Second language processing and revision of garden-path sentences: a visual word study

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Children often struggle to revise initial interpretations during sentence processing.
• It is debated whether this difficulty reflects immature language systems or learning processes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether adult second language (L2) learners exhibit similar difficulties in revising sentence processing commitments as children.
• To determine if these revision difficulties are characteristic of an immature parser or a learning parser.

Main Methods:

• Adult L2 English speakers performed an "act-out" task with temporarily ambiguous and unambiguous instructions.
• Online processing patterns and "act-out" behaviors were analyzed to assess sentence interpretation and revision.

Main Results:

• L2 adults showed similar sensitivity to referential information and experienced "garden-path" effects as native adults.
• However, L2 adults exhibited significant difficulties in revising initial interpretations, comparable to 5-year-old native children.
• This suggests revision difficulties are linked to the learning process rather than parser immaturity.

Conclusions:

• Adult L2 learners face challenges in revising sentence interpretations, mirroring difficulties seen in young children.
• These revision deficits are likely due to the increased cognitive control demands of processing a non-native language.
• Reduced availability of cognitive control for parsing revisions may underlie these observed difficulties.