Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T15:33:38.372Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Individual differences predict ERP signatures of second language learning of novel grammatical rules

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2017

EMILY S. NICHOLS  and
MARC F. JOANISSE
EMILY S. NICHOLS*
Affiliation:
The University of Western Ontario
MARC F. JOANISSE
Affiliation:
The University of Western Ontario
*
Address for correspondence: Emily S. Nichols, The Brain and Mind Institute, Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, N6A 5B7, Canada[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We investigated the extent to which second-language (L2) learning is influenced by the similarity of grammatical features in one's first language (L1). We used event-related potentials to identify neural signatures of a novel grammatical rule – grammatical gender – in L1 English speakers. Of interest was whether individual differences in L2 proficiency and age of acquisition (AoA) influenced these effects. L2 and native speakers of French read French sentences that were grammatically correct, or contained either a grammatical gender or word order violation. Proficiency and AoA predicted Left Anterior Negativity amplitude, with structure violations driving the proficiency effect and gender violations driving the AoA effect. Proficiency, group, and AoA predicted P600 amplitude for gender violations but not structure violations. Different effects of grammatical gender and structure violations indicate that L2 speakers engage novel grammatical processes differently from L1 speakers and that this varies appreciably based on both AoA and proficiency.

Keywords

bilingualismproficiencyage of acquisitionevent-related potentialssyntaxsecond languageERPgrammatical genderleft anterior negativityP600
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , pp. 78 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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.)

Footnotes

We are grateful to Melanie L. Russell, Scotia McKinlay, and Mikayla Keller for help with data collection. A Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Discovery Grant and Accelerator Award to M.F.J. and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship to E.S.N. supported this study.

Supplementary material can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728917000566

