Cognitive factors: Working memory and lexical development

1. Cognitive factors:Working memory and lexical development Alan Juffs

2. Support • National Science Foundation • SBR-9709152 • Thanks to RSAs: • Jenifer Larson-Hall • Greg Mizera • Jessica Giesler • Sean Coyan • Vivian Chen

3. Publications • Dekeyser, R and A. Juffs. (2005). Cognitive considerations in L2 learning. Handbook of Research in Second Language Teaching and Learning. 437-454. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. • Juffs, A. (2004). Representation, processing and working memory in a second language. Transactions of the Philological Society, 102, 199-226. • Juffs, A. (2005). Some effects of first language and working memory in the processing of long distance wh- questions. Second Language Research 21, 121-151. • In press a. Processing reduced relative vs. main verb ambiguity in English as a Second Language: a replication study with working memory. A festschrift for XXXX. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

4. Structure of talk • Sketch of working memory models • Brief Sketch of sentence processing • Experiment in working memory and sentence processing in English as a second language • Memory, aptitude, and low educated learners

5. Baddeley’s Working Memory Model 1

6. Baddeley’s Working Memory Model 2

7. Behavioural Measures • Central executive • Reading Span Task (Daneman and Carpenter, 1980) • What does the RST claim to measure?

8. Relative clause types and WM • 1. Animacy effects in reduced relative clauses • The evidence [inanimate] examined by the lawyer was convincing. • The witness [animate] examined by the lawyer was convincing. • 2. Subject and object asymmetry in relative clauses. • The reporter that the senator attacked ____ regretted the error. • The reporter that ___ attacked the senator regretted the error. • 3. Reduced relatives and cue strength. • The bad boys seen during the game were playing in the park. • - no ambiguity; good cue for ambiguity resolution • The bad boys watched almost every day were playing in the park. • ambiguity + bad cue for ambiguity resolution.

9. Phonological Loop • Non-word span, digit span • What does this measure? • acquisition of new words, and does not reflect the knowledge base. • Gathercole, Baddeley, & Papagno (1998, p. 159, Table 1) in partial correlations for 3 year-olds, non-word repetition is more strongly correlated with vocabulary measures than digit span (0.31 vs. 0.16 (ns), • whereas for 8 year-olds neither span is correlates (0.22 (ns) vs. 0.23 (ns)). • The data they report for 13 year olds, simple digit span is related to vocabulary measures (r= .46, p = .05).

10. Phonological loop in adults • May be important in ability to learn new words in adults, but it has not been implicated in studies of on-line ambiguity resolution. • These ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ effects of PSTM in L1 learning are not reflected in L2 reviews of the literature.

11. Issue and controversies • Does the reading span tap general or specifically linguistic capacity? • Does WM reflect experience? • Which test is a better test of WM? • What is the role of the phonological loop? • The role of memory as a key component of aptitude

12. Recent L2 WM research

13. Recent L2 research

14. The grammar and the parser • Crain and Fodor (1985, p. 126) suggested: • a theory of grammar that will be useful to a theory of parsing is one that is compatible with the on-line application of constraints. • Frazier & Clifton (1996, 24-25): • Licensing grammars, based on current versions of GB theory, may be developed so that they provide attractive alternatives [to head projection models] • Chomsky (2000, p. 91) • ‘ the major problem is to discover the principles and parameters … and to proceed beyond, to the study of use, acquisition, pathology, cellular mechanisms, …’ • Hence Chomsky includes ‘use’ in the MP?

15. Second Language Acquisition • Development of the L2 lexicon: ‘what’: • Projectionist accounts (Principles and Parameters) • constructionist accounts (Goldberg, 1995) • Process of acquisition: ‘how’ • Processing break down • Accumulation of chunks/structures

16. L2 vocabulary: Nation 1990 • 1. The spoken form of a word • 2. The written form of a word • 3. The grammatical behaviour of a word • 4. The collocational behaviour of a word • 5. How frequent the word is • 6. The stylistic register constraints on a word • 7. The conceptual meaning of a word • 8. The associations a word has with other related words

17. Experiment - Questions • Do measures of working memory correlate in the L1 and L2? • Can individual differences in working memory account for individual differences in sentence processing based on verb meaning? • What is the effect of the L1 on L2 processing?

18. Method -1 • Proficiency measure • Measure of Reading Span in L1 and L2 • Measure of Word Span in L1 and L2

19. Method 2 • Data from on-line reading: record word by word reading times

20. MethodThe ‘moving window’ paradigm • Without • her • contributions • would • be • Impossible • Possible or not possible?

