Second Language Processing Shows Increased Native-Like Neural Responses after Months of No Exposure
Kara Morgan-Short, Ingrid Finger, Sarah Grey, Michael T. Ullman
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
I would love to see replications of this and many other studies you’ve reviewed on this blog. The odds of non-replication in psychilogic and social science are too high to rely on a single experiment when it comes to such an important finding.
Humorous true story: ‘Two recent papers highlighted the possibility that research practices spuriously inflate the presence of positive results in the published literature (John, Loewenstein, & Prelec, 2012; Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn, 2011). Surely ours was not a case to worry about. We had hypothesized it, the effect was reliable. But, we had been discussing reproducibility, and we had declared to our lab mates the importance of replication for increasing certainty of research results … We conducted a direct replication while we prepared the manuscript … The effect vanished (p = .59). Our immediate reaction was “why the #&@! did we do a direct replication?”’ http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1205/1205.4251.pdf
Hey Ahmed, Thanks for visiting! Your suspicions of the experimental results are well founded – specially for such small testing groups in most cases. Of course most psychological experiments suffer from the same shortcomings, and biases so it’s the best we have. They are at least as valuable as opinions offered by various prognosticators with no experimental evidence. I’m posting them here more as bookmarks for myself so that I can refer to them and if language learners cares to browse them and draw their own conclusions. I should post a disclaimer that I don’t necessarily endorse particular papers, and in some cases have not even read them. Cheers!