Desirable difficulties in learning multiword units in a second language: Exploring processing and retrieval through behavior and brain potentials
Open Access
- Author:
- Pulido, Manuel
- Graduate Program:
- Spanish
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- February 25, 2020
- Committee Members:
- Paola E. Dussias, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Paola E. Dussias, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Matthew Thomas Carlson, Committee Member
Rena Torres Cacoullos, Committee Member
Judith F Kroll, Outside Member
Adriana Van Hell, Committee Member
Paola Eulalia Dussias, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- Second Language Acquisition
Multiword Units
Collocations
Psycholinguistics
Event-Related Potentials
ERPs
Lexical Retrieval
Inhibition
Learning
Bilingualism
Desirable Difficulties - Abstract:
- While some adults may attain native-like proficiency in a second language (L2), success in L2 learning is still largely variable. Such variability is particularly evident in aspects of the L2 that are only partially congruent across the two languages, whether pertaining to morphosyntax (Tokowicz & MacWhinney, 2012), phonology (Barrios, Jiang, & Idsardi, 2016; Brown, 2000) or the lexicon (Peters, 2016). An aspect of language that shows large variability in learning success due to partial L1-L2 congruency is that of collocations, defined as combinations of words that are strongly associated because of their tendency to appear together (Gries, 2013, e.g., “run a business”, “pay a visit”, “shoot a movie”). Learning collocations helps L2 speakers fulfill pragmatic functions and produce output that matches the expectations of native interlocutors (Bardovi-Harlig, 2009), and also facilitate L2 processing (Wolter & Gyllstad, 2011, 2013). This dissertation reports on three experiments inspired by recent proposals of desirable difficulties in language learning (e.g., Bjork & Kroll, 2015), which seek to create the learning and practice conditions that engage the cognitive mechanisms necessary for successful learning. Such conditions are sometimes hard to identify, as they may counterintuitively produce seeming initial difficulties (e.g., slower learning, higher error rates) which, however, lead to more successful long-term learning. The first experiment in this dissertation presents evidence that carefully selecting the distractors of L2 practice exercises to induce interference from the native language may create a desirable difficulty, by providing learners with experience in regulating cross-language interference that improves learning. The results of a second experiment, which employed EEG, shed light onto the neural correlates of multiword lexical selection in native and non-native speakers. A third experiment revealed a direct association between the brain potentials elicited under different practice conditions, and the ability to remember newly learned collocations in a test. Taken together, the results from these studies may inform approaches to teaching and learning in the classroom and beyond.