English Monolinguals Research Articles

New Zealand is “racist as f**k”: Linguistic racism and te reo Māori

A key feature of the confluence of modern nation-state formation and colonization has been the marginalization and denigration of minoritized language varieties, particularly Indigenous languages, over time. Indigenous languages have been actively proscribed in public language domains, such as education, leading to their inevitable shift and loss, in settler-colonial contexts worldwide. This process of linguistic hierarchization has long been recognized in the sociology of language and the sociology of nationalism but the overt and covert linguistic racism attendant upon it had remained relatively under-explored. Recent discussions within sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, however, have addressed this lacuna, particularly through the development of raciolinguistics as a theoretical framework. Linguistic racism, a form of cultural racism, uses discursive constructions of language use and related linguistic hierarchies as a proxy for the racialized discrimination and subordination of Indigenous peoples and other minoritized ethnic groups. Here, I explore discourses of linguistic racism by Pākehā (White) New Zealanders in Aotearoa New Zealand toward te reo Māori, the Indigenous Māori language, in everyday discourses and the media. I focus particularly on the public contestation of the increasing normalization of te reo Māori in contemporary New Zealand society, the result of the successes of the last 40 years of Māori language revitalization, via both overt and covert forms of linguistic racism toward te reo Māori. These discourses act in defense of English monolingualism, the direct linguistic legacy of New Zealand’s settler-colonial history, along with the privileges this history has provided for White, monolingual English-speaking New Zealanders. Interestingly, the racialized opposition to te reo Māori is most evident among older, White New Zealanders. This suggests the potential for change among younger New Zealanders and New Zealand’s increasingly diverse migrant population, both of whom appear more open to the ongoing development of societal bilingualism in English and te reo Māori.

Can adults learn L2 grammar after prolonged exposure under incidental conditions?

While late second language (L2) learning is assumed to be largely explicit, there is evidence that adults are able to acquire grammar under incidental exposure conditions, and that the acquisition of this knowledge may be implicit in nature. Here, we revisit the question of whether adults can learn grammar incidentally and investigate whether word order and morphology are susceptible to incidental learning to the same degree. In experiment 1, adult English monolinguals were exposed to an artificial language (Kepidalo) that had case marking and variable word order: a canonical Subject-Object-Verb order and a non-canonical Object-Subject-Verb. In a five-session online study, participants received vocabulary training while being incidentally exposed to grammar, and completed a series of picture-selection and grammaticality judgment tasks assessing grammatical knowledge. Despite extensive exposure to input, and although performance on vocabulary increased significantly across sessions, learners' grammatical comprehension showed little improvement over time, and this was limited to Subject-Object-Verb sentences only. Furthermore, participants were better at detecting word order than case marking violations in the grammaticality judgment tasks. Experiment 2 further increased the amount of incidental exposure whilst examining native speakers of German, which exhibits higher morphological richness. Testing was followed by a post-test metalinguistic awareness questionnaire. Although greater learning effects were observed, participants continued to have difficulties with case marking. The findings also demonstrated that language outcomes were modulated by learners' level of metalinguistic awareness. Taken together, the results of the two experiments underscore adult learners' difficulty with case marking and point towards the presence of a threshold in incidental L2 grammar learning, which appears to be tightly linked to prior first language experience. In addition, our findings continue to highlight the facilitative role of conscious awareness on L2 outcomes.

Phonological and morphological literacy skills in English and Chinese: A cross-linguistic neuroimaging comparison of Chinese-English bilingual and monolingual English children.

Over the course of literacy development, children learn to recognize word sounds and meanings in print. Yet, they do so differently across alphabetic and character-based orthographies such as English and Chinese. To uncover cross-linguistic influences on children's literacy, we asked young Chinese-English simultaneous bilinguals and English monolinguals (N = 119, ages 5-10) to complete phonological and morphological awareness (MA) literacy tasks. Children completed the tasks in the auditory modality in each of their languages during functional near-infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging. Cross-linguistically, comparisons between bilinguals' two languages revealed that the task that was more central to reading in a given orthography, such as phonological awareness (PA) in English and MA in Chinese, elicited less activation in the left inferior frontal and parietal regions. Group comparisons between bilinguals and monolinguals in English, their shared language of academic instruction, revealed that the left inferior frontal was less active during phonology but more active during morphology in bilinguals relative to monolinguals. MA skills are generally considered to have greater language specificity than PA skills. Bilingual literacy training in a skill that is maximally similar across languages, such as PA, may therefore yield greater automaticity for this skill, as reflected in the lower activation in bilinguals relative to monolinguals. This interpretation is supported by negative correlations between proficiency and brain activation. Together, these findings suggest that both the structural characteristics and literacy experiences with a given language can exert specific influences on bilingual and monolingual children's emerging brain networks for learning to read.

