High Proficiency Group Research Articles

Mindfulness Induces Changes in Anterior Alpha Asymmetry in Healthy Older Adults

Anterior alpha asymmetry is an EEG measure of relative left- or right-sided prefrontal cortical activity that has been associated with affective style, such that greater relative left-sided activity is associated with positive affect and approach-related behaviours. While mindfulness has been shown to enhance attention and affect, here we investigate the underlying neurobiological changes supporting these outcomes by assessing anterior alpha asymmetry. A longitudinal RCT was conducted to investigate the effect of an 8-week mindfulness training (MT) intervention on anterior alpha asymmetry and affect in a group of healthy adults aged over 60 years (n = 41). An active control computer-based attention training (CT) program (n = 26) designed to activate similar attentional components to mindfulness was used to determine if outcomes resulted from attention training or mindfulness-specific factors. The Sustained Attention to Response Task was used to assess attentional performance, while a breath counting task was used to classify mindfulness participants into high (MT-HIGH; n = 19) and low (MT-LOW; n = 22) proficiency groups. While all groups displayed improved attentional performance, only the MT-HIGH and MT-LOW groups showed significant increases in positive affect as measured by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. The MT-HIGH group showed significantly increased relative left-sided activity at both Fp1/Fp2 and F3/F4 electrode pairs, while no significant changes were observed in the MT-LOW and CT groups. These results suggest that 8 weeks of mindfulness training is capable of inducing changes in resting anterior alpha asymmetry, but these results are dependent upon the level of proficiency achieved.

Speaking progress and meaning negotiation processes in synchronous online tutoring

There has been increasing interest in Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication (SCMC) as a resource for English learning, which can increase the availability of academic help outside of the classroom and offer opportunities to communicate with English speakers around the world. This study investigated the effects of online tutoring on college students' speaking proficiency and their meaning negotiation processes. Participants were 25 second-year, non-native English-speaking college students at a university of science and technology in central Taiwan. Data collected included pre- and post-tests of oral proficiency, as well as records of communication between tutors and students. A paired sample t-test was conducted to measure the students' speaking progress, while Varonis and Gass’ (1985) interactional modification model was adopted to analyze their meaning negotiation processes. The findings revealed that both the high proficiency (HP) and low proficiency (LP) groups made significant progress in speaking fluency, vocabulary, and accuracy and structure in the meaning negotiation processes, while only the LP group showed significant progress in pronunciation and comprehension. The analysis also revealed significant differences in meaning negotiation processes between the HP and LP groups. It was found that students’ negotiated turns produced plentiful language output, suggesting that meaning negotiation provided a rich avenue for them to practice their oral skills through constant rephrasing and elaboration.

The Effects of Task Complexity and L2 Proficiency on L2 Written Performance

Although extensive task-based research has focused on how the manipulation of task complexity affects L2 performance, less attention has been paid to its combined effects with those of L2 proficiency. In this study, 41 Korean learners of English carried out a written task with two levels of task complexity, operationalized as number of elements. Participants were divided into three groups, based on their level of L2 proficiency. Performance was assessed by syntactic complexity, lexical diversity, and accuracy measures. Significant interaction effects between L2 proficiency and task complexity were found on lexical diversity and accuracy measures, especially in the high-proficiency group. Findings are discussed in relation to Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis and attentional resources available for task performance.

고등학생 영어 숙달도가 영어 읽기 전략 및 읽기 도구 사용 습관에 미치는 영향

The present study was designed to examine metacognitive ability in Korean high school EFL learners’ reading comprehension. Fifty-seven Korean high school students participated in this study, and the rate of reading strategy use, the rate of reading strategy use in response to the text difficulty, and the usage of annotation tools were analyzed. The students were divided into two groups according to their proficiency levels (high vs. low) for comparison. Results showed that the high proficiency group had higher metacognitive and self-regulatory abilities. Additionally, Korean high school EFL learners had a tendency to rely more on bottom-up processing than topdown processing when reading. The excessive use of annotation tools (e.g., slash) indicates that the readers were overly conscious of language form, which may have led to unsuccessful reading comprehension. These findings suggest that a need for a strategy-based instruction, especially on employing global reading strategies. Adequate usage of annotation tools also deserves instructional attention in EFL classrooms.

