The current study investigated two heuristic processing strategies, the agent-first strategy and an animacy-based strategy, in visual world eye-tracking data as well as sentence final interpretations of wh-questions in adolescent L1 German learners of English in both their L1 and their L2. We observed differences between online and offline measures, as well as L1-L2 differences, both in the selection and the time course of application of the heuristics. In L1 German, heuristics were visible only in online data, and the dominant heuristic was animacy-based. In L2 English, the animacy-based heuristic was applied later and to a lesser degree than the agent-first heuristic. The results speak against a direct transfer of heuristic strategies from the L1 to the L2. Instead, we suggest that low-proficiency learners may not have the capacity to use several heuristics at once, and may thus prioritize the agent-first strategy due to its broad domain of application.
