Task effects on automatization of syntactic processing in Japanese EFL learners

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K16796
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Foreign language education
• Research Institution: Hyogo University of Teacher Education
• Principal Investigator: Narumi Tomoyuki 兵庫教育大学, 学校教育研究科, 講師 (40736154)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 統語解析 / 自動化 / 熟達度 / 注意 / 適格性判断課題 / 文法性判断課題 / 意味性判断課題

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study investigated automatization of syntactic processing and relationships between syntactic and semantic processing in Japanese EFL learners depending on their proficiency by changing the type of task they performed immediately after reading a sentence. Participants read sentences with phrase structure rule violations or with semantic violations and conducted one of the following three tasks: (1) a sentence correctness judgment task, (2) a grammaticality judgment task, and (3) a semantic judgment task. These tasks manipulated the participants’ focus on linguistic information. Results revealed that sentence processing in Japanese EFL learners is lexical-semantic driven when they do not pay attention to syntactic information, either because their syntactic processing mechanism may not activate or because they may not be able to use it efficiently.

Free Research Field

心理言語学