The Role of Auditory Perceptual Simulation in L2 Syntactic Processing

Abstract

Auditory perceptual simulation (APS) reading is a virtual auditory representation of other speakers reading out a text. A previous L1 study showed that native speakers of English using APS reading read faster and more accurately. This study investigated whether using a similar paradigm can enhance L2 learners’ weak syntactic processing with more salient prosodic information. In eye-tracking experiments, L2 Korean learners of English, with or without APS-manipulation, read experimental sentences that employed the plausibility effect, such as The cat that the mouse chased was fast. The plausibility effect would occur when the participants properly established the structural relation and disappear when they overcame the difficulty with accurate syntactic interpretations. The results demonstrated that the APS-reading group showed larger plausibility effect at the critical region during the initial processing, but smaller plausibility effect during the late processing. The APS group detected the implausibility of the sentence earlier than the control group and had less difficulty accurately parsing the structure. This finding suggests that APS reading can improve L2 learners’ syntactic processing, as it does in L1 processing, by facilitating their prosodic representations.