Lecture: Verbatim memory during reading in L1 and L2

An eye-tracking project

This talk presents the structure, methods, and some preliminary findings from the DFG project “retention of surface linguistic information during reading in L1 and L2”. In this project, we investigate the influence of linguistic factors on verbatim memory (as opposed to memory for content) in several eye-tracking studies, testing different grammatical alternations in German and English such as active vs. passive voice or coordination vs subordination structure. The conception of the project is based on two independent lines of research: The first, which focuses on native speakers, indicates that surface information is available only during and directly after sentence processing (e.g. Anderson 1974). The second, which focuses on language learners (i.e. children or non-native speakers), claims that grammatical rules are learned by abstraction from chunks which are memorized verbatim (e.g. Tomasello 2003). Our main hypothesis, trying to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory traditions, is that L2 readers perform better than L1 readers regarding verbatim memory, which was already supported by a pilot study (Bordag et al. 2021) and is detailed further in our current project. I will briefly talk about how eye-tracking works on a technical level and some associated challenges, before focusing on the theoretical background of the project, the experimental design, and some preliminary results from the first experiments.

Anderson, J. R. (1974). Verbatim and propositional representation of sentences in immediate and long-term memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13(2), 149-162.
Bordag, D., Opitz, A., Polter, M., & Meng, M. (2021). Non-native readers are more sensitive to changes in surface linguistic information than native readers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 24(4), 599-611.
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: a usage-based theory of language acquisition. Harvard University Press.

Info

Day: 2023-05-26
Start time: 16:25
Duration: 00:30
Room: SH 3.103
Track: Applied Linguistics

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