Second language acquisition theory has traditionally focused on the cognitive and psycholinguistic processes involved in additional language (L2) learning. In addition, research on learner psychology has primarily centered on learners' cognitive abilities (e.g., aptitude and working memory) and internal traits or states (e.g., dispositions,…

Adults learning a new language tend to judge unconventional utterances more leniently than fluent speakers do; ratings on acceptable utterances, however, tend to align more closely with fluent speakers. This asymmetry raises a question as to whether unconventional utterances can be statistically preempted by conventional utterances for adult…

Collocational priming is a priming effect induced by collocationally related words; it has been taken to explain the cognitive reality of collocation. Collocational priming has largely been observed in first language (L1) speakers, whereas work on the representation of collocation in a second language (L2) is still limited. In the present study,…

This study is the first to explore microdevelopment in sociolinguistic evaluative judgments of standard German and Austro-Bavarian dialect by adult second language learners of German by using dense time serial measurements. Intensive longitudinal data (10 observations per participant) were collected from four learners at approximately weekly…

Previous studies report that exposure to the Maori language on a regular basis allows New Zealand adults who cannot speak Maori to build a proto-lexicon of Maori -- an implicit memory of word forms without detailed knowledge of meaning. How might this knowledge feed into explicit language learning? Is it possible to "awaken" the…

In this paper, we report a longitudinal study of the effects of procedural task repetition on learners' task performance (i.e., syntactic complexity in relation to lexical complexity). We investigated how task repetition results in differences at the group and individual level across each task interval (T = 7). Intermediate-level Saudi learners of…

Second language (L2) grammar learning is difficult. Two frameworks--the psycholinguistic lexical bottleneck hypothesis and the neurocognitive declarative/procedural model--predict that faster L2 lexical processing should facilitate L2 incidental grammar learning. We tested these predictions in a pretest-posttest syntactic adaptation study of…

We tested whether second language (L2) learners rely more on explicit memory during structural priming at lower than at higher proficiency levels (Hartsuiker & Bernolet, 2017). We compared within-L2 priming with lexical overlap in 100 low and 100 high proficiency French L2 speakers under low versus high working memory load conditions induced…

When learning spoken second language (L2), words overlapping in form and meaning with one's native language (L1) help break into the new language. When nonsigning speakers learn a sign language as L2, such overlaps are absent because of the modality differences (L1: speech, L2: sign). In such cases, nonsigning speakers might use iconic…

Making adults learn from larger linguistic units can facilitate learning article-noun agreement. Here we ask whether initial exposure to larger units improves learning by increasing the predictive associations between the article and noun. Using an artificial language learning paradigm, we taught 106 Hebrew-speaking participants novel article-noun…

Using computational Social Network Analysis (SNA), this longitudinal study investigates the development of the interaction network and its influence on the second language (L2) gains of a complete cohort of 41 U.S. sojourners enrolled in a 3-month intensive study-abroad Arabic program in Jordan. Unlike extant research, our study focuses on…

This study investigated how much practice is necessary for learners to attain durable second language (L2) grammar knowledge. Using digital flashcards, 119 participants practiced translating 12 sentences into an artificial language, followed by feedback, until they had typed all sentences correctly. Participants repeated this activity in one, two,…

This article presents a theoretical review of and methodological guidelines for the study of two key notions in second language acquisition research, complexity and difficulty. The term "complexity" has gained considerable currency over the past decades and has taken on a wide range of meanings. We argue for a more restricted…

Most second language acquisition (SLA) research has documented the processes involved in learning second/foreign languages, with few studies focusing on the durability of attained second language (L2) skills once instructed learners/users are no longer receiving formal instruction. The current study examines the effects of continued exposure and…

In this Methods Showcase Article, we illustrate mixed-effects modeling with a multinomial dependent variable as a means of explaining complexities in language. We model data on future-time reference in second language Spanish, which consists of a nominal dependent variable that has three levels, measured over 73 participants. We offer step-by-step…