Structural complexity reduction in English-French bilingual children's event encoding.

Previous research on the L1 acquisition of motion event expression suggests that mapping multiple semantic components onto syntactic units is associated with greater difficulties in verb-framed than in satellite-framed languages, because the former require more complex structures (using subordination). This study investigated the impact of this language-specific difference in English-French bilingual children's caused motion expressions. 2L1 children (n = 96) between 4 and 10 years and monolingual English and French children (n = 96) described video animations portraying caused motion events involving multiple semantic components. Results revealed reduced rates of subordinate constructions in bilinguals' French descriptions, and more so in older than younger children, while English responses aligned with monolinguals. Semantic density of responses strongly predicted syntactic complexity, but exclusively in French. These asymmetric findings indicate a task-specific syntactic relief strategy and are discussed in the context of theoretical claims about universal biases of event encoding and bilingual-specific optimisation strategies.

Executive function skills account for a bilingual advantage in English novel word learning among low-income preschoolers

The current study compared economically disadvantaged bilingual and monolingual preschoolers’ performance on an English novel word learning task and examined whether children’s executive function (EF) skills account for differences in novel word learning performance across groups. In total, 39 English monolinguals and 35 Spanish–English bilingual preschoolers from low-income homes completed a battery of EF measures and the Quick Interactive Language Screener to gauge English novel word learning ability. Within a poverty context, bilingual preschoolers performed significantly better on measures of English novel word learning as compared with their monolingual peers. This bilingual advantage in novel word learning ability was mediated by short-term memory, but not inhibition or attention shifting, which indicates that gains in short-term memory may facilitate word learning in English for bilingual preschoolers from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. These findings have important practical implications for interventions designed to promote English vocabulary growth for low-income bilingual children.

The effect of language on the coherence of children’s conceptions of force

ABSTRACT Background The coherence of learners’ pre-instruction conceptions has been debated for some time. Studies on conceptions of force, specifically, have produced very different results in different contexts around the world. In this study, an integrative theoretical framework linking semantic differences across languages to concept learning in childhood is proposed, motivating the hypothesis that language is a population variable that impacts the coherence of young learners’ conceptions of force. Method This study uses the same structured interview developed in a previous study by Ioannides and Vosniadoue but in a new context—the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—with three groups of elementary school children (7–12 years of age; n = 185): monolingual in Arabic; monolingual in English; and bilingual in Arabic and English. Findings The results support the hypothesis that language impacts the coherence of children’s conceptions of force with Arabic monolinguals exhibiting greater coherence than English monolinguals, and bilingual children exhibiting intermediate coherence. Contribution This paper provides evidence for the effect of semantic differences across languages and the phenomenon of lexical polysemy on the coherence of children’s initial conceptions of force. The relationship between the integrative theoretical framework proposed and other theories of conceptual change and its novel pedagogical implications are discussed.

Bilingual workers in a monolingual state: bilingualism as a non-skill

ABSTRACT This article examines the institutional and market treatment of the profession of interpreting in the English-monolingual context of Australia. Based on qualitative interview methods with 67 healthcare interpreters in Australia, the study aims to explore the impact of the linguistic hierarchies in favour of English on the financial and professional valuing of bilingualism and bilingual workers, most of whom are migrants speaking English as their additional language. With Bourdieu’s linguistic market as a key theoretical framework, the findings reveal how deeply English monolingualism is entrenched in the local interpreting industry and healthcare institutions and how the pervasive monolingual ideologies work to devalue bilingualism as a non-skill. The study highlights strong ties between monolingualism, power, class and race, with a particular focus on the migrant-concentrated aspect of the interpreting profession. It illuminates the role of language in justifying and sustaining power and structural inequalities, which, in turn, disproportionately impacts vulnerable populations.

