Catherine Caldwell-Harris (Boston University) and Brian MacWhinney

1. Emergent constraints on second language learning: Incorporating social and motivational factors into emergentist accounts Catherine Caldwell-Harris (Boston University) and Brian MacWhinney

5. Why is age-of-arrival a strong predictor of L2 attainment for immigrants? The social agency of older children and adults allow them to seek out L1-rich activities This protects their L1 from attrition But: reduces the benefit to L2 learning of immersion (See Marinova-Todd, Marshall & Snow, 2000; Jia & Aaronson, 2003)

6. Age of arrival organizes immigrants' language learning environment…. Caldwell-Harris, C.L., Staroselsky, M., Smashnaya, S., Vasilyeva, N. (2012).  Emotional resonances of bilinguals’ two languages vary with age of arrival: The Russian-English bilingual experience in the U.S. In P. Wilson (Ed.), Dynamicity in emotion concepts (pp. 373-395). Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang.

7. Method • Interviews with 44 Russian immigrants, • Age of arrival 0-30 years old • Frequency of use and proficiency of respondents' two languages • Use of their two languages with family and friends • Emotional resonances of their two languages • Cultural identity • Role of culture in their daily life • Measured skin conductance while listening to emotional phrases

8. Immigrating before age 6: Bringing L2-English into the Home Age of arrival 0-5 years: • Lack of an entrenched L1 • Peer use of English on the playground • Respond to parental L1 use by answering in L2-English • Because of children's cognitive immaturity, parents were not able to insist on home L1 use Result: L1 attrition and L2 dominance.

9. Parents succeed at enforcing L1 at home AoAr 6-9 years: • L2-English became dominant because of peer socialization and school performance pressures • L1 restricted to home • L1 was cognitively entrenched before English immersion and thus parents could enforce it as the language of home Result: L1 not attained to native-speaker levels.

10. Immigrating in middle childhood: Two arenas for expertise and competence: home and friends/school AoAr 10-15 years old • L1 very entrenched • Because of L2 immersion with L2 peer socialization, L2 also mastered • Retained nostalgia, pride in L1 culture • Result: balanced bilinguals; identify as native speakers of both of their languages

11. When older teens or young adults immigrate, they find (create) an environment rich in L2 AoAr 16-30 years old • L1 preferred for home and friends • Retained L1 as their dominant language for at least a decade post-immigration Individual differences: • The more that L2 was perceived to be emotional, the more it was used for peer socialization, and the higher was L2 self-rated proficiency.

14. Infer: Age effects in dominance and L2 maintenance reflect differences in the situation of learning rather than incapacity to learn(Marinova-Todd et al. 2000) But these are correlational patterns. Nativists can claim: Young immigrants English-ify their household because they learn L2 so easily; older immigrants retain L1 because they have low capacity to learn Response: young learners only learn well in immersion situations; older immigrants can learn if motivated

15. Effortful and unsuccessful language learning in childhood Classroom foreign language learning – abysmal failure First language attrition Ignoring a second language

16. Needed:A multi-causal theory and empirical tests of the contribution of proposed components No innate ‘knowledge’ In But maybe an ‘interactional instinct’ General decline in brain plasticty Prior commitment to first-language structures Social, motivational forces decline with age Automatic, internal emotional rewards from learning L2 decline with age

17. Incorporating broader ideas about motivation into emergentist theory Haven’t L2 researchers already discussed motivation? • Gardner, integrative motivation …? • Dornyei ‘ideal future self’ …?

18. Motivation for investing in a new language varies over the lifespan On this account: • Opportunity costs: Time spent practicing a foreign language must compete with time spent pursuing other goals; opportunity costs are less for children • Low immediate rewards. L2 practice usually doesn’t afford the same emotional intimacy that adults can obtain in their native language

19. Why not just let the explanation be ‘decline in brain plasticity?’ • Me: The teenage brain is highly plastic and approaching its cognitive peak • Critics: but not for learning a gigantic new system, whose full mastery will take years • Me: Exactly!

20. Explore-Exploit dilemma Organisms at different ages have different goals • Age 7: learn the dominant language • Age 15: acquire status using new and prior training • Age 25: consolidate and build on knowledge base

21. Infants are captive learners; they can't decide to disengage from a speech stream • Is learning this language relevant for my goals?

22. Social / motivational • The opportunity and motivation to acquire languages declines dramatically across the lifespan.

23. But some adults intensely desire the end-state of foreign language fluency! • Organisms prefer mental activities that elicit a quirt of dopamine into the brain’s reward system NOW. • Hard to set aside high-quality rewards (e.g., joking, story-telling) of using your first language. • Comparison to other short-term / long-term reward trade-off (e.g., losing weight)

24. Incorporating broader ideas about motivation When it is hard to learn anything (or make ourselves do difficult intellectual tasks) • No immediate rewards • Opportunity costs Both are crushing for foreign language learning • Should I eat that donut? • Compare writing academic paper

25. Unified Competition Model strength validity rote combination cues processes competition costs support func. circuits local circuits grounding social

35. We don’t need to posit a period of special sensitivity to language But if there is one – it is age 10-15

36. Factors operate at all ages,Apply to both L1 and L2 learning • Both children and adults are strategic learners (except possibly infancy) • Denies automatic, effortlessly language learning in childhood • Foreign/second language learning is effortful for children and they will avoid doing it if possible

37. Children are strategic learners, like adults • "Younger the better" -> No. Only true for immigration and only applies to the new language of the host country • "Older the better" for foreign language classroom situation

38. Adult foreign language learning has wide variability in outcome…

39. Heuristic value • Age effects are omnipresent, from golf to ballet. • The strongest age effects occur when the new activity has to be learned as a separate system, not building on prior knowledge. • Sensori-motor learning is the learning that works best when started young (Li and Hernandez noted this -- but they didn't say why)

40. Thought experiment • What if we removed or minimized language learners’ intense need to connect to social others?

41. What if we minimized language learners’ intense need to connect to social others? • This occurs all the time: • Classroom foreign language learning • Older children’s second language acquisition • Experiment of nature: autism

42. Heuristic value / Research to do • Establish that successfully comprehending a sentence is rewarding.

43. Heuristic value / Research to do • Establish that repeated failure to communicate (or gain any rewards from successful communication) is aversive. • Establish that attempts to communicate in a nonproficient language causes fatigue and/or depletes executive function

44. Heuristic value / Research to do Children are captive audiences The Saffron task • Infants need 3 minutes of listening to a speech stream • Adults need 20 minutes to be above chance Show the growing role of being strategic: Use of appraisal of task relevance during learning. (last slide)