21. Participants30 Chinese 28 Japanese 46 Spanish 21 English speakers

22. Results • Working memory • Sentence processing

23. Chinese-speaking learners

24. Japanese-speaking learners

25. Spanish-speaking Learners

26. Chinese WM & Proficiency

27. Japanese WM & Proficiency

28. Spanish WM & Proficiency

29. Sentences that impose processing load • Garden Path sentences • After the children cleaned the house looked neat and tidy • The doctor knew the nurses liked the man from England

30. Unconscious GP Processing

31. Garden Path Processing- L1

32. Garden Path Processing - WM

33. Transitivity and cue type • (1) • a. The experienced soldiers warned about the dangers conducted the midnight raid. • b. The experienced soldiers chosen for their skills conducted the midnight raid. • 2. • a. The bad boys criticized during the morning were playing in the park. • b. The bad boys criticized almost every day were playing in the park.

34. 6 Sentence types • Unambiguous good and bad cues • Two way ambiguous, good and bad cues • Three way ambiguous, good and bad cues Easiest: unambiguous, good cue • The bad boys chosenduring the gamewere playing in the park. • Most difficult: three way ambiguous, bad cue • The bad boys watched almost every daywere playing in the park.

35. Processing reduced relativesThe bad boys XXX were playing

36. Working memory and reduced relatives • No correlations with WM and processing at key point for any of the groups at any point in parsing except early on • All weak correlations, suggesting much of the variance can be explained by other factors • Main effects for language robust

37. Points to remember • L1 a better predictor of performance than WM • WM does not correlate with individual differences in processing • L2 speakers show reading profiles analagous to natives in many cases • Use of WM tests need to be fully justified in L2 research • Overemphasis of WM when results don’t support it

38. More points to remember • More careful regression analyses • Clearer acknowledgement of the role of prior linguistic knowledge is necessary. • Role of the ‘new’ link proposed by Baddeley between visual spatial ability and the PL and language needs to be looked at

39. Aptitude and ultimate attainment • DeKeyser 2000 • Replication of Johnson and Newport 1989 • Added MLAT measure • 58 Hungarian-speaking learners of ESL • Findings: replicated Johnson and Newport • The only adults who succeed are those who score high on the aptitude battery • Cf. Bialystok’s commentary and reply • http://www.pitt.edu/~rdk1/

40. Skehan 2001 • Aptitude: speed or ultimate attainment? • DeKeyser (2000, p. 518) aptitude has a role in ultimate attainment • Skehan (2001, p. 93) points out that the MLAT was designed to predict RATE and not ultimate attainment, contra (?) DeKeyser 2000) • Does the MLAT measure communicative competence? Or an ability on discrete point items?

41. Mackey et al. 2001 • RST and WM test • Combined measure: • Low WM tended to notice less at lower developmental stages than High WM • High WM - more development in delayed post-test • High WM tended to notice more

42. Robinson 2001 • Implicit learning: not related to higher IQ or aptitude measures? • Incidental learning: unintentional and uncontrolled? • Explicit learning: does relate to higher IQ measures? • Dual system for implicit/explicit knowledge?

43. Robinson 2001 • Japanese learners of Samoan • Relationship between IQ and explicit learning confirmed • Surprising: low IQ scores outperform high IQ scores on implicit learning • GJ judgements and production are also unrelated to individual differences • learning of locatives, and may be incorporation, but not ergatives. Learning clearer in production tasks compared to GJ tasks

44. Concluding remarks • Research on cognitive abilities is deeply divided between those who maintain access to UG in some form (dual system, encapsulated) and those who believe in critical period/general learning. • Aptitude measures do seem to predict performance on SOME discrete point item tests of the Johnson and Newport type

45. Conclusions • Evidence suggests that the L1 exerts the greatest influence on L2 processing • Lexical learning and processing shows that verb transitivity (a highly complex system) is acquired and affects L2 reading and processing and is NOT predicted by IDs in working memory • Unlikely that this is ‘generalized’ knowledge

46. Conclusions • Therefore it is PREMATURE to conclude that adults are unable to master details of a linguistic system unless they have some higher aptitude: this is because the learners in these studies showed that they can use complex information in millisecond by millisecond parsing decisions.

47. Finally • For ‘low-educated’ learners, this is an important issue because it means that low aptitude/IQ/education does not preclude successful language learning (= achievement of communicative competence) given exposure and motivation and cultural conditions