Visuals to Ideologies: Exploring the Linguistic Landscapes of Mindanao State University Marawi Campus

The research demonstrated the linguistic landscapes of the Mindanao State University Marawi Campus in the Southern Philippines, known as the “Melting Pot of the South”, where multilingualism, multiculturalism, and multimodality were quite situated. Linguistic Landscape (LL) encompassed and manifested the range of language use in society. Under the theoretical lens of linguistics, the research aimed to qualitatively and descriptively illustrate the linguistic tokens that marked the context of the school community. The needed data were photographed and collected inside the university premises and analyzed in terms of the number of languages used, language choice, and types of signs. The research reveals a sociolinguistic paradox: the multilingual realities of the school community and the prevalent exhibitions of monolingual English on its linguistic landscapes, which consequently seems to dishearten the status, propagation, promotion, and/or effectivity of multilingual policies and education in the Philippines. Furthermore, the research provides theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, it shows another lens of the notion of presumed language prestige and hierarchies. Furthermore, practically, it aids the deepening of knowledge and understanding of language use, and its implications, in public spaces. Finally, the research suggests revisiting and recalibrating the exhibition of multilingualism in the country by simply considering the status of language use in their environments, as they do not just reflect or manifest languages but also propagate and promote them.

Justice in English-Only

Australia has long sought to portray itself as a proudly multicultural nation that claims to welcome and celebrate cultural and linguistic diversity. This article seeks to illustrate how the law, legal discourse and precedent continue to exclude and symbolically punish language-minoritised people, through reinforcing unofficial ‘English-only’ rules. This is accompanied by efforts to deny or downplay the racialised effects of linguistic marginalisation. ‘Equality’ discourses are especially powerful in this kind of denialism, where particular groups are portrayed as equally disadvantaged by particular language requirements needed to exercise and operationalise certain legal rights. This construct of a ‘shared inequality’ when it comes to language is effective in denying that laws can operate in a racially discriminatory manner. At an interactional level, racialised ‘English-only’ rules are reinforced through the policing and assessing of the language practices of minoritised witnesses and accused people. Speaking the ‘right way’ becomes particularly relevant when courtroom credibility assessments are tied to how a person speaks. In this regards, English monolingualism is constructed as the normative benchmark against which the linguistic and racial ‘Other’ is adjudged. This means that a failure to meet this standard can become a basis for questioning a person's credibility and believability as a witness.

Preschool language exposure and use: A comparison study of dual‐language learners and English monolingual children

AbstractThis study explored the language experiences of dual language learners (DLL; n = 19) and English monolinguals (EM; n = 13) in preschool classrooms where English is the primary language of instruction and many home languages are present. Using the Language ENvironment Analysis™ system as a primary tool, we quantitatively analysed an average of 34 hours of recordings collected over 5–8 days for each participating child (Mage = 52 months) in six classrooms. Results showed that, during a typical preschool day, DLLs spoke as much as EMs but received less adult talk overall and had more 5‐min segments with zero adult–child conversations than their EM peers. Follow‐up analyses revealed that teachers generally talked less when children initiated the conversations than when adults initiated the conversations, and this pattern was particularly evident for DLLs. Study implications and future research are discussed.

Words in context: Compensation for phonological assimilation in monolingual and bilingual toddlers

Most words spoken to infants are produced in larger units, such as clauses, phrases, and sentences. As such, language learners must recognize words amidst the words that surround them. However, the phonetic forms of words change based on surrounding context. Here, we investigate the effects of a common source of phonetic change—phonological assimilation—on word recognition in English monolingual and English-Mandarin bilingual infants from Singapore. Using a preferential looking paradigm, 24-month-old monolingual English and bilingual English-Mandarin toddlers were presented with three different forms of familiar English words embedded in phrases: correct productions (e.g. ‘Look at the pen, dear’), assimilated forms (e.g. ‘Look at the pem, baby’), and mispronunciations (e.g. ‘Look at the pem, dear’). Although participants preferentially fixated visual targets upon hearing them labeled, there were no effects or interactions of language background and trial type on target fixation. However, higher naming effects were associated with increased English exposure in bilingual infants. The results suggest that monolingual and bilingual infants respond similarly to phonetic alternations arising from nasal place assimilation at 24 months.