Syntactic complexity and musical proficiency modulate neural processing of non-native music

In music, chords are organized into hierarchical structures on the basis of musical syntax and the syntax of Western music can be implicitly acquired by listeners growing up in a Western musical culture. Here, we investigated whether Western musical syntax of different complexities can be implicitly acquired by non-native listeners growing up in China. This study used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure how the neural responses to musical sequences that either follow a simple rule, i.e., finite state grammar (FSG), or a complex rule, i.e., phrase structure grammar (PSG), are affected. We tested three groups of Chinese listeners who varied in their proficiency and experience in Western music. Only the high-proficiency group had received formal Western musical training, whereas the low- and moderate-proficiency groups varied in their degree of exposure to Western music. The results showed that in the FSG condition, the event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked by regular and irregular final chords were not significantly different in the low-proficiency group. In contrast, in the moderate- and high-proficiency groups, the irregular final chords evoked an ERAN-N5 biphasic response. In the PSG condition, however, only the high-proficiency group showed an ERAN-N5 biphasic response evoked by irregular final chords. This study provides evidence that although simple structures of Western music, such as FSG, can be acquired by long-term implicit learning, the acquisition of more complex structures, such as PSG, merely from exposure to western music may not be as easy.

The effects of second language proficiency on speech production in noise

Speech production is a dynamic process and talkers produce variance of speech in order to maximize intelligibility and minimize articulatory efforts (cf. hyper- and hypo-articulation model). Prior research has shown that native (L1) talkers modify their speech produced in noise, such as increasing intensity, and changing formant frequency (especially F1 for vowel production). However, it is still unknown to what extent L2 talkers accommodate the environmental need. For example, speaking in noise is less familiar for L2 talkers, especially English as foreign language (EFL) learners. In addition, EFL learners lack interaction in their L2 usage, i.e., their speech may not be successfully modified considering listeners’ facilitation. The current study thus tested this with Japanese EFL learners (high and low L2 proficiency). The target stimuli were English tense/lax vowel production (/i-ɪ/ and /u-ʊ/), which is known that Japanese learners of English tend to assimilate the spectral differences and instead use the durational contrast. Our preliminary results showed that both groups of the learners produced spectral enhancement of F1. However, only the high proficiency group used the temporal modification on /i/, potentially due to their faster speaking rate. These results suggest that different modification strategies were observed based on their L2 proficiency.

Use of a hybrid-abdominal wound simulated patient in the ACS/ASE medical student simulation skills curriculum

ObjectiveWe incorporated a hybrid-abdominal wound simulation to teach/assess the acquisition of three essential clinical skills in the ACS/ASE Medical Student Simulation-based Surgical Skills Curriculum. MethodThird year students (N = 43) attended a workshop based on the ACS/ASE surgical skills curriculum for drain care/removal, staple removal and Steri-Strip application. Following a didactic session and demonstration using a simulated patient, student skill acquisition was assessed using the ACS/ASE module rating tool. Student interest/perceived usefulness of the workshop was evaluated using Keller's Motivational Survey. ResultsWe used median scores to identify low proficiency (n = 20; scores 17–28) and high proficiency (n = 23; scores 29–35) groups. The high proficiency group was more knowledgeable, performed better drain care, had a higher global score and was more confident than the low proficiency group. The students rated the workshop highly based on the Keller's Motivational Survey. ConclusionAll students were proficient in the procedure tasks and communication skills and most felt that the course was beneficial. The ACS/ASE Medical Student Simulation-based Surgical Skills Curriculum was successfully integrated into our third year surgical clerkship.

