Second Language Proficiency
Places Cognitive Constraints
on Sentence Processing
Noriko Hoshino
Department of Psychology
The Pennsylvania State University
I can’t answer your
question right now.
I have to
concentrate on
driving.
Why was it so hard for a beginning
driver to answer a question in her L2
while driving?



Small working memory capacity?
Low L2 proficiency??
L1 and L2 have very different syntactic
structures???
Cognitive Resources and Sentence Processing

Within-Language Research (Just & Carpenter, 1992;
Hartsuiker et al., 1999)


Individuals with limited cognitive resources are
less sensitive to semantic information during online sentence processing than those with a high
level of cognitive resources.
Bilingual Research (Hasegawa et al., 2003)

More computation and activation is required to
process the L2 than the L1.
Research Question

Does L2 proficiency place cognitive constraints
on sentence processing?

Examine the production of subject-verb agreement
in monolingual and bilingual speakers

Is the ease of access to conceptual number in the
production of subject-verb agreement modulated by L2
proficiency?
Conceptually Distributive Number

Single-Referent
The baby on the blankets

Distributive-Referent
The label on the bottles
The baby on the blankets (singe-referent mismatch)
The baby on the blanket (match control)
The label on the bottles (distributive-referent mismatch)
The label on the bottle (match control)
Single
Distributive
Sensitive to conceptual
as well as grammatical number
Single
Distributive
Sensitive to grammatical
number alone
Magnitude of Number Mismatch =
Agreement Error Rate for Mismatch - Match Control
Cognitive Resources and Subject-Verb Agreement
(Hartsuiker et al., 1999)
Single
Distributive
Controls
Single
Distributive
Broca's Aphasics
• Sensitivity to conceptual information during the process of
subject-verb agreement is constrained by the degree of available
computational resources.
Predictions

If individual differences in working memory capacity and in L2
proficiency have similar cognitive constraints on the process of
subject-verb agreement…
High span monolinguals
Highly proficient bilinguals
Single
Distributive
Sensitive to conceptual
as well as grammatical number
Low span monolinguals
Less proficient bilinguals
Single
Distributive
Sensitive to grammatical
number alone
Participants

56 English Monolinguals L1
Higher Span (n=26)
 Lower Span (n=27)
Groups based on a reading span task (adopted from Waters &

Caplan, 1996)


41 English-Spanish Bilinguals L1&L2
30 Spanish-English Bilinguals L1&L2
Materials


Design: Four 64-item lists in English and in Spanish
32 Critical Items:





The author of the novels (single-referent target)
The author of the novel (number match control)
The drawing on the posters (distributive-referent target)
The drawing on the poster (number match control)
32 Fillers: Include plural head nouns
 Examples:




The roads to the stores
The roads to the store
The rooms in the apartments
The rooms in the apartment
Sentence Completion Task
RT
+
(Beep)
1800 ms
600 ms
The author of the novels
Self-Paced
famous
+
Scoring

Correct


Agreement Error


The uniform for the soldiers is white.
The uniform for the soldiers are white.
Eight other scoring categories
English Monolinguals by Reading Span Groups
16
14
12
Single
Distributive
10
8
6
4
2
0
Higher Span (n = 26)
Magnitude of Number Mismatch (%)
Magnitude of Number Mismatch (%)
16
14
Single
Distributive
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Lower Span (n = 27)
Single Target: The author of the novels Distributive Target: The drawing on the posters
Match Control: The author of the novel Match Control: The drawing on the poster
Magnitude of Number Mismatch =
Agreement Error Rate for Mismatch - Match Control
English-Spanish Bilinguals
16
14
12
Single
Distributive
10
8
6
4
2
0
English (L1) (N = 41)
Magnitude of Number Mismatch (%)
Magnitude of Number Mismatch (%)
16
14
Single
Distributive
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Spanish (L2) (N = 41)
Single Target: The author of the novels Distributive Target: The drawing on the posters
Magnitude of Number Mismatch =
Agreement Error Rate for Mismatch - Match Control
Language History:
English-Spanish vs. Spanish-English Bilinguals
Age (years)
L1 Rating
(10-point scale)
L2 Rating
(10-point scale)
Immersion
(months)
EnglishSpanish
Bilinguals
SpanishEnglish
Bilinguals
22.2
9.4
6.5
4.3
25.5
9.5
8.3
57.4
• Spanish-English bilinguals were more proficient in L2 than
English-Spanish bilinguals.
Spanish-English Bilinguals
14
12
16
Single
Distributive
10
8
6
4
2
0
Spanish (L1) (N = 30)
Magnitude of Number Mismatch (%)
Magnitude of Number Mismatch (%)
16
14
Single
Distributive
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
English (L2) (N = 30)
Single Target: The author of the novels Distributive Target: The drawing on the posters
Magnitude of Number Mismatch =
Agreement Error Rate for Mismatch - Match Control
Summary