508 A Study of Cortical Thickness in Bilingual Children with Reading Disability (Dyslexia)

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Dyslexia is a common Reading Disability (RD) affecting 7-12% of the population and is associated with less cortical thickness (CT) in bilateral brain regions. However, the interaction between RD and a bilingual experience on CT is unknown, even though bilingualism is also associated with altered CT. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We studied 48 Bilinguals assigned to the Typical Reader group based on Oral Reading Recognition Test (ORRT) scores above 90 (avg=107 ± 14), 47 Bilinguals assigned to the RD group based on ORRT scores below 85 (avg=77 ± 5), 45 English Monolingual Typical Readers with ORRT scores above 90 (avg=102 ± 13) and 47 Monolinguals with RD based on ORRT scores below 85 (avg=78 ± 5). Participants (all from the Adolescent Brain & Cognitive Development Study) were 11.9 ± 0.7 years of age and the 4 groups were matched for sex, self-ratings of English, nonverbal reasoning, and combined household income. Structural magnetic resonance images were analyzed using CAT12 and all four groups were entered into a factorial analysis. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Surprisingly, the main effect of Reading Ability did not reveal any regions where RD manifested less CT than Controls (raising the possibility that the findings from the only two prior reports were due to small samples). The main effect of Language Background revealed less CT in bilinguals in bilateral perisylvian regions (inferior frontal gyri, superior temporal gyri, and left Heschl's gyrus) consistent with prior reports. There was no interaction of Reading Ability by Language Background. Taken together, we found no differences in CT in those with RD relative to Typical readers and no evidence that the dual language experience affected this result in any way. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: The lack of interaction between Reading Ability and Language Background indicates that a dual-language experience does not affect CT differently in those with RD and reduces concerns that RD in those who are bilingual needs to be given separate consideration in studies of CT neuroanatomy.

Issues of monolingualism: A new expression of Neo-Colonisation? The ideological underpinnings of language education in Australia: The case of New South Wales

In recent decades, the drift toward English monolingualism has been a significant concern in Australian multilingual education. Despite Australia being multicultural and linguistically diverse, extensive research has shown that the nation is still adversely affected by a persistent ‘monolingual mindset’. Potential weaknesses regarding multilingual education have been long addressed but no satisfactory countermeasures have been implemented. A recent challenge to the conceptual underpinnings of the ‘monolingual mindset’ have emerged in the last half-century from the neoliberal marketisation of education. Discouragement of multilingualism and multiculturalism may be related to Australia's ‘liberal status quo’, in which language education has not been provided with adequate structural support from Australia’s liberal government and society. While Australian language educators have made continuous efforts to maintain ethnic minority ‘community languages’ within this context, these efforts will seemingly remain ineffective if a monolingual mentality is permitted to remain at a structural level. Recently, a neoliberal challenge has been levelled to make such structural changes, with the privatisation of education encouraging the learning of minority languages and cultivation of ethnic identities. However, political problems are raised by this response, which risks stressing ethnic conflict and political tensions. This paper investigates the issues around Australia’s liberal ‘monolingual mindset’, the structural causes for its discouragement of language learning and the strengths and weaknesses of its responses. This paper utilises a qualitative approach to analyse documents relevant to current language syllabi in New South Wales. Through critical discourse analysis, thematic categorisation will reveal the values and interests contained in these documents. New South Wales has been chosen as a reference for other Australian states and territories regarding language planning and education due to its rich multicultural and multilingual makeup. This study is intended to motivate further inquiry into what may motivate students to pursue future language studies.

Association between primary Spanish language and quality of intrapartum care among Latina women: a secondary analysis of the Listening to Mothers in California survey

