Ingrid Finger

Second Language Processing Shows Increased Native- Like Neural Responses after Months of No Exposure

Although learning a second language (L2) as an adult is notoriously difficult, research has shown that adults can indeed attain native language-like brain processing and high proficiency levels. However, it is important to then retain what has been attained, even in the absence of continued exposure to the L2—particularly since periods of minimal or no L2 exposure are common. This event-related potential (ERP) study of an artificial language tested performance and neural processing following a substantial period of no exposure. Adults learned to speak and comprehend the artificial language to high proficiency with either explicit, classroom-like, or implicit, immersion-like training, and then underwent several months of no exposure to the language. Surprisingly, proficiency did not decrease during this delay. Instead, it remained unchanged, and there was an increase in native-like neural processing of syntax, as evidenced by several ERP changes—including earlier, more reliable, and more left-lateralized anterior negativities, and more robust P600s, in response to word-order violations. Moreover, both the explicitly and implicitly trained groups showed increased native-like ERP patterns over the delay, indicating that such changes can hold independently of L2 training type. The results demonstrate that substantial periods with no L2 exposure are not necessarily detrimental. Rather, benefits may ensue from such periods of time even when there is no L2 exposure. Interestingly, both before and after the delay the implicitly trained group showed more native-like processing than the explicitly trained group, indicating that type of training also affects the attainment of native-like processing in the brain. Overall, the findings may be largely explained by a combination of forgetting and consolidation in declarative and procedural memory, on which L2 grammar learning appears to depend. The study has a range of implications, and suggests a research program with potentially important consequences for second language acquisition and related fields.

The role of explicit instruction in the acquisition of the present perfect

This paper aims at analyzing the role of explicit instruction in the learning of the Present Perfect by Brazilian university students in a formal setting. Participants were divided into two groups and tested twice in comprehension and production tasks during a three-week interval. In the second week, the experimental group was exposed to explicit instruction on use and form of the target topic. Results indicate that the explicit instruction group showed overall improvement, providing support to the claim that explicit instruction is beneficial, or at least it is not prejudicial, to foreign language learning.

O efeito da anterioridade e da altura na identificação das vogais médias altas e médias baixas do Português Brasileiro por falantes de espanhol.

Speakers of L1 Spanish have difficulty discriminating the open and close-mid vowels [e], [E], [o], [O] in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). The goal of this paper is to verify the effects of frontness and height in the perception of these vowels. A test of vowel identification was given to 16 speakers of Argentine Spanish, aged between 16 e 18 years, using minimal pairs in BP. Results show that, in both front and back vowels, participants had higher scores in items containing close-mid vowels if compared with items containing open-mid vowels In relation to the frontness effect, participants also demonstrated more difficulty in identifying open-mid vowels than close-mid vowels. The results confirm the difficulty of Spanish speakers in identifying mid vowels of BP, as well as provide evidence that these learners are forming new L2 phonetic-phonological categories, despite the difficulty of defining aspects that characterize such acoustic-articulatory categories.

Estudo comparativo do acesso semântico no processamento visual de palavras entre brasileiros monolíngues e chineses multilíngues falantes do português do Brasil como língua estrangeira

O priming semântico e uma forma de avaliar o processamento semântico de palavras. Se a semântica e um importante fator contribuinte no reconhecimento visual de palavras, surge a questao de se chineses multilingues (mandarin como L1 e ingles como L2), que estao aprendendo o portugues como L3, podem se beneficiar do contexto semântico em tarefa de decisao lexical na Lingua Portuguesa, comparado aos controles (brasileiros universitarios e criancas). Alem de comparar a magnitude do efeito de priming semântico entre a amostra de chineses e de brasileiros, objetivou-se investigar nos chineses a relacao entre o desempenho no experimento de priming semântico e na tarefa de consciencia fonologica, ambos na lingua portuguesa. Participaram do estudo 40 universitarios chineses multilingues, 31 universitarios brasileiros e 26 criancas de 3a serie. Houve efeito de priming semântico nos chineses e nos brasileiros, universitarios e criancas, ou seja, respostas mais rapidas na condicao com prime relacionado do que na condicao com prime nao relacionado. Nao houve diferencas significativas na magnitude do efeito entre os grupos de adultos, mas as criancas apresentaram maior magnitude de efeito do que os chineses. Considerando apenas o grupo de chineses, nao houve correlacao entre os escores na tarefa de decisao lexical no paradigma de priming semântico e a avaliacao da consciencia fonologica. Chineses parecem ter acessado o significado dos primes apresentados visualmente na Lingua Portuguesa, nao se diferenciando dos brasileiros adultos e criancas .