Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-2lccl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T17:56:01.527Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Individual differences and retrieval interference in L2 Processing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2016

SILVINA MONTRUL  and
DARREN S. TANNER
SILVINA MONTRUL*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics and Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
DARREN S. TANNER
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
*
Address for correspondence: Silvina Montrul, Department of Linguistics and Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 4080 Foreign Languages Building, MC-176 707 S. Mathews Ave., Urbana, IL 61801, USAmontrul@illinois.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Cunnings’ keynote article outlines a novel approach to native/non-native differences in on-line language comprehension by proposing that L2 speakers are more susceptible to cue-based retrieval interference than natives. Cue-based, parallel access approaches to processing have been prominent in monolingual studies for around 15 years now, but have barely been applied to L2/bilingual processing. We are particularly excited about the possibilities that this approach offers for understanding L1, L2 and bilingual processing, as well as individual differences. In this commentary, we focus on two issues: 1) whether the existing evidence for cue-based retrial mechanisms in L2 processing support a deficit model, as Cunnings seems to claim, and 2) how individual differences may explain both similarities and differences in L1 and L2 processing.

Type
Peer Commentaries
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , August 2017 , pp. 704 - 705
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Conway, A. R. A., Kane, M. J., Bunting, M. F., Hembrick, D. Z., Wilhelm, O., & Engle, R. W. (2005). Working memory span tasks: A methodological review and user's guide. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 769–786.Google Scholar
Engle, R. W. (2002). Working memory capacity as executive attention. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11 (1), 19–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tanner, D., Bulkes, N., Shantz, K., Armstrong, A., & Reyes, A. (2016) Working memory, not language experience, predicts N400 effects to semantically anomalous words during reading. Poster presented at the 2016 Neurobiology of Language Conference, London, UK.Google Scholar
Tanner, D., Nicol, J., Herschensohn, J., & Osterhout, L. (2012). Electrophysiological markers of interference and structural facilitation in native and nonnative agreement processing. In Biller, A. K., Chung, E. Y., & Kimball, A. E. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 594–606). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Unsworth, N., & Spillers, G. J. (2010). Working memory capacity: Attention control, secondary memory, or both? A direct test of the dual-component model. Journal of Memory and Language, 62 (4), 392–406. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2010.02.001 Google Scholar
Westfall, J., & Yarkoni, T. (2016). Statistically controlling for confounding constructs is harder than you think. PloS ONE, 11 (3), e0152719. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004 Google Scholar