seems to undergo dramatic, but systematic, changes with increasing proficiency levels. We describe the general dynamics of these changes (and the corresponding ERP components) and discuss how ERP research can advance our current understanding of SLA in general.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e821f23d7920ef9811f8d6cebd68cdbbadac84bc

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Citations in the corpus

Juggling Two Languages in One Mind (2008, background): “As noted earlier, the conclusion that there are hard constraints that restrict L2 processing has been called into question in recent investigations of the neural basis of grammatical processing (e.g., Steinhauer et al., 2009; Tokowicz & MacWhinney, 2005).”
Pinning down the concept of “interface” in bilingualism (2011, background): “For example Sturt’s (2002) study of reflexive anaphors shows that early processing depends exclusively on Principle A of binding theory (which binds the reflexive to a local antecedent in the same clause), although it does not fully constrain subsequent stages of anaphora resolution.”
An ERP study on L2 syntax processing: When do learners fail? (2014, background): “Furthermore, there may be predictors of nativelikeness in L2 learners, such as age of acquisition, proficiency, language exposure and use, that may explain variance within the group (e.g., Weber-Fox and Neville, 1996, 1999; Rossi et al., 2006; Steinhauer et al., 2009; Tanner et al., 2014).”
Morphosyntactic processing in advanced second language (L2) learners: An event-related potential investigation of the effects of L1–L2 similarity and structural distance (2014, unknown): “Previous ERP studies on L2 processing have shown that, with increasing proficiency, adult L2 learners tend to show native-like ERP patterns for morphosyntactic violations, (e.g. Ojima et al., 2005; Rossi et al., 2006; Tanner et al., 2013; for reviews, see Kotz, 2009; Steinhauer et al., 2009).”
The interplay of individual differences and context of learning in behavioral and neurocognitive second language development (2018, background): “…are relevant to the current study (for more in-depth reviews for native language (L1), see Kaan, 2007; Steinhauer and Connolly, 2008; Swaab et al., 2012; and for more in-depth reviews for L2, see MorganShort, 2014; Morgan-Short et al., 2015b; Steinhauer et al., 2009; van Hell and Tokowicz, 2010).”
SOME NOTES ON THE SHALLOW STRUCTURE HYPOTHESIS (2017, result): “Delays in the timing of expected effects are also sometimes observed in studies using eventrelated brain responses, another experimental technique providing a fine-grained temporal resolution (see Morgan-Short, 2014; Steinhauer et al., 2009, for review and discussion).”