Department of Linguistics and Languages will host a talk by Dr. Aline Godfroid from Michigan State University on January 24, 2018. This is part of the Cognitive Science of Language lecture series of the current academic year. In this talk, Dr. Godfroid will present an overview of the expanding field of eye-tracking research on learner attention. For more details, please visit the Cognitive Science of Language lecture series webpage.

Title: Attention in second language acquisition: Towards an explanatory model
Presenter: Dr. Aline Godfroid
Date: Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Time: 2:30 pm to 4:00 pm
Location: BSB – B103, McMaster University

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Abstract

Attention has occupied a central place in theories of second language acquisition (SLA), dating back at least to Schmidt’s noticing hypothesis (Schmidt, 1990). The noticing hypothesis states that attention to language form, coupled with a low level of awareness, enables the representation of these forms in working memory, which may then give rise to more durable learning. Different methodologies have been proposed over the years to measure attention, including circling or underlining (e.g., Izumi, Bigelow, Fujiwara, & Fearnow, 1999), note taking (e.g., Izumi, 2002), and think-aloud protocols (e.g., Alanen, 1995). More recently, eye tracking—the real-time registration of a participant’s eye gaze—has emerged as a particularly sensitive measure of learner attention (Godfroid, Boers, & Housen, 2013), extending the measurement of the eye gaze as an index of overt attention in other disciplines (Wright & Ward, 2008). In this talk, Dr. Godfroid will present an overview of the expanding field of eye-tracking research on learner attention.

Originally framed in terms of the noticing hypothesis (Godfroid, Housen, & Boers, 2010; Smith, 2010), work on attention in SLA signaled a new direction in second-language eye-tracking research, with a goal of linking processing and acquisition. Attentional processing has traditionally been observed under incidental learning conditions, meaning the participants in an eye-tracking study engage in a natural, meaning-focused language task (e.g., reading a text, chatting with an interlocutor). Unbeknownst to them, the task contains learning targets (e.g., novel words or grammar) or language-related episodes (i.e., feedback) that can help advance their knowledge. Eye-tracking research has shown that language learners generally do attend to these target forms in the input; moreover, length of processing (as a measure of attention) is positively related to the learners’ performance on surprise vocabulary or grammar post-tests (Godfroid et al., 2013, 2017; Godfroid & Uggen, 2013; Mohamed, 2017; Pellicer-Sánchez, 2016; Smith, 2012). In an expansion of this basic paradigm, researchers have now begun to manipulate task instructions in an effort to compare incidental and intentional learning conditions (Choi, in preparation) or implicit and explicit instruction (Cintrón-Valentín & Ellis, 2015; Indrarathne & Kormos, 2017a, 2017b; Issa & Morgan-Short, forthcoming) more directly. Results have generally favored more explicit types of instruction (Choi, in preparation; Indrarathne & Kormos, 2017a, 2017b) and suggest the role of attention in the learning process may be causal (Choi, in preparation). Taken together, this growing body of eye-tracking research has the potential to corroborate empirically what theorists have posited for decades, namely that attention is pivotal to adult second-language learning.