The Fate of the Native Language in Second Language Learning

成年人往往发现学习第二语言很难。一些成年学习者确实成功地在第二语言中取得了与母语相似的成绩，但这是如何发生的，或者对学习者有什么帮助，仍然是未知的。计划中的研究将调查一种新的假设，即成功的成年学习者是能够容忍母语变化的人。实现成功的成人语言学习可能需要的改变可能涉及处理成本，这些成本最初降低了母语的速度并使母语的表现更容易出错，使学习者对母语的某些特征不那么敏感，并且使母语受到所学习的语言的影响。该项目询问一些成年人是否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。调查人员将使用横截面和纵向设计，在典型的课堂学习环境中检查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。对母语的变化将在词汇和语法的水平上进行检查，比较理解和产出，使用速度和准确性的行为测量，阅读过程中的眼球跟踪测量，以及检查语言处理的最早时间过程的电生理测量。这项研究对改善成人第二语言学习有许多更广泛的启示。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，面临着在童年最早阶段之后学习第二语言的任务，对他们来说，这一任务的失败与糟糕的学业、社会和经济结果有关。这项研究将通过本科生和研究生的参与，帮助培养不同的认知科学家群体，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.