Doctoral Dissertation Research: Age Differences and Cognitive Aptitudes in Ultimate Second Language Attainment

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Very high-level, functional ability in foreign languages is increasingly important in many walks of life -- from business and science to diplomacy and national security. It is also very rare, and an early start and/or a special talent, or aptitude, for languages is believed to be necessary. Language aptitude is defined as a combination of cognitive/perceptual abilities measurable on a standardized test and advantageous in second language (L2) acquisition. Language aptitude has been related to variation in ultimate attainment (i.e., long-term differences in acquisition) in both classroom and immersion settings. This research will investigate the extent to which aptitude for explicit language learning, defined as "language analytic ability," and implicit language learning, defined as "sequence learning ability," are differentially important, as measured by performance on tasks that involve either controlled or automatic use of L2 knowledge. There will be three groups of subjects: a control group of Spanish native speakers, and two groups of Chinese immigrants, long-term residents of Spain, who learned Spanish (a typologically very different L2) naturalistically, and whose first sustained exposure was either as children (ages 3 and 6) or adults (after 15). Previous studies have relied on single measures of aptitude, weighted heavily in favor of cognitive abilities that allow for explicit learning (thought to be the primary adult learning process, as opposed to implicit learning by children), and single measures of attainment that favored controlled use of L2 knowledge. To correct for this, a metalinguistic knowledge test and a word-monitoring task, as well as four grammaticality judgment tests, will be used to assess the Chinese learners' Spanish under different conditions of time pressure (pressured/unpressured) and modality (visual/auditory). The results will help clarify the relative importance of starting age and type of language aptitude (explicit or implicit) for learners who need to achieve advanced L2 proficiency.