Vigilance,expectancy,and noise: Attention in second language lexical learning and memory

Abstract

Talamas et al. (1999), Ferré et al. (2006) and Sunderman and Kroll (2006) exposed participants to first-language/second-language (L1/L2) pairs of words and asked them to decide whether the second word was the correct translation of the first. In the critical condition, the L2 word was either the translation of the L1 word (man → hombre) or a form-relative of the translation (man → hambre). Less fluent speakers showed higher recognition latencies in the form-relative condition than did more fluent speakers. This report explores whether an appropriately trained Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) neural network (Carpenter and Grossberg, 1987a) will suffer from form-relative interference, and the role of vigilance (a parameter of low-level attention sensitive to environmental complexity) in this effect. I argue that the learning environment of early bilinguals is more complex than that of adult L2 learners, and therefore adult learners may be less vigilant to word form. ART2 networks were trained with English and Spanish corpora under conditions emulating early and late second language acquisition at different vigilance levels and then serially exposed to the same types of word pairs used in the three studies mentioned above. Form-relative interference was observed, indicating that low-level attentional mechanisms may play a role in second language lexical learning and access.