Exploring the Effects of Working Memory Capacity on Second Language Oral Fluency and the Acceptability of Object Resumptive Pronouns on Adult Learners

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if working memory capacity (WMC) plays animportant role in the acquisition of second language (L2) aspects that represent a challengefor adult learners in oral production and grammatical comprehension. With this in mind, themain goal is to explore the effects of WMC on the L2 oral fluency and the acceptability ofobject resumptive (R) pronouns among adult Spanish-speaking learners of English. Researchin second language acquisition has demonstrated that learners who start their acquisitionprocess after puberty attain the L2 in a variable manner (Schmid, 2011). Emergentist theory,on the one hand, sustains that late L2 learners are able to reach automatized, meaning fastand efficient (Segalowitz & Segalowitz, 1993), processing levels. On the other hand, researchwith a generative approach has demonstrated that these learners can acquire L2 featuresthat are abstract and can only be comprehended through deep L2 grammatical knowledge(cf. Rothman & Slabakova, 2017; White, 2003, 2007; White & Juffs, 1998).Therefore, it is important to explore if individual differences in cognition, particularlyin working memory (WM), can explain the variability in the degrees of L2 attainment of theseparticular aspects amid adult L2 learners. Considering that WM serves to temporarily storeinformation while underpinning higher-order skills (Baddeley, 2003a, 2003b, 2007, 2017), theproposal of this thesis is that a higher WMC allows adult learners to develop L2 automaticityand to cope with the parsing of certain L2 grammatical conditions.In order to test the effects of WMC in these aspects of L2 acquisition, two studies wereconducted. For these studies, a group of intermediate (N = 22) and a group of advanced (N =27) adult Spanish-speaking learners of English were considered; as well as a group of adultnative speakers of English (N = 24). The first study explored the relation between WMC andthe temporal measures of oral fluency (Kormos, 2006; Skehan, 2003; Tavakoli & Skehan,2005). WMC was measured using a listening and a reading span task (Conwell et al., 2005;Redick et al., 2012). For oral fluency, a speech generation task (Daneman, 1991; Segalowitz,2010) was employed to measure speed, breakdown, and repair fluency (Skehan, 2003).The results indicate that there is a significant equation found (F (2,18) = 5.098, p < .003)between WMC and the temporal measures of L2 oral fluency in the group of intermediatelearners. The second study examines how WMC influences the acceptability of sentenceswith an object R pronoun (Leal-Mendez & Slabakova, 2012) condition. A grammaticalityjudgment task (Mackey & Gass, 2012; White, 2007) was designed to study the degree ofacceptability of sentences with an object resumptive condition and with a gap in objectresumptive position. It was observed that there is a significant equation (F (6,15) = 3.504, p< .023) between WMC and the sentences with a gap in object R position among theintermediate group of L2 learners. The findings of this thesis indicate that adult L2 intermediate learners with a higherWMC have better measures of L2 oral fluency (higher measures of speed fluency and lowermeasures of breakdown and repair fluency); also, intermediate learners with a higher WMCare more accepting of sentences with a gap condition as they do not have to rely on the Rpronoun to alleviate the processing load of the long-distance sentence structure (cf.Alexopoulou & Keller, 2007, 2013).

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ORCID for Roumyana Slabakova: orcid.org/0000-0002-5839-460X

ORCID for Laura Dominguez: orcid.org/0000-0003-2701-2469

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