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Brain-based individual differences in online L2 grammatical comprehension*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2013

DARREN TANNER ,
KAYO INOUE  and
LEE OSTERHOUT
DARREN TANNER*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
KAYO INOUE
Affiliation:
Integrated Brain Imaging Center, Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, University of Washington
LEE OSTERHOUT
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Washington
*
Address for correspondence: Darren Tanner, 707 S Matthews Ave., 4080 Foreign Languages Building, MC 168, Urbana, IL 61801, USAdstanner@gmail.com
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Abstract

Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we investigated the impact of a range of individual difference measures related to L2 learning on proficient L1 Spanish – L2 English bilinguals’ brain responses during L2 morphosyntactic processing. Although grand mean ERP analyses revealed a biphasic N400–P600 response to English subject–verb agreement violations, subsequent analyses showed that participants’ brain responses varied along a continuum between N400- and P600-dominance. To investigate this pattern, we introduce two novel ERP measures that independently quantify relative brain response type and overall magnitude. Multivariate analyses revealed that larger overall brain responses were associated with higher L2 proficiency, while relative brain response type (N400 or P600) was predicted by a coalition of variables, most notably learners’ motivation and age of arrival in an L2 environment. Our findings show that aspects of a learner's background can differentially impact a learner's overall sensitivity to L2 morphosyntax and qualitative use of linguistic cues during processing.

Keywords

ERPN400P600individual differencesmorphosyntaxsecond language acquisition
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , April 2014 , pp. 277 - 293
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by NIDCD grant R01DC01947 to Lee Osterhout and NSF BCS-0951595 to Lee Osterhout and Darren Tanner. Darren Tanner also received support from the William Orr Dingwall Neurolinguistics Dissertation Fellowship and NSF OISE-0968369. We would like to thank Julia Herschensohn, Judith McLaughlin, Janet Nicol, Janet Van Hell and Eleonora Rossi for thoughtful comments and discussion. Our thanks also go to the participants, as well as Geoff Valentine, Kristie Fisher, Shota Moma, and Elliot Collins for their help in acquiring the data. We would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on a previous version of this manuscript. Any remaining errors are our own.

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