We investigated the predictive processing of grammatical number information through stem-vowel alternations in German strong verbs by adult first language (L1) speakers and Dutch-speaking advanced second language (L2) learners of German, and the influence of working memory and awareness (i.e., whether participants consciously registered the predictive cue) thereon. While changed stem vowels indicate a singular referent (e.g., /ε/ in fällt3SG, “falls”), unchanged vowels indicate plural (e.g., /a/ in fallt2PL, “fall”). This target structure presents a challenge for L2 learners of German due to its subregularity and low salience. With their eye movements being tracked, participants matched German auditory sentences (VSO order) with one of two pictures, displaying identical action scenes but varying in agent number. The number cue provided by the strong verbs allowed participants to predict whether the upcoming subject would be singular or plural. The analyses revealed significant prediction, measured as predictive eye movements toward the target picture and faster button-press responses. Prediction in the L2 group was weaker than in the L1 group and present in the eye movement data only. Higher working memory scores were linked to faster predictive presses. Approximately half of the participants had become aware of the predictive cue, and being aware facilitated prediction to a limited extent.

We investigate the role of awareness in learning non-salient grammar features in a second language during oral interaction. We conducted a learning experiment during which forty-eight adult Dutch-speaking advanced learners of German and a native German-speaking experimenter engaged in a scripted oral dialogue game. The experimenter and learner in turn produced sentences based on pictures eliciting German strong verbs with stem-vowel alternations, a morphosyntactic feature that represents a persistent learning difficulty. While learners in the implicit condition were merely instructed to focus on sentence meaning, learners in the explicit condition were encouraged to also pay attention to and learn from the target structure in the experimenter's input. Although the explicit group achieved higher accuracy scores overall, both groups had similar (absolute) learning gains, showing that oral input provided during interactive exchanges can lead to substantial learning not only under explicit, learning-targeted conditions, but also without an explicit directive to learn.

The aim of our study was to examine the longitudinal associations between two forms of second language (L2) knowledge (i.e., explicit and implicit knowledge) and the activity types that facilitate different processing mechanisms (i.e., form- and meaning-focused processing). L2 English speakers completed two tests of explicit knowledge (untimed written grammaticality judgment test and metalinguistic knowledge test) and three tests of implicit knowledge (timed written grammaticality judgment test, oral production, and elicited imitation) at the beginning and the end of a semester of university-level study. To track engagement in the activity types, participants completed self-reported language exposure logs across five days throughout the semester. The results from an autoregressive cross-lag analysis suggest L2 explicit and implicit knowledge influenced each other reciprocally over time. Neither activity type predicted knowledge development. We conclude that language acquisition is a developmental process typified by a dynamic, synergistic interface between explicit and implicit knowledge.

Motivated by a series of interconnected studies on simultaneous attention to form and meaning, we revisit L2 learners’ real-time processing of text by using eye-tracking as an unobtrusive method to provide concurrent data on attention allocation. Seventy-five L2 Spanish learners were instructed to attend to an assigned form in a reading passage and to press a button when they noticed it. After reading the passage, the learners answered 10 multiple-choice comprehension questions. The participants’ responses to the comprehension questions and their reading behaviors reflected in eye-movement data suggest that attention to grammatical form may hinder L2 learners’ simultaneous attention to form and meaning. However, individual differences in global text processing contributed to the differences in the participants’ text-comprehension scores over and above the task instruction to attend to form: Slower L2 readers who read the passage more carefully showed better text comprehension.

This study addresses the role of domain-general mechanisms in second-language learning and knowledge using an individual differences approach. We examine the predictive validity of implicit-statistical learning aptitude for implicit second-language knowledge. Participants (n = 131) completed a battery of four aptitude measures and nine grammar tests. Structural equation modeling revealed that only the alternating serial reaction time task (a measure of implicit-statistical learning aptitude) significantly predicted learners’ performance on timed, accuracy-based language tests, but not their performance on reaction-time measures. These results inform ongoing debates about the nature of implicit knowledge in SLA: they lend support to the validity of timed, accuracy-based language tests as measures of implicit knowledge. Auditory and visual statistical learning were correlated with medium strength, while the remaining implicit-statistical learning aptitude measures were not correlated, highlighting the multicomponential nature of implicit-statistical learning aptitude and the corresponding need for a multitest approach to assess its different facets.

