Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T23:15:09.119Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT MEASURES OF SENSITIVITY TO VIOLATIONS IN SECOND LANGUAGE GRAMMAR: An Event-Related Potential Investigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2005

Natasha Tokowicz  and
Brian MacWhinney
Natasha Tokowicz
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Brian MacWhinney
Affiliation:
Carnegie Mellon University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the contributions of explicit and implicit processes during second language (L2) sentence comprehension. We used a L2 grammaticality judgment task (GJT) to test 20 native English speakers enrolled in the first four semesters of Spanish while recording both accuracy and ERP data. Because end-of-sentence grammaticality judgments are open to conscious inspection, we reasoned that they can be influenced by strategic processes that reflect on formal rules and therefore reflect primarily offline explicit processing. On the other hand, because ERPs are a direct reflection of online processing, they reflect automatic, nonreflective, implicit responses to stimuli (Osterhout, Bersick, & McLaughlin, 1997; Rugg et al., 1998; Tachibana et al., 1999).

We used a version of the GJT adapted for the ERP environment. The experimental sentences varied the form of three different syntactic constructions: (a) tense-marking, which is formed similarly in the first language (L1) and the L2; (b) determiner number agreement, which is formed differently in the L1 and the L2; and (c) determiner gender agreement, which is unique to the L2. We examined ERP responses during a time period between 500 and 900 ms following the onset of the critical (violation or matched control) word in the sentence because extensive past research has shown that grammatical violations elicit a positive-going deflection in the ERP waveform during this period (e.g., the “P600”; Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992).

We found that learners were sensitive (i.e., showed different brain responses to grammatical and ungrammatical sentences) to violations in L2 for constructions that are formed similarly in the L1 and the L2, but were not sensitive to violations for constructions that differ in the L1 and the L2. Critically, a robust grammaticality effect was found in the ERP data for the construction that was unique to the L2, suggesting that the learners were implicitly sensitive to these violations. Judgment accuracy was near chance for all constructions. These findings suggest that learners are able to implicitly process some aspects of L2 syntax even in early stages of learning but that this knowledge depends on the similarity between the L1 and the L2. Furthermore, there is a divergence between explicit and implicit measures of L2 learning, which might be due to the behavioral task demands (e.g., McLaughlin, Osterhout, & Kim, 2004). We conclude that comparing ERP and behavioral data could provide a sensitive method for measuring implicit processing.This research was supported by a National Institutes of Health Individual National Research Service Award (NIH HD42948-01) awarded to Natasha Tokowicz and a National Institutes of Health Institutional National Research Service Award (T32 MH19102) awarded to Brian MacWhinney. We thank Beatrice DeAngelis, Dayne Grove, Kwan Hansongkitpong, Katie Keil, Lee Osterhout, Chuck Perfetti, Kelley Sacco, Alex Waid, and Eddie Wlotko for their assistance with this project. We gratefully acknowledge the comments of Rod Ellis, Jan Hulstijn, Albert Valdman, and the two anonymous SSLA reviewers on earlier versions of this manuscript. A portion of these results was presented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society (2002, November).

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , June 2005 , pp. 173 - 204
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