References

Abutalebi, J. (2008). Neural aspects of second language representation and language control. Acta Psychologica, 128 (3), 466–478.Google Scholar
Alarcón, I. V. (2011). Spanish gender agreement under complete and incomplete acquisition: Early and late bilinguals’ linguistic behavior within the noun phrase. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14 (3), 332–350.Google Scholar
Arnon, I., & Ramscar, M. (2012). Granularity and the acquisition of grammatical gender: how order-of-acquisition affects what gets learned. Cognition, 122 (3), 292–305.Google Scholar
Aronoff, M. (1994). Morphology by Itself: Stems and Inflectional Classes. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J., & Bates, D. M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 59 (4), 390–412.Google Scholar
Bagiella, E., Sloan, R. P., & Heitjan, D. F. (2000). Mixed-effects models in psychophysiology. Psychophysiology, 37 (1), 13–20.Google Scholar
Barber, H. A., & Carreiras, M. (2005). Grammatical gender and number agreement in Spanish: an ERP comparison. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17 (1), 137–53.Google Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67 (1), 1–48.Google Scholar
Baudiffier, V., Caplan, D., Gaonac'h, D., & Chesnet, D. (2011). The effect of noun animacy on the processing of unambiguous sentences: Evidence from French relative clauses. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64 (10), 1896–1905.Google Scholar
Bornkessel, I., & Schlesewsky, M. (2006). The extended argument dependency model: a neurocognitive approach to sentence comprehension across languages. Psychological Review, 113 (4), 787–821.Google Scholar
Caffarra, S., & Barber, H. A. (2015). Does the ending matter? The role of gender-to-ending consistency in sentence reading. Brain Research, 1605 (1), 83–92.Google Scholar
Caffarra, S., Molinaro, N., Davidson, D., & Carreiras, M. (2015). Second language syntactic processing revealed through event-related potentials: An empirical review. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 51, 31–47.Google Scholar
Chen, L., Shu, H., Liu, Y., Zhao, J., & Li, P. (2007). ERP signatures of subject–verb agreement in L2 learning. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10 (2), 161–174.Google Scholar
Costa, A., Kovacic, D., Franck, J., & Caramazza, A. (2003). On the autonomy of the grammatical gender systems of the two languages of a bilingual. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6 (3), 181–200.Google Scholar
Delorme, A., & Makeig, S. (2004). EEGLAB: An open source toolbox for analysis of single-trial EEG dynamics including independent component analysis. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 134 (1), 9–21.Google Scholar
Foucart, A., & Frenck-Mestre, C. (2011). Grammatical gender processing in L2: Electrophysiological evidence of the effect of L1–L2 syntactic similarity. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14 (3), 379–399.Google Scholar
Foucart, A., & Frenck-Mestre, C. (2012). Can late L2 learners acquire new grammatical features? Evidence from ERPs and eye-tracking. Journal of Memory and Language, 66 (1), 226–248.Google Scholar
Friederici, A. D. (2002). Towards a neural basis of auditory sentence processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6 (2), 78–84.Google Scholar
Friederici, A. D., Pfeifer, E., & Hahne, A. (1993). Event-related brain potentials during natural speech processing: effects of semantic, morphological and syntactic violations. Cognitive Brain Research, 1, 183–192.Google Scholar
Gillon Dowens, M., Guo, T., Guo, J., Barber, H. a., & Carreiras, M. (2011). Gender and number processing in Chinese learners of Spanish - evidence from Event Related Potentials. Neuropsychologia, 49 (7), 1651–9.Google Scholar
Gunter, T. C., Friederici, A. D., & Schriefers, H. (1996). Syntactic Gender and Semantic Expectancy: ERPs Reveal Early Autonomy and Late Interaction. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12 (4), 556–568.Google Scholar
Hahne, A. (2001). What's Different in Second-Language Processing? Evidence from Event-Related Brain Potentials. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 30 (3), 251–266.Google Scholar
Hahne, A., & Friederici, A. D. (1999). Electrophysiological evidence for two steps in syntactic analysis. Early automatic and late controlled processes. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 11 (2), 194–205.Google Scholar
Hahne, A., & Friederici, A. D. (2001). Processing a second language: Late learners’ comprehension mechanisms as revealed by event-related brain potentials. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4 (2), 123–141.Google Scholar
Hartsuiker, R. J., Beerts, S., Loncke, M., Desmet, T., & Bernolet, S. (2016). Cross-linguistic structural priming in multilinguals: Further evidence for shared syntax. Journal of Memory and Language, 90, 14–30.Google Scholar
Hernandez, A. E., & Li, P. (2007). Age of acquisition: Its neural and computational mechanisms. Psychological Bulletin, 133 (4), 638–650.Google Scholar
Indefrey, P. (2006). A Meta-analysis of Hemodynamic Studies on First and Second Language Processing: Which Suggested Differences Can We Trust and What Do They Mean? Language Learning, 56, 279–304.Google Scholar
