Gretchen Sunderman

Losing Access to the Native Language While Immersed in a Second Language: Evidence for the Role of Inhibition in Second-Language Learning

Adults are notoriously poor second-language (L2) learners. A context that enables successful L2 acquisition is language immersion. In this study, we investigated the effects of immersion learning for a group of university students studying abroad in Spain. Our interest was in the effect of immersion on the native language (L1), English. We tested the hypothesis that immersion benefits L2 learning as a result of attenuated influence of the L1. Participants were English-speaking learners of Spanish who were either immersed in Spanish while living in Spain or exposed to Spanish in the classroom only. Performance on both comprehension and production tasks showed that immersed learners outperformed their classroom counterparts with respect to L2 proficiency. However, the results also revealed that immersed learners had reduced L1 access. The pattern of data is most consistent with the interpretation that the L1 was inhibited while the learners were immersed.

FIRST LANGUAGE ACTIVATION DURING SECOND LANGUAGE LEXICAL PROCESSING An Investigation of Lexical Form, Meaning, and Grammatical Class

This study places the predictions of the bilingual interactive activation model (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 1998) and the revised hierarchical model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) in the same context to investigate lexical processing in a second language (L2). The performances of two groups of native English speakers, one less proficient and the other more proficient in Spanish, were compared on translation recognition. In this task, participants decided whether two words, one in each language, are translation equivalents. The items in the critical conditions were not translation equivalents and therefore required a “no” response, but were similar to the correct translation in either form or meaning. For example, for translation equivalents such as cara-face, critical distracters included (a) a form-related neighbor to the first word of the pair (e.g., cara-card), (b) a form-related neighbor to the second word of the pair, the translation equivalent (cara-fact), or (c) a meaning-related word (cara-head). The results showed that all learners, regardless of proficiency, experienced interference for lexical neighbors and for meaning-related pairs. However, only the less proficient learners also showed effects of form relatedness via the translation equivalent. Moreover, all participants were sensitive to cues to grammatical class, such that lexical interference was reduced or eliminated when the two words of each pair were drawn from different grammatical classes. We consider the implications of these results for L2 lexical processing and for models of the bilingual lexicon.The writing of this article was supported in part by NSF Doctoral Enhancement Grant BCS-0111733 to Gretchen Sunderman and Judith F. Kroll, and by NSF grants BCS-0111734 and BCS-0418071 and NIH grant RO1MH62479 to Judith F. Kroll. We thank Maya Misra for advice on computing measures of orthographic similarity and Rachel Varra and Asha Persaud for research assistance. We also thank the anonymous SSLA reviewers for their helpful comments.

Inhibitory Control Predicts Language Switching Performance in Trilingual Speech Production.

This study investigated the role of domain-general inhibitory control in trilingual speech production. Taking an individual differences approach, we examined the relationship between performance on a non-linguistic measure of inhibitory control (the Simon task) and a multilingual language switching task for a group of fifty-six native English (L1) speakers learning French (L2) and Spanish (L3). Better inhibitory control was related to reduced switch costs, but only when switching into or out of the more dominant L1, where inhibitory control has been theorized to be most important (Green, 1998). The results provide evidence of a direct link between inhibitory control abilities and language switching capabilities, and suggest constraints on the conditions under which a domain-general inhibitory control mechanism supports language switching.

When study abroad experience fails to deliver: The internal resources threshold effect

Some second language (L2) learners return from study abroad experiences with seemingly no change in their L2 ability. In this study we investigate whether a certain level of internal cognitive resources is necessary in order for individuals to take full advantage of the study abroad experience. Specifically, we examined the role of working memory resources in lexical comprehension and production for learners who had or had not studied abroad. Participants included native English learners of Spanish. Participants completed a translation recognition task and a picture-naming task. The results suggest that individuals who lack a certain threshold of working memory resources are unable to benefit from the study abroad context in terms of being able to produce accurately in the L2.

Speech production and second language acquisition

Speech production and second language acquisition, by Judit Kormos, Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006, xxvii+221 pp., US

Cognitive Processes in Second Language Learners and Bilinguals: The Development of Lexical and Conceptual Representations

59.95 (hardback), ISBN 0-8058-5657-9; US

Language switching in bilingual speech production: In search of the language-specific selection mechanism

29.95 (paperback), ISBN 0-8058-565...