Second language (L2) listening requires efficient processing of continuing incoming information (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). Even so, research into individual differences in L2 listening has mostly shed light on the role of linguistic knowledge measured without time pressure (e.g., Mecarty, 2000; Wang & Treffers-Daller, 2017; cf. Vafaee & Suzuki, 2020), leaving the role of processing speed and automaticity largely unexplored. To close this gap, we explored the determinants of successful listening using three processing tasks at lexical, syntactic, and propositional levels. Participants were 44 Chinese learners of English. Response accuracy afforded measures of vocabulary size, syntactic parsing skills, and formulation of propositional meaning. Reaction times and the coefficient of variation (Segalowitz & Segalowitz, 1993) afforded processing speed and automaticity measures at each level. We found a hierarchical relationship between different levels of processing, whereby lower-level, lexical effects cascade up and are mediated by propositional comprehension in accounting for listening comprehension. The results highlight the importance of considering processing accuracy and speed at different levels of the linguistic hierarchy to explain variability among L2 listeners. Different from most previous studies, we argue for a need to consider the temporal aspects of processing, along with linguistic knowledge, in modeling L2 listening.

In this final contribution to the issue, we discuss the important concept of generalizability and how it relates to applied linguists’ ability to serve language learners of all shades and grades. We provide insight into how biased sampling in Applied Linguistics currently is and how such bias may skew the knowledge that we, applied linguists, are building about second language learning and instruction. For example, our conclusions are often framed as universally-applying, even though the samples that have given rise to them are highly specific and Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD; Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). We end with a call for research and replication in more diverse contexts and with more diverse samples to promote progress in the field of Applied Linguistics as ARAL celebrates its 40th anniversary.

We investigated how positive, negative, and neutral mood states influence aspects of second language acquisition, either directly or in interaction with certain personality characteristics (openness, intuition, emotional intelligence, foreign language anxiety, and impulsivity). After completing individual differences questionnaires, 120 participants were randomly assigned to either a Comparison group or one of three emotionally induced treatment groups. They were trained on a semiartificial language under incidental learning conditions. Immediate testing measured participants’ knowledge of the target syntactic forms, while source-attribution data gauged the nature (implicit, explicit, or a combination of both) of their knowledge. Contrary to some previous studies, knowledge gains were chiefly conscious-explicit. Participants exhibited substantial variability in how emotions impacted their learning, with self-reported stress management and premeditation resulting in higher learning in the Negative group. Overall, participants that claimed higher levels of intellect showed the best results.

This study responds to the call for more ecologically valid psycholinguistic research (Spivey & Cardon, 2015) by examining how readers incidentally acquire multifaceted vocabulary knowledge while reading a long, authentic text. Using eye tracking, we explore how the processing of unfamiliar words changes with repeated exposure and how the repeated exposure and processing affect word learning. In two sessions, native and non-native English speakers read five chapters of an authentic English novel containing Dari words. After reading, participants received a comprehension test and three surprise vocabulary tests. Growth curve modeling revealed a non-linear decrease in reading times that followed an S shaped curve. Number of exposures was the strongest predictor of vocabulary learning (form and meaning), while total reading time independently contributed to the learning of word meaning. Thus, both quantity and quality of lexical processing aid incremental vocabulary development and may reveal themselves differently in readers’ eye movement records.

This study extends the evidence for implicit second language (L2) learning, which comes largely from (semi-)artificial language research, to German. Upper-intermediate L2 German learners were flooded with spoken exemplars of a difficult morphological structure, namely strong, vowel-changing verbs. Toward the end of exposure, the mandatory vowel change was omitted, yielding ungrammatical verb forms (compare Leung & Williams, 2012). Two pre- and posttests—word monitoring and controlled oral production—gauged the development of learners’ implicit and explicit knowledge, respectively.

Interviews revealed 33 out of 38 L2 learners remained unaware of the ungrammatical verbs in the input flood; however, they showed significant sensitivity during listening as evidenced by a reaction time slowdown on ungrammatical trials. The unaware learners also improved significantly from pretest to posttest on the word-monitoring task, but not the oral production measure, unless the verbs’ salience in the input flood had resonated with them. Thus, implicit instruction affected implicit knowledge primarily, although prior knowledge and memory could potentially account for interactions between implicit processing, implicit knowledge, and explicit knowledge.

Grammaticality judgment tests (GJTs) have been used to elicit data reflecting second language (L2) speakers’ knowledge of L2 grammar. However, the exact constructs measured by GJTs, whether primarily implicit or explicit knowledge, are disputed and have been argued to differ depending on test-related variables (i.e., time pressure and item grammaticality).