DeKeyser, R. M. (2000). The robustness of critical period effects in second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22, 499–533.Google Scholar
Electrical Geodesics, Inc. (2003). NetStation [computer software]. Eugene, OR: Electrical Geodesics, Inc.
Ellis, N. C. (2002). Frequency effects in language processing: A review with implications for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24, 143–188.Google Scholar
Fabiani, M., Gratton, G., & Coles, M. G. H. (2000). Event-related brain potentials: Methods, theory, and applications. In J. T. Cacioppo, L. G. Tassinary, & G. G. Berntson (Eds.), Handbook of psychophysiology (pp. 53–84). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ferree, T. C., Luu, P., Russell, G. S., & Tucker, D. M. (2001). Scalp electrode impedance, infection risk, and EEG data quality. Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology, 112, 536–544.Google Scholar
Frenck-Mestre, C. (in press). Ambiguities and anomalies: What can eye-movements and event-related potentials reveal about second language sentence processing? In J. F. Kroll & A. M. B. de Groot (Eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hoffman, J. E., Simons, R. F., & Houck, M. R. (1983). Event-related potentials during controlled and automatic target detection. Psychophysiology, 20, 625–632.Google Scholar
Hulstijn, J. H. (2002). Towards a unified account of the representation, processing, and acquisition of second language knowledge. Second Language Research, 18, 193–223.Google Scholar
Jasper, H. H. (1958). The ten-twenty electrode system of the International Federation. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 48, 113–126.Google Scholar
Kaan, E., & Swaab, T. Y. (2003). Repair, revision, and complexity in syntactic analysis: An electrophysiological differentiation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15, 98–110.Google Scholar
Koelsch, S., Gunter, T., Schröger, E., & Friederici, A. D. (2003). Processing tonal modulations: An ERP study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15, 1149–1159.Google Scholar
Krashen, S. (1994). The input hypothesis and its rivals. In N. C. Ellis (Ed.), Implicit and explicit learning of languages. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Kroll, J. F., & Tokowicz, N. (in press). Models of bilingual representation and processing: Looking back and to the future. In J. F. Kroll & A. M. B. de Groot (Eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lehmann, D., & Skrandies, W. (1980). Reference-free identification of components of checkerboard-evoked multi-channels potential fields. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 48, 609–621.Google Scholar
Luce, D. (1959). Individual choice behavior. New York: Wiley.
MacWhinney, B. (1987). The competition model. In B. MacWhinney (Ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition (pp. 249–308). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
MacWhinney, B. (in press). A unified model of language acquisition. In J. F. Kroll & A. M. B. de Groot (Eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McDonald, J. L. (1987). Sentence interpretation in bilingual speakers of English and Dutch. Applied Psycholinguistics, 8, 379–414.Google Scholar
McLaughlin, J., Osterhout, L., & Kim, A. (2004). Neural correlates of second-language word learning: Minimal instruction produces rapid change. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 703–704.Google Scholar
Morris, J. P., Squires, N. K., Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. (2003). Activation of political attitudes: A psychophysiological examination of the hot cognition hypothesis. Political Psychology, 24, 727–745.Google Scholar
Osterhout, L., Bersick, M., & McLaughlin, J. (1997). Brain potentials reflect violations of gender stereotypes. Memory & Cognition, 25, 273–285.Google Scholar
Osterhout, L., & Holcomb, P. J. (1992). Event-related potentials elicited by syntactic anomaly. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 785–806.Google Scholar
Osterhout, L., McLaughlin, J., Inoue, K., & Loveless, J. (2000, November). Brain responses in L2 learning. Paper presented at the meeting Bilingualism: From basic research to educational practice, Rovereto, Italy.
Osterhout, L., & Mobley, L. A. (1995). Event-related brain potentials elicited by failure to agree. Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 739–773.Google Scholar
Osterhout, L., & Nicol, J. (1999). On the distinctiveness, independence, and time course of the brain response to syntactic and semantic anomalies. Language and Cognitive Processes, 14, 283–317.Google Scholar
Psychological Software Tools, Inc. (2000). E-Prime [Computer software]. Pittsburgh, PA: Psychological Software Tools, Inc.
Rugg, M. D., Mark, R. E., Walla, P., Schloerscheidt, A. M., Birch, C. S., & Allan, K. (1998). Dissociations of the neural correlates of implicit and explicit memory. Nature, 392, 595–598.Google Scholar
Tachibana, H., Miyata, Y., Takeda, M., Minamoto, H., Sugita, M., & Okita, T. (1999). Memory in patients with subcortical infarction: An auditory event-related potential study. Cognitive Brain Research, 8, 87–94.Google Scholar
Weber-Fox, C. M., & Neville, H. J. (1996). Maturational constraints on functional specializations for language processing: ERP and behavioral evidence in bilingual speakers. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 8, 231–256.Google Scholar
Zhang, S. Q. (1995). Semantic differentiation in the acquisition of English as a second language. Language Learning, 45, 225–249.Google Scholar