Category: Events

Congratulations to Ye Ma, Ph.D. candidate in Linguistics, for receiving the MSU Varg-Sullivan Award for an article she and her collaborators published in the Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, titled “Expressions with aspectual verbs elicit slower reading times than those with psychological verbs: An eye-tracking study in Mandarin Chinese”.

 

https://cal.msu.edu/news/varg-sullivan-graduate-award-winners-announced-2/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10936-022-09846-y

Zoom Meeting: https://eduhk.zoom.us/j/97973116406

The recording of eye movements, or eye tracking, has become an important tool for language researchers to probe real-time cognitive processes in first and second language speakers. Researchers turn to eye tracking for its millisecond precise temporal information and its high spatial resolution. As an exquisitely versatile tool, eye tracking has many applications across SLA disciplines and inspires new work, as well as new takes on old questions each year (see Godfroid, 2019, 2020; Godfroid & Hui, 2020; Godfroid, Winke, & Conklin, 2020, for reviews).

When participants engage in a language task, their eye gaze may provide a measure of their attentional allocation and linguistic processing (Godfroid, Boers & Housen, 2013; Just & Carpenter, 1980; Reichle, Pollatsek, & Rayner, 2006; Smith, 2012). This technology can be used to capture both conscious and unconscious processing in language learning and processing, which opens up new avenues for research in linguistics, psycholinguistics, instructed second language acquisition, and discourse studies, among many others.

In this keynote address, I will render the depth and breadth of eye-tracking research in second-language research, sampling influential studies across different SLA disciplines and highlighting how each study benefited in unique ways from the use of eye-movement registration.  The talk will conclude with a discussion of methodological aspects to consider with a view to promoting sound and reproducible eye-tracking research in the scientific study of language. 

A234 Wells Hall or Zoom Meeting: https://msu.zoom.us/j/94888981051 (passcode: Leal)

While there is wide agreement in L2 studies regarding the existence of L1 transfer effects, there has been scant discussion about the role of the type of similarity among the languages in question, whether it be formal similarity (similarity in the featural composition between the functional or lexical items in the languages under study) or surface level similarity (similarity in how these forms sound and/or look). Our study aims to determine whether formal similarity between two languages (operationalized via the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis) allows adult L2 learners of French (Spanish L1 speakers) to straightforwardly acquire third-person singular accusative clitics in their L2. Additionally, we examined the role of surface similarity, since French and Spanish overlap and diverge in several ways. In terms of formal similarity, third-person accusative clitic pronouns in Spanish are almost perfect analogues of their French counterparts. In terms of surface similarity, however, while the feminine accusative pronouns are identical (“la” [la]), the masculine ones differ in Spanish (“lo” [lo]) and French (“le” [lǝ]). Participants included French L1 speakers (n = 26) and Spanish-speaking L2 French learners (n = 36). Results from an offline forced-choice picture selection task and an online self-paced reading task did not support the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis because learners showed considerable difficulty with the interpretation and processing of these pronouns, revealing that, unlike French NSs, their interpretations and processing are guided by the feature [±Human] and, to a lesser degree, by gender, which might be due to the surface-level similarity between feminine accusative clitic pronouns in both languages.

The recording of eye movements, or eye tracking, has become an important tool for language researchers to probe real-time cognitive processes in first and second language speakers. Researchers turn to eye tracking for its millisecond-precise temporal information and its high spatial resolution. As an exquisitely versatile tool, eye tracking has many applications across SLA disciplines and inspires new work, as well as new takes on old questions each year (see Godfroid, 2020; Godfroid & Hui, 2020; Godfroid, Winke, & Conklin, 2020, for reviews).

In this workshop, participants will learn about how eye-movement registration might enrich their own research studies through the information that eye tracking provides about attention allocation and processing. This “window” into the mind can inform a wide variety of studies, as over 140 eye-tracking studies published in SLA to date can attest to (see Godfroid, 2020; Godfroid & Hui, 2020; Godfroid, Winke, & Conklin, 2020, for reviews). Because eye tracking is so flexible in terms of what researchers can do with it, careful study design is key to the validity of the study. Workshop participants will learn fundamental facts about study design, data analysis, and interpretation of findings so they become more informed consumers of eye-tracking research and feel confident to start designing their own studies. Overall, this workshop will explain the details of how and why to best collect and analyze eye-movement recordings for well-designed and informative SLA research.

Aline Godfroid’s eye-tracking methodology book was a finalist of the AAAL 2021 First Book Award.

Stay tuned for more information on a special colloquium on eye-tracking and SLA at AAAL 2018 in Chicago!