Using eye-tracking, this study replicates the GJT results in R. Ellis (2005). Twenty native and 40 nonnative English speakers judged sentences with and without time pressure. Analyses revealed that time pressure suppressed regressions (right-to-left eye movements) in nonnative speakers only. Conversely, both groups regressed more on untimed, grammatical items. These findings suggest that timed and untimed GJTs measure different constructs, which could correspond to implicit and explicit knowledge, respectively. In particular, they point to a difference in the levels of automatic and controlled processing involved in responding to the timed and untimed tests. Furthermore, untimed grammatical items may induce GJT-specific task effects.

This study investigates the automatization of sentence processing using the coefficient of variation (CV), a measure of intraindividual processing stability (Segalowitz & Segalowitz, 1993). A smaller CV (i.e., standard deviation to reaction time [RT] ratio) and a positive CV-RT correlation are taken to index increased automatization. Hulstijn, Van Gelderen, and Schoonen (2009) were the first to try to validate the use of CV at the sentence level; however, they did not find any evidence for automatization in their CV analyses. Forty Korean English as a second language students (20 intermediate, 20 advanced) and 20 native speakers performed three speeded tasks in English: a semantic classification task, a sentence verification task, and a sentence construction task. The results revealed that, consistent with findings from previous word recognition studies, the CV in the sentence-level tasks decreased as participants’ proficiency level increased. Although the CV-RT correlation in the sentence verification task was not always significant, no counterevidence against Segalowitz and Segalowitz’ (1993) hypothesis was found. The sentence construction task discriminated better between groups than the sentence verification task. We argue that the CV may be a valid measure of automatization at the sentence level, provided the tasks used target lower-level processes such as word recognition, parsing, and semantic proposition formation.

This eye-tracking study tests the hypothesis that more attention leads to more learning, following claims that attention to new language elements in the input results in their initial representation in long-term memory (i.e., intake; Robinson, 2003; Schmidt, 1990, 2001).

Twenty-eight advanced learners of English read English texts that contained 12 targets for incidental word learning. The target was a known word (control condition), a matched pseudoword, or that pseudoword preceded or followed by the known word (with the latter being a cue to the pseudoword’s meaning). Participants’ eye-fixation durations on the targets during reading served as a measure of the amount of attention paid (see Rayner, 2009).

Results indicate that participants spent more time processing the unknown pseudowords than their matched controls. The longer participants looked at a pseudoword during reading, the more likely they were to recognize that word in an unannounced vocabulary posttest. Finally, the known, appositive cues were fixated longer when they followed the pseudowords than when they preceded them; however, their presence did not lead to higher retention of the pseudowords.

We discuss how eye-tracking may add to existing methodologies for studying attention and noticing (Schmidt, 1990) in SLA.

This study focuses on beginning second language learners’ attention to irregular verb morphology, an area of grammar that many adults find difficult to acquire (e.g., DeKeyser, 2005; Larsen-Freeman, 2010). We measured beginning learners’ eye movements during sentence processing to investigate whether or not they actually attend to irregular verb features and, if so, whether the amount of attention that they pay to these features predicts their acquisition. On the assumption that attention facilitates learning (e.g., Gass, 1997; Robinson, 2003; Schmidt, 2001), we expected more attention (i.e., longer fixations or more frequent comparisons between verb forms) to lead to more learning of the irregular verbs. Forty beginning learners of German read 12 German sentence pairs with stem-changing verbs and 12 German sentence pairs with regular verbs while an Eyelink 1000 recorded their eye movements. The stem-changing verbs consisted of six a → ä changing verbs and six e → i(e) changing verbs. Each verb appeared in a baseline sentence in the first-person singular, which has no stem change, and a critical sentence in the second- or third-person singular, which have a stem change for the irregular but not the regular verbs, on the same screen. Productive pre- and posttests measured the effects of exposure on learning. Results indicate that learners looked longer overall at stem-changing verbs than regular verbs, revealing a late effect of verb irregularity on reading times. Longer total times had a modest, favorable effect on the subsequent production of the stem vowel. Finally, the production of only the a → ä verbs—not the e → i(e) verbs—benefited from direct visual comparisons during reading, possibly because of the umlaut in the former. We interpret the results with reference to recent theory and research on attention, noticing, and language learning and provide a more nuanced and empirically based understanding of the noticing construct.