We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the
contributions of explicit and implicit processes during second language
(L2) sentence comprehension. We used a L2 grammaticality judgment task
(GJT) to test 20 native English speakers enrolled in the first four
semesters of Spanish while recording both accuracy and ERP data. Because
end-of-sentence grammaticality judgments are open to conscious inspection,
we reasoned that they can be influenced by strategic processes that
reflect on formal rules and therefore reflect primarily offline explicit
processing. On the other hand, because ERPs are a direct reflection of
online processing, they reflect automatic, nonreflective, implicit
responses to stimuli (Osterhout, Bersick, &
McLaughlin, 1997; Rugg et al., 1998;
Tachibana et al., 1999).
We used a version of the GJT adapted for the ERP environment. The
experimental sentences varied the form of three different syntactic
constructions: (a) tense-marking, which is formed similarly in the first
language (L1) and the L2; (b) determiner number agreement, which is formed
differently in the L1 and the L2; and (c) determiner gender agreement,
which is unique to the L2. We examined ERP responses during a time period
between 500 and 900 ms following the onset of the critical (violation or
matched control) word in the sentence because extensive past research has
shown that grammatical violations elicit a positive-going deflection in
the ERP waveform during this period (e.g., the “P600”; Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992).
We found that learners were sensitive (i.e., showed different brain
responses to grammatical and ungrammatical sentences) to violations in L2
for constructions that are formed similarly in the L1 and the L2, but were
not sensitive to violations for constructions that differ in the L1 and
the L2. Critically, a robust grammaticality effect was found in the ERP
data for the construction that was unique to the L2, suggesting that the
learners were implicitly sensitive to these violations. Judgment accuracy
was near chance for all constructions. These findings suggest that
learners are able to implicitly process some aspects of L2 syntax even in
early stages of learning but that this knowledge depends on the similarity
between the L1 and the L2. Furthermore, there is a divergence between
explicit and implicit measures of L2 learning, which might be due to the
behavioral task demands (e.g., McLaughlin, Osterhout,
& Kim, 2004). We conclude that comparing ERP and behavioral
data could provide a sensitive method for measuring implicit
processing.This research was supported by a
National Institutes of Health Individual National Research Service Award
(NIH HD42948-01) awarded to Natasha Tokowicz and a National Institutes of
Health Institutional National Research Service Award (T32 MH19102) awarded
to Brian MacWhinney. We thank Beatrice DeAngelis, Dayne Grove, Kwan
Hansongkitpong, Katie Keil, Lee Osterhout, Chuck Perfetti, Kelley Sacco,
Alex Waid, and Eddie Wlotko for their assistance with this project. We
gratefully acknowledge the comments of Rod Ellis, Jan Hulstijn, Albert
Valdman, and the two anonymous SSLA reviewers on earlier versions
of this manuscript. A portion of these results was presented at the 43rd
Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society (2002, November).