May 2, 2024 | 3:30PM
Stuart, Room 105
Please join us at 3:30pm this coming Thursday (May 2nd), in Stuart, room 105, for our next colloquium talk by Kara Morgan-Short (UIC). You can find the title and the abstract of Kara's talk below.
Title: Explaining variability in the neurocognitive processing of adult-learned additional languages
Abstract: Current trends in neurocognitive research demonstrate the potential of adults to learn additional languages successfully and to engage neurocognitive processes that are similar to those recruited for first-language processing. However, not all adult learners are successful and a great deal of variability among learners remains unexplained. In this talk, I provide an overview of research that has examined neurocognitive processing for adult-learned additional languages with a focus on (morpho)syntax. I present results from studies that examine language processing using event-related potentials (ERPs), which reflect brain-based electrical activity associated with processing particular linguistic structures. I consider factors that appear to partially account for variability in ERPs, including learning context (e.g., classroom, study abroad), type of knowledge (e.g., explicit or implicit knowledge), and cognitive individual differences (e.g., working memory, procedural memory). Although each of these variables uniquely contributes to the neurocognitive processing of adult-learned additional languages, a comprehensive understanding of variability continues to be an important question for our field to resolve, arguably for both first language and additional language processing.