48. Selected References • BADDELEY, ALAN, 2000. ‘Short-term and working memory,’ in Endel Tulving & Fergus Craik (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Memory, New York: Oxford University Press, 77-92. • BADDELEY, ALAN, GATHERCOLE, SUSAN & PAPAGNO, COSTANZA, 1998. ‘The phonological loop as a language learning device,’ The Psychological Review 105, 158-73. • BERQUIST, BRETT, 1997. ‘Individual differences in working memory span and L2 proficiency: capacity or processing capacity?,’ Paper presented at Proceedings of the GALA ‘97 Conference on Language Acquisition, Edinburgh, UK. • CARPENTER, PATRICIA, JUST, MARCEL Adam & REICHLE, ERIC D., 2000. ‘Working memory and executive function,’ Current Opinion in Neurobiology 10, 195-99. • DANEMAN, Meredith & CARPENTER, PATRICIA, 1980. ‘Individual differences in working memory and reading,’ Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 19, 450-66. • ELLIS, NICK C., 1996. ‘Sequencing in SLA: phonological memory, chunking and points of order,’ Studies in Second Language Acquisition 18, 91-126. • ELLIS, NICK C., 2002. ‘Frequency effects and language processing: investigating formulaic use and input in future expression,’ Studies in Second Language Acquisition 24, 143-88. • GIBSON, EDWARD & SCHÜTZE, CARSON T, 1999. ‘Disambiguation preferences in noun phrase conjunction do not mirror corpus frequency,’ Journal of Memory and Language 40, 263-79. • HARRINGTON, MICHAEL W, & SAWYER, MARK, 1992. ‘L2 working memory capacity and L2 reading skills,’ Studies in Second Language Acquisition 14, 25-38. • JUFFS, ALAN, 1998. ‘Main verb vs. reduced relative clause ambiguity resolution in second language sentence processing,’ Language Learning 48, 107-47. • JUST, MARCEL Adam, CARPENTER, PATRICIA A & WOOLLEY, JACQUELINE D., 1982. ‘Paradigms and processes and in reading comprehension,’ Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 3, 228-38. • JUST, MARCEL Adam, CARPENTER, PATRICIA & KELLER, Timothy, 1996. ‘The capacity theory of comprehension: new frontiers of evidence and arguments,’ The Psychological Review 103, 773-80. • JUST, MARCEL ADAM & VARMA, SHASHANK, 2002. ‘A hybrid architecture for working memory: Reply to MacDonald and Christianson 2002,’ Psychological Review 109, 55-65.

49. Selected References • MACDONALD, MARYELLEN C & CHRISTIANSEN, MORTEN H, 2002. ‘Reassessing working memory: comment on Just and Carpenter 1992 and Waters and Caplan 1996,’ Psychological Review 109, 35-54. • MACDONALD, MARYELLEN C, 1994. ‘Probablistic constraints and syntactic ambiguity resolution,’ Language and Cognitive Processes 9, 157-201. • MACDONALD, MARYELLEN, JUST, MARCEL & CARPENTER, PATRICIA, 1992. ‘Working memory constraints on the processing of syntactic ambiguity,’ Cognitive Psychology 24, 56-98. • MACKEY, ALISON, PHILP, JENEFER, EGI, TAKAKO, FUJII, AKIKO & TATSUMI, TOMOAKI, 2002. ‘Individual differences in working memory, noticing of interactional feedback and L2 development,’ in Peter Robinson (eds.) Individual Differences And Instructed Language Learning, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 181-209. • MYLES, FLORENCE, HOOPER, JANET & MITCHELL, ROSAMOND, 1998. ‘Rote or rule? Exploring the role of formulaic language in the foreign language classroom,’ Language Learning 48, 323-64. • MYLES, FLORENCE, MITCHELL, ROSAMOND & HOOPER, JANET, 1999. ‘Interrogative chunks in French L2: A basis for creative construction?’ Studies in Second Language Acquisition 21, 49-80. • OSAKA, MARIKO & OSAKA, NAOYUKI, 1992. ‘Language independent working memory as measured by Japanese and English reading span tests,’ Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 30, 287-89. • PRITCHETT, BRADLEY LOUIS, 1988. ‘Garden path phenomena and the grammatical basis of language processing,’ Language 64, 539-76. • PRITCHETT, BRADLEY LOUIS,1992. Grammatical Competence And Parsing Performance. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

50. Selected References • ROBERTS, ROSE & GIBSON, EDWARD, 2003. ‘Individual differences in sentence memory,’ Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 31, 573-98. • ROBINSON, PETER, 2002a. ‘Effects of individual differences in intelligence, aptitude and working memory on incidental SLA,’ in Peter Robinson (ed.), Individual Differences And Instructed Language Learning, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 211-51. • WATERS, GLORIA S. & CAPLAN, DAVID, 1996a. ‘Processing resource capacity and the comprehension of garden path sentences,’ Memory and Cognition 24, 342-55. • WATERS, GLORIA S. & CAPLAN, DAVID, 1996b. ‘The measurement of verbal working memory capacity and its relation to reading comprehension,’ Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology- Human Experimental Psychology, 49A, 51-79. • WEINBERG, AMY, 1999. ‘A minimalist theory of human sentence processing,’ in Sam Epstein &Norbert Hornstein (eds.) Working Minimalism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 287-315. • WHITE, LYDIA, 2003. Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar. New York: Cambridge University Press. • WILLIAMS, JOHN N, MÖBIUS, PETER & KIM, CHOONKYONG, 2001. ‘Native and non-native processing of English wh- questions: parsing strategies and plausibility constraints,’ Applied Psycholinguistics, 22, 509-40.