The influence of proficiency levels and working memory capacities in sentence processing by Japanese learners of English

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26580109
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Foreign language education
• Research Institution: University of Shizuoka (2015); Toyama Prefectural University (2014)
• Principal Investigator: SUDA Koji 静岡県立大学, 国際関係学部, 准教授 (60390390)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 第二言語習得 / 文処理 / 意味役割 / 文法役割 / 習熟度 / 記憶容量

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this study, we conducted three sentence processing experiments including event related potentials (ERPs), and investigated how Japanese learners of English (JLEs) with different proficiency levels and working memory capacities made use of lexical and syntactic information during sentence comprehension. The results showed that JLEs at the lower proficiency tended to rely on lexical information such as animacy, but they reached a stage of using structural information as the proficiency level developed. Moreover, it was observed that there was a positive effect of working memory in L2 parsing, and JLEs with the large working memory capacity read a crucial verb area faster than those with the small working memory capacity.

Free Research Field

第二言語習得