Jeong, H., Sugiura, M., Sassa, Y., Haji, T., Usui, N., Taira, M, Horie, K., Sato, S., & Kawashima, R. (2007). Effect of syntactic similarity on cortical activation during second language processing: A comparison of English and Japanese among native Korean trilinguals. Human Brain Mapping, 28 (3), 194–204.Google Scholar
Johnson, J. S., & Newport, E. L. (1991). Critical period effects on universal properties of language: The status of subjacency in the acquisition of a second language. Cognition, 39 (3), 215–258.Google Scholar
Kaan, E., Harris, A., Gibson, E., & Holcomb, P. J. (2000). The P600 as an index of syntactic integration difficulty. Language and Cognitive Processes, 15 (2), 159–201.Google Scholar
Keating, G. (2009). Sensitivity to Violation of Gender Agreement in Native and Nonnative Spanish. Language Learning, 59 (September), 503–535.Google Scholar
Kim, A., & Sikos, L. (2011). Conflict and surrender during sentence processing: An ERP study of syntax-semantics interaction. Brain and Language, 118 (1–2), 15–22.Google Scholar
Kotz, S. A. (2009). A critical review of ERP and fMRI evidence on L2 syntactic processing. Brain and Language, 109 (2–3), 68–74.Google Scholar
Kotz, S. A., & Friederici, A. D. (2003). Electrophysiology of normal and pathological language processing. Journal of Neurolinguistics.Google Scholar
Lemhöfer, K., Spalek, K., & Schriefers, H. (2008). Cross-language effects of grammatical gender in bilingual word recognition and production. Journal of Memory and Language, 59 (3), 312–330.Google Scholar
Lopez-Calderon, J., & Luck, S. J. (2014). ERPLAB: an open-source toolbox for the analysis of event-related potentials. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8 (April), 1–14.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (1987). Applying the Competition Model to bilingualism. Applied Psycholinguistics, 8 (4), 315–327.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2005). Extending the Competition Model. International Journal of Bilingualism, 9 (1), 69–84.Google Scholar
Mayberry, R. I., & Lock, E. (2003). Age constraints on first versus second language acquisition: Evidence for linguistic plasticity and epigenesis. Brain and Language, 87 (3), 369–384.Google Scholar
Meulman, N., Wieling, M., Sprenger, S. A., Stowe, L. A., & Schmid, M. S. (2015). Age effects in L2 grammar processing as revealed by ERPs and how (not) to study them. PLoS One, 1–31.Google Scholar
Molinaro, N., Barber, H. a., Caffarra, S., & Carreiras, M. (2014). On the left anterior negativity (LAN): The case of morphosyntactic agreement. Cortex, 4–7.Google Scholar
Molinaro, N., Vespignani, F., & Job, R. (2008). A deeper reanalysis of a superficial feature: an ERP study on agreement violations. Brain Research, 1228, 161–76.Google Scholar
Montrul, S., Foote, R., & Perpiñán, S. (2008). Gender agreement in adult second language learners and Spanish heritage speakers: The effects of age and context of acquisition. Language Learning, 58 (3), 503–553.Google Scholar
Morgan-Short, K., Sanz, C., & Ullman, M. T. (2010). Second Language Acquisition of Gender Agreement in Explicit and Implicit Training Conditions: An Event-Related Potential Study. Language Learning, 60 (1), 154–193.Google Scholar
Neary-Sundquist, C. a. (2013). The development of cohesion in a learner corpus. Studies in Second Language Learning & Teaching, 3 (1), 109–130.Google Scholar
Neville, H., Nicol, J. L., Barss, A., Forster, K. I., & Garrett, M. F. (1991). Syntactically Based Sentence Processing Classes: Evidence fiom Event-Related Brain Potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 3 (2), 151–165.Google Scholar
Newman, A. J., Tremblay, A., Nichols, E. S., Neville, H. J., & Ullman, M. T. (2012). The Influence of Language Proficiency on Lexical Semantic Processing in Native and Late Learners of English. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 24 (5), 1205–1223.Google Scholar
Newman, A. J., Ullman, M. T., Pancheva, R., Waligura, D. L., & Neville, H. J. (2007). An ERP study of regular and irregular English past tense inflection. NeuroImage, 34 (1), 435–45.Google Scholar
Nichols, E. S., & Joanisse, M. F. (2016). Functional activity and white matter microstructure reveal the independent effects of age of acquisition and proficiency on second-language learning. NeuroImage, 143, 15–25.Google Scholar
Ojima, S., Nakata, H., & Kakigi, R. (2005). An ERP study on second language learning after childhood: Effects of proficiency. J Cogn Neurosci, 17 (8), 1212–1228.Google Scholar
Oldfield, R. C. (1971). The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Edinburgh inventory. Neuropsychologia, 9 (1), 97–113.Google Scholar
Osterhout, L., & Holcomb, P. J. (1992). Event-related brain potentials elicited by syntactic anomaly. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 785–806.Google Scholar
Osterhout, L., & Mobley, L. a. (1995). Event-Related Brain Potentials Elicited by Failure to Agree. Journal of Memory and Language.Google Scholar
Pakulak, E., & Neville, H. J. (2011). Maturational constraints on the recruitment of early processes for syntactic processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23 (10), 2752–65.Google Scholar