BackgroundLanguage barriers play significant roles in quality of healthcare. Limited studies have examined the relationships between Spanish language and quality of intrapartum care. The objective was to determine the association between primary Spanish language and quality of intrapartum care so as to further inform best practices for non-English speaking patients in the labor and delivery setting.MethodsWe used the 2016 Listening to Mothers in California survey data, which included a statewide representative sample of women who gave birth in hospitals. Our analytical sample included 1202 Latina women. Multivariable logistic regression was used to examine the association between primary language (monolingual English vs. monolingual Spanish vs. bilingual Spanish/English) and perceived discrimination due to language, perceived pressure for medical interventions, and mistreatment during labor, adjusting for maternal sociodemographics and other maternal and neonatal factors.ResultsOver one-third of the study population spoke English (35.6%), less than one-third spoke Spanish (29.1%), and greater than one-third spoke bilingual Spanish/English (35.3%). Overall, 5.4% of Latina women perceived discrimination due to language spoken, 23.1% perceived pressure for any medical intervention, and 10.1% experienced either form of mistreatment. Compared to English-speakers, Spanish-speakers were significantly more likely to report discrimination due to language (aOR 4.36; 95% CI 1.15–16.59), but were significantly less likely to experience pressure for certain medical interventions (labor induction or cesarean delivery) during labor (aOR 0.34; 95% CI 0.15–0.79 for induction; aOR 0.44; 95% CI 0.18–0.97 for cesarean delivery). Bilingual Spanish/English-speakers also significantly reported discrimination due to language to a lesser extent than monolingual Spanish-speakers (aOR 3.37; 95% CI 1.12–10.13). Any form of Spanish language (monolingual or bilingual) was not significantly associated with mistreatment.ConclusionsSpanish language may contribute to experiences of discrimination during intrapartum care among Latina women. Future research is needed to explore perceptions of pressure, discrimination and mistreatment, among patients with limited English proficiency.

Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual production of clear speech

Clear speech, a listener-oriented speaking style adopted to mitigate communicative barriers, is often characterized by language-specific acoustic enhancement of phonological contrasts (Smiljanic and Bradlow, 2008; Cho et al., 2011). Previous work (e.g., Smiljanic and Bradlow, 2009) suggested a possibility that bilingual speakers’ L1 and L2 clear speech strategies could affect each other. The current study examined English and Korean clear speech produced by late Korean-English bilinguals (n = 30) living in the United States. Their clear speech produced in each of the two languages was compared with clear speech produced by either English (n = 20) or Korean (n = 20) monolinguals. Of specific interest was how English and Korean stop contrasts were realized and enhanced in clear speech with respect to the use of VOT and onset F0. The bilinguals enhanced the English voicing contrast in the same manner as English monolinguals, via asymmetrical lengthening of voiceless stops’ VOT. In Korean clear speech, bilinguals also lengthened VOT of the aspirated and lenis (long-lag) stops, whereas Korean monolinguals did not exhibit the same pattern. These findings suggest that Korean clear speech strategies produced by the bilinguals could be affected by their L2, due to their extensive exposure to the language.

Speech-language disorder severity, academic success, and socioemotional functioning among multilingual and English children in the United States: The National Survey of Children's Health.

Research points to negative associations between educational success, socioemotional functioning, and the severity of symptoms in some speech-language disorders (SLDs). Nonetheless, the majority of studies examining SLDs in children have focused on monolinguals. More research is needed to determine whether the scant findings among multilinguals are robust. The present study used parent report data from the U.S. National Survey of Children's Health (2018 to 2020) to gain a better understanding of the impacts of SLD severity on indicators of academic success and socioemotional functioning among multilingual (n = 255) and English monolingual (n = 5,952) children with SLDs. Tests of between-group differences indicated that multilingual children evidenced more severe SLDs, had lower school engagement, and had lower reports of flourishing than English monolingual children with SLDs. Further, a greater proportion of multilingual children with SLDs missed more school days than English monolinguals. However, multilinguals were less likely to bully others or have been bullied than monolinguals. While the previous between-group differences were statistically significant, they were small (vs ≤ 0.08). Increased SLD severity predicted an increased number of repeated school grades, increased absenteeism, and decreased school engagement, when age and socioeconomic status were controlled. Increased SLD severity also predicted greater difficulty making and keeping friends and decreased flourishing. The effect of SLD severity on being bullied was statistically significant for the monolinguals but not multilinguals. There was a statistically significant interaction for SLD severity and sex for school engagement and difficulty making and keeping friends for monolinguals but not multilinguals. The interactions indicated that school engagement decreased more for females than for males while difficulties making and keeping friends increased more for males than females as one's SLD severity increased. While some findings were specific to monolinguals, tests of measurement invariance indicated that the same general pattern of relations among the variables were evident across the groups of multilinguals and monolinguals. These final findings can inform the interpretation of the results from both the current and future studies, while the overall findings can inform the development of intervention programs, thereby improving the long-term academic and socioemotional outcomes of children with SLDs.