Phonological activation of first language (Spanish) and second language (English) when learning third language (Slovak) novel words

Objectives/Research Questions: This study investigates whether bilinguals activate lexical knowledge from both their dominant first language (L1; Spanish) and their less-dominant second language (L2; English) during novel third language (L3; Slovak) word learning. Moreover, it examines the extent to which L2 activation in L3 lexical learning depends on the level of L2 proficiency. Methodology: Stimuli included 120 auditory Slovak words with substantial phonological overlap with either English or Spanish (homophones) or with neither language (control words), and their written Spanish translations. Two groups of participants (with high and low-proficiency in L2 English) completed paired-associate learning, correct/incorrect translation recognition and backward translation tasks on Slovak–Spanish translation equivalents to examine the facilitation effect of homophones with either Spanish or English. Data and Analysis: Response times, accuracy scores and correct translation counts were collected from 35 Spanish–English bilinguals and analyzed by means of repeated measures analyses of variance. Findings/Conclusions: The phonological similarity of novel L3 words with participants’ L2 words showed similar facilitation effects as phonological similarity with L1 words. This implies an involuntary activation of bilinguals’ less-dominant L2, even when not overtly present in the L3 lexical learning task. Moreover, the low-proficiency group experienced a higher facilitation for L1 than for L2 homophones, but overall lower facilitation in L3 lexical learning than the high-proficiency group. These findings suggest that bilinguals can activate lexical knowledge from both of their languages during novel L3 word learning, but the activation of the less-dominant L2 depends on participants’ L2 proficiency. Originality: We investigated how Spanish–English bilinguals incorporate vocabulary from an understudied language (i.e. Slovak) into their lexical system to test the language non-selective hypothesis in a multilingual lexical context. Significance: Our research contributes to the study of the degree of language dominance and its implications for L3 lexical learning and parallel activation of multilinguals’ languages.

다른 발화 속도의 또렷한 음성과 대화체로 발화한 영어문장 인지

Korean students with much exposure to the relatively slow and clear speech used in most English classes in Korea can be expected to have difficulty understanding the casual style that is common in the everyday speech of English speakers. This research attempted to investigate an effective way to utilize casual speech in English education, by exploring the way different speech styles (clear vs. casual) affect Korean learners’ comprehension of spoken English. Twenty Korean university students and two native speakers of English participated in a listening session. The English utterances were produced in different speech styles (clear slow, casual slow, clear fast, and casual fast). The Korean students were divided into two groups by English proficiency level. The results showed that the Korean students achieved 69.4% comprehension accuracy, while the native speakers of English demonstrated almost perfect results. The Korean students (especially the low-proficiency group) had more problems perceiving function words than they did perceiving content words. Responding to the different speech styles, the high-proficiency group had more difficulty listening to utterances with phonological variation than they did listening to utterances produced at a faster speed. The low-proficiency group, however, struggled with utterances produced at a faster speed more than they did with utterances with phonological variation. The pedagogical implications of the results are discussed in the concluding section.

Interlanguage Pragmatics: Deviant Patterns of Negative Responses to English Negative Yes/No Questions by L1 Thai Speakers

This study investigated the potential cause of L1 Thai speakers’ persistent deviations from target-like negative responses to negative yes/no questions in L2 English context based on the theory of interlanguage pragmatics, particularly pragmatic transfer. L1 Thai undergraduates were categorized into two groups according to their level of L2 English linguistic proficiency. A discourse completion task (DCT), which required the participants to complete their turns in a conversation under different situations, were used to elicit their negative responses. The results revealed that negative pragmatic transfer, influenced by differences in linguistic action patterns of negative responses to negative yes/no questions between Thai and English, occurred in the performance of L1 Thai speakers in both lower and higher L2 English proficiency groups. However, the overall results suggested that the lower proficiency group tended to rely more on their L1 Thai pragmatic competence and showed higher tendency of negative pragmatic transfer than the higher proficiency group. The research indicated that negative transfer from the speakers’ different L1 Thai pragmatic influence from L2 English could make an impact on their non-target-like performance. Moreover, their level of L2 English linguistic proficiency and degree of reliance on their L1 Thai pragmatic knowledge could affect their production to diverge from L2 English pragmatic norms.