Pakulak, E., & Neville, H. J. (2010). Proficiency differences in syntactic processing of monolingual native speakers indexed by event-related potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22 (12), 2728–44.Google Scholar
Paolieri, D., Cubelli, R., Macizo, P., Bajo, T., Lotto, L., & Job, R. (2010). Grammatical gender processing in Italian and Spanish bilinguals. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006), 63 (8), 1631–45.Google Scholar
Perani, D., Paulesu, E., Galles, N. S., Dupoux, E., Dehaene, S., Bettinardi, V., Cappa, S. F., Fazio, F., & Mehler, J. (1998). The bilingual brain proficiency and age of acquisition of the second language. Brain, 121 (10), 1841–1852.Google Scholar
R Core Team (2013). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.Google Scholar
Rösler, F., Pütz, P., Friederici, A., & Hahne, A. (1993). Event-Related Brain Potentials while encountering semantic and syntactic contraint violations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 5 (3), 345–362.Google Scholar
Rossi, E., Kroll, J. F., & Dussias, P. E. (2014). Clitic pronouns reveal the time course of processing gender and number in a second language. Neuropsychologia, 62 (1), 11–25.Google Scholar
Rossi, S., Gugler, M. F., Friederici, A. D., & Hahne, A. (2006). The Impact of Proficiency on Syntactic Second-language Processing of German and Italian: Evidence from Event-related Potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 2030–2048.Google Scholar
Sabourin, L., & Stowe, L. A. (2008). Second language processing: when are first and second languages processed similarly? Second Language Research, 24 (3), 397–430.Google Scholar
Sabourin, L., Stowe, L. A., & de Haan, G. J. (2006). Transfer effects in learning a second language grammatical gender system. Second Language Research, 22 (1), 1–29.Google Scholar
Salamoura, A., & Williams, J. N. (2007). The representation of grammatical gender in the bilingual lexicon: Evidence from Greek and German. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10 (3), 257–275.Google Scholar
Schacht, A., Sommer, W., Shmuilovich, O., Martienz, P. C., & Martin-Loeches, M. (2014). Differential task effects on N400 and P600 elicited by semantic and syntactic violations. PLoS ONE, 9 (3), 1–8.Google Scholar
Schneider, W., Eschman, A., & Zuccolotto, A. (2002). E-Prime reference guide. Psychology Software Tools, 3 (1), 1.Google Scholar
Silva-Pereyra, J., Gutierrez-Sigut, E., & Carreiras, M. (2012). An ERP study of coreference in Spanish: Semantic and grammatical gender cues. Psychophysiology, 49 (10), 1401–1411.Google Scholar
Stevens, G. (1999). Age at immigration and second language proficiency among foreign-born adults. Language in Society, 28 (4), 555–578.Google Scholar
Stowe, L. A., & Sabourin, L. (2005). Imaging the processing of a second language: Effects of maturation and proficiency on the neural processes involved. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 43 (4), 329–353.Google Scholar
Tanner, D. (2014). On the left anterior negativity (LAN) in electrophysiological studies of morphosyntactic agreement. Cortex, 1–7.Google Scholar
Tanner, D., McLaughlin, J., Herschensohn, J., & Osterhout, L. (2013). Individual differences reveal stages of L2 grammatical acquisition: ERP evidence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16 (2), 367–382.Google Scholar
Tanner, D., & Van Hell, J. G. (2014). ERPs reveal individual differences in morphosyntactic processing. Neuropsychologia, 56 (1), 289–301.Google Scholar
Tibon, R., & Levy, D. A. (2015). Striking a balance: analyzing unbalanced event-related potential data. Frontiers in Psychology, 6 (JAN), 1–4.Google Scholar
Ullman, M. T. (2001a). The neural basis of lexicon and grammar in first and second language: the declarative/procedural model. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4 (1), 105–122.Google Scholar
Ullman, M. T. (2001b). A neurocognitive perspective on language: the declarative/procedural model. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 2 (10), 717–26.Google Scholar
Wartenburger, I., Heekeren, H. R., Abutalebi, J., Cappa, S. F., Villringer, A., Perani, D., & Olgettina, V. (2003). Early Setting of Grammatical Processing in the Bilingual Brain. Neuron, 37 (1), 159–170.Google Scholar
Weber-Fox, C. M., Davis, L. J., & Cuadrado, E. (2003). Event-related brain potential markers of high-language proficiency in adults. Brain and Language, 85 (2), 231–244.Google Scholar
Weber-Fox, C. M., & Neville, H. J. (1996). Maturational constraints on functional specializations for language processing: ERP and behavioral evidence in bilingual speakers. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 8 (3), 231–256.Google Scholar
Yan, H., Zhang, Y. M., Xu, M., Chen, H. Y., & Wang, Y. H. (2016). What to do if we have nothing to rely on: Late bilinguals process L2 grammatical features like L1 natives. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 40, 1–14.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Nichols and Joanisse supplementary material 1

Appendices

Download Nichols and Joanisse supplementary material 1(PDF)
PDF 170.8 KB