Motivation to learn Korean as L2 or L3 in a bilingual, bicultural community

ABSTRACT The motivation of linguistically diverse young adults to learn Korean as a Foreign Language (KFL) was studied at a university on the US-Mexico border. This diglossic setting permitted a complex investigation of multiple elements, including L2-motivation theoretical attributes, exposure to Korean contemporary pop culture, and the linguistic and cultural diversity of the local community. 152 KFL university students completed an online survey. Participants were sorted into four language groups according to the degree to which English/Spanish predominated in their daily life: Spanish-dominant, balanced, and English-dominant bilinguals, in addition to English monolinguals. Maximum Likelihood Exploratory Factor Analysis found two underlying KFL motivation factors, which were conceptualised as a social-cultural factor (F1) and an educational factor (F2). This underlying motivation structure was then further explored to find associations between the factor-based motivational attributes and the four language groups. Repeated MANOVA measures found statistically significant interactional effects and between-group differences between the balanced and non-balanced bilingual groups and the English monolinguals. Further discussion highlights the diglossic environment, the cultural interests of bilingual young adults in L3 learning, and the role of English as a power language.

Dominance, Language Experience, and Increased Interaction Effects on the Development of Pragmatic Knowledge in Heritage Bilingual Children

Abstract We investigate whether dominance, language experience, and increased interaction have an effect on the development of heritage bilingual children’s knowledge of the discourse-pragmatic constraints guiding null and overt subjects. A group of child heritage bilinguals (n = 18, mean age = 5;5) and comparison groups of adults: Mexican Spanish monolinguals (n = 15), heritage bilinguals in the United States (n = 16), and English monolinguals in the United States (n = 16) completed a language background questionnaire, a portion of the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment (BESA) in English and Spanish, a forced-choice task (FCT) in Spanish, and two acceptability judgment tasks (AJT s): one in English and one in Spanish. Results showed that heritage children and adults pattern similarly and differently from adult monolinguals. Increased interaction at home has a positive effect on accuracy in the pragmatic conditions that license null subjects in Spanish without affecting overt subject patterns in English, the dominant language.

Segmented relations between online reading behaviors, text properties, and reader-text interactions: An eye-movement experiment.

To investigate relations between abilities of readers and properties of words during online sentence reading, we conducted a sentence reading eye-movements study on young adults of English monolinguals from the US, who exhibited a wide scope of individual differences in standard measures of language and literacy skills. We adopted mixed-effects regression models of gaze measures of early and late print processing stages from sentence onset to investigate possible associations between gaze measures, text properties, and skill measures. We also applied segmented linear regressions to detect the dynamics of identified associations. Our study reported significant associations between (a) gaze measures (first-pass reading time, total reading times, and first-pass regression probability) and (b) interactions of lexical properties (word length or position) and skill measures (vocabulary, oral reading fluency, decoding, and verbal working memory), and confirmed a segmented linear dynamics between gaze measures and lexical properties, which was influenced by skill measures. This study extends the previous work on predictive effects of individual language and literacy skills on online reading behavior, enriches the existing methodology exploring the dynamics of associations between lexical properties and eye-movement measures, and stimulates future work investigating factors that shape such dynamics.

Scrutinizing LLAMA D as a measure of implicit learning aptitude

AbstractSince Gisela Granena’s influential work, LLAMA D v2, a sound recognition subtest of LLAMA aptitude tests, has been used as a measure of implicit learning aptitude in second language acquisition research. The validity of this test, however, is little known and the results of studies with this instrument have been somewhat inconsistent. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that researchers’ variable test instructions are the source of the inconsistent results. One hundred fourteen English monolinguals were randomly assigned to take LLAMA D v2 under one of three test instruction conditions. They also completed two implicit aptitude tests, three explicit aptitude tests, and a sound discrimination test. The results showed that, regardless of the type of test instructions, LLAMA D scores did not align with implicit aptitude test scores, indicating no clear evidence of the test being implicit. On the contrary, LLAMA D scores were negatively associated with scores on one implicit aptitude test, the Serial Reaction Time (SRT) task, but only in the condition where the instructions drew participants’ focal attention to the stimuli. This negative association was interpreted as focal attention working against learning in the SRT task. Implicit learning aptitude may be the degree to which one is able to process input without focal attention.