Agents Strongly Preferred: ERP Evidence from Natives and Non-Natives Processing Intransitive Sentences in Spanish

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Neuroscience
• Second Language Acquisition

Background:

• Investigating whether non-native speakers can process a second language similarly to native speakers.
• Examining the role of sentence structure (agent vs. agentless) and grammatical agreement in language processing.
• Utilizing Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to understand the neural correlates of second language processing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if non-native speakers achieve native-like processing of Spanish intransitive sentences.
• To compare the processing of agent vs. agentless sentences and person vs. number agreement in native and non-native speakers.
• To explore the influence of Age of Acquisition (AoA), proficiency, and usage frequency on second language processing.

Main Methods:

• Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) recording during the processing of Spanish intransitive sentences.
• Behavioral accuracy and reaction time measurements for grammatical and ungrammatical sentences.
• Comparison of neural responses between native speakers and high-proficiency early non-native speakers.

Main Results:

• Participants showed higher accuracy and distinct ERP patterns for agent (unergative) versus agentless (unaccusative) sentences, indicating processing differences.
• Native speakers exhibited more pronounced effects in the early ERP time window (300-500 ms) compared to non-native speakers.
• Distinct processing was observed for person vs. number agreement morphology at both behavioral and electrophysiological levels.

Conclusions:

• Native-like second language processing competence is achievable for non-native speakers with early Age of Acquisition (AoA), high proficiency, and frequent use.
• Both sentence structure and agreement morphology are processed differently, with agentless sentences incurring a higher processing cost.
• The study provides electrophysiological evidence supporting the attainability of native-like proficiency in non-native language processing.