English monolinguals with higher reading span were
sensitive to the conceptual number of the subject
phrase during the process of subject-verb agreement,
whereas those with lower span were not.

Less proficient bilinguals showed sensitivity to
conceptual number only in their L1, whereas highly
proficient bilinguals were sensitive to conceptual
number in both languages.
Discussion

Individual differences in working memory capacity
and in L2 proficiency have similar cognitive
constraints on the process of subject-verb agreement.


Semantic information comes to play during syntactic
processing such as the process of subject-verb agreement
only when individuals have available processing resources.
Although the availability of processing resources is a
critical factor to influence the sensitivity to the
conceptual number, are there any language constraints
on the process of subject-verb agreement?

Recent within-language (Bock, 2004) and bilingual
studies (Nicol & Greth, 2003; Van Hell & Mensies, 2004) suggest that
cross-linguistic differences per se do not determine
sensitivity to conceptual number. However, withinlanguage lexical and syntactic constraints may
contribute to the processing of agreement.
Examine the performance of Japanese-English bilinguals
whose L1 does not have subject-verb agreement

If the absence of a rule for subject-verb agreement in
the L1 affects performance in the L2, then JapaneseEnglish bilinguals, even those who are highly
proficient in English, may fail to demonstrate
sensitivity to conceptual number.
Language History:
Spanish-English vs. Japanese-English Bilinguals
Age (years)
AOA (years)
L1 Rating
(10-point scale)
L2 Rating
(10-point scale)
Immersion
(months)
LDT Acc
Nonword (%)
LDT Acc
Word (%)
SpanishEnglish
Bilinguals
JapaneseEnglish
Bilinguals
25.4
10.9
9.7
8.6
54.0
86.0
94.5
29.0
11.9
9.6
6.9
60.2
81.2
91.8
Although L2 ratings for JapaneseEnglish were lower than for SpanishEnglish bilinguals, Japanese-English
bilinguals seem to have rated
themselves as less proficient than
they actually were.
Japanese-English Bilinguals
• Possibility 2: Distinctive
structural differences may
impose higher demands on
processing resources in L2.
Magnitude of Number Mismatch (%)
• Possibility 1: Significant
structural differences between
L1 and L2 may affect the ability
to compute subject-verb
agreement like a native speaker.
16
14
Single
Distributive
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
English (L2)
(N = 19)
Single Target: The author of the novels Distributive Target: The drawing on the posters
Magnitude of Number Mismatch =
Agreement Error Rate for Mismatch - Match Control

In ongoing research, we are examining the
relation between cognitive resources, L2
proficiency, and cross-language similarity.
Acknowledgements


Paola Dussias
Judith Kroll




Judith Pirela
Raul Rios
James Burns
Natalie De Rosa
Grant Support:
NSF Grant BCS-0418071 and NIMH Grant RO1MH62479 to
Judith F. Kroll
Travel Support:
Research and Graduate Studies Office, Department of Psychology,
and Language Acquisition Graduate Organization, Penn State
University