The Fate of the Native Language in Second Language Learning

成年人经常发现学习第二语言很难。一些成人学习者确实能够成功地在第二语言中达到母语水平，但这是如何发生的，或者是什么帮助了学习者，这仍然是未知的。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忍受母语变化的人。成人语言学习成功所需的改变可能涉及处理成本，这些成本最初会减慢母语的速度，使母语表现更容易出错，使学习者对母语的某些特征不那么敏感，并使母语受到所学语言的影响。该项目询问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。使用横断面和纵向设计，研究人员将在典型的课堂学习环境中检查不同水平的学习者，在美国沉浸在英语中，在西班牙沉浸在西班牙语中。对母语的改变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测量，阅读时的眼动追踪测量，以及检查语言处理最早时间过程的电生理测量。这项研究对提高成年人的第二语言学习有许多更广泛的意义。它还可以为社会中的教育问题提供信息，在这个社会中，许多学习者，例如移民青少年，在童年最早的阶段就面临着学习第二语言的任务，对他们来说，这项任务的失败与糟糕的学术、社会和经济结果有关。这项研究将通过涉及本科生和研究生，其中许多人是双语者或第二语言学习者，有助于培养多样化的认知科学家群体，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.