The Fate of the Native Language in Second Language Learning

成年人经常发现学习第二语言很困难。 一些成人学习者确实成功地在第二语言中实现了类似母语的表现，但这是如何发生的，或者是什么帮助了学习者仍然是未知的。计划中的研究将调查一个新的假设，即成功的成人学习者是能够容忍母语变化的人。成功的成人语言学习可能需要的变化可能涉及处理成本，这些成本最初会减慢母语的速度，使母语的表现更容易出错，使学习者对母语的某些特征不太敏感，并使母语受到正在学习的语言的影响。该项目旨在研究是否有些成年人能够更好地适应母语的变化，从而更有可能成功地掌握第二语言。研究人员将采用横向和纵向设计，在典型的课堂学习环境中考察不同熟练程度的学习者，在美国沉浸在英语中，在西班牙沉浸在西班牙语中。母语的变化将在词汇和语法的水平上进行检查，比较理解和生产，使用速度和准确性的行为措施，阅读过程中的眼动跟踪措施，以及检查语言处理的最早时间过程的电生理措施。这项研究对改善成人第二语言学习有许多更广泛的意义。它还可以告知社会中的教育问题，其中许多学习者，例如，移民青少年面临着在童年最早阶段之后获得第二语言的任务，对他们来说，这项任务的失败与学业、社会和经济成果的不良有关。这项研究将有助于培养一批不同的认知科学家，包括本科生和研究生，其中许多人本身就是双语者或第二语言学习者，并将促进国际科学合作。

Adults often find it difficult to learn a second language. Some adult learners do manage to successfully achieve native-like performance in a second language, but how that occurs or what helps the learner is still unknown. The planned studies will investigate a new hypothesis that proposes that successful adult learners are individuals who are able to tolerate change in their native language. The changes that may be required to enable successful adult language learning may involve processing costs that initially slow the native language and make native language performance more error prone, make learners less sensitive to some features of the native language, and that open the native language to the influences of the language being learned. The project asks whether some adults are better able to accommodate the changes to the native language and, as a result, are more likely to succeed in mastering a second language.Using both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, the investigators will examine learners at different levels of proficiency in typical classroom learning contexts, immersed in English in the US or in Spanish in Spain. Changes to the native language will be examined at the level of the lexicon and the grammar, comparing comprehension and production, using behavioral measures of speed and accuracy, eye tracking measures during reading, and electrophysiological measures that examine the earliest time course of language processing. The research has a number of broader implications for improving adult second language learning. It can also inform educational issues in a society in which many learners, e.g., immigrant adolescents, are faced with the task of acquiring a second language past the earliest stages of childhood and for whom failure in this task is associated with poor academic, social, and economic outcomes. The research will contribute to the training of a diverse group of cognitive scientists by involving both undergraduate and graduate students, many of whom are bilinguals or second language learners themselves, and will foster an international scientific collaboration.