Thai Learners’ Acquisition of L2 Collocations: An Interlanguage Perspective

The emergence of second language (L2) collocation studies has grabbed the attention of a number of scholars. However, few empirical studies from an interlanguage perspective have addressed the issue of how learners acquire L2 collocations. The current study investigated what grammatical and lexical collocations posed difficulty to Thai EFL learners and whether learners of different proficiency levels exhibited the same order of acquisition. The study also attempted to explore whether task differences significantly affected the learners’ acquisition process. The participants were organized into a high proficiency group (N = 45) and a low proficiency group ( N = 45). Receptive and productive tasks were devised to gauge the learners’ collocation knowledge. In the receptive task, the learners were encouraged to identify errors. In the productive task, they were asked to write a correct collocate required for a certain context. The results illustrated that almost all target collocations were difficult for both advanced and basic groups. Only verb-preposition collocations did not pose any considerable difficulty to the advanced participants. In terms of acquisition order, there were palpable differences between the two groups. It was also discovered that the different tasks administered exerted a profound effect on the learners’ order of collocation acquisition. The key findings are discussed in light of first language (L1) transfer, transfer of prior knowledge of a particular congruent collocation, familiarity with receptive tasks, and effects of both receptive and productive tasks. The findings suggest that teachers can teach students a group of words rather than individual words by utilizing meaningful materials oriented toward specific difficult collocations or receptive-productive integration tasks. Teachers can also encourage their students to practice using frequency-based collocations and dictionaries in English classes.

Self-regulated Learning and English Proficiency of Korean EFL College Students

The current study explores the relationship between self-regulated learning strategies and English proficiency in L2 settings, focusing on Korean college students. 170 participants were assigned to low-, medium-, and high-proficiency groups based on their English performance. In the study, a background questionnaire, a questionnaire for self-regulated learning strategies, and a TOEIC subtest was employed. The findings revealed that there were significant differences among groups on the motivation and learning strategy scales. The learners in the high-proficiency group were aware of the importance of intrinsic goal and metacognitive self-regulation strategies while both the intermediate and advanced learners indicated significantly larger outcomes than lower proficiency learners in terms of task-value, self-efficacy for learning performance, rehearsal, elaboration, critical thinking, and peer evaluation. Pedagogical implications for L2 acquisition have been suggested based on the results. (Gwangju University · Chonnam National University)

Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies among EFL High School Students in China

Readers’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies has always been the interest of L2 reading research (Zhang, 2001). This study reported an investigation of 118 Chinese EFL students’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and the relationship between metacognitive awareness and actual reading performance. Data was collected through the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) and one internal reading exam. The findings showed that students’ overall metacognitive awareness of reading strategies was at a moderate level with the highest level on problem-solving strategies, followed by global strategies and support strategies. Students from high English proficiency group reported considerably higher metacognitive awareness in global and problem-solving strategies compared with the students from intermediate and low proficiency groups, which provided the evidence that readers’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies was related to their English language proficiency. Further investigation revealed that the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies as measured by SORS was positively associated with students’ actual reading performance, accounting for 23% of the variance in English reading performance. Analysis of individual factors showed that global strategy was a significant predictor of reading performance. The findings of this study also showed a possible way for English reading instructors to assess readers’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies, so that they can better interpret readers’ learning needs and design suitable strategy-based reading curriculum.”

Validation of a bilingual version of the vocabulary size test: comparison with the monolingual version

ABSTRACTThis study was set to cross-validate a bilingual Persian-English version of the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) against the monolingual English version and compare Iranian EFL learners’ performance on the two versions. Various bilingual versions of the VST have been developed based on the assumption that bilingual versions are not affected by the grammar and reading demands of the long options in the monolingual version. To serve the purposes of the study, the Persian-English version and monolingual version of the VST were administered to 116 Iranian EFL learners. Results indicated that a single dimension was underlying both versions. Combined factor analysis indicated that both versions assessed the same construct. Further, both versions were capable of distinguishing learners of varying English proficiency levels and there was also a rough order of difficulty across frequency levels in both of them. Separate paired-samples t-tests revealed that the low- and mid-proficiency groups had differential performance on the two versions of the VST. Their L2 vocabulary knowledge was significantly underestimated by the monolingual version as shown by the mean-differences between the two versions of the VST for these two groups. In contrast, the results also revealed that the high-proficiency group in the study did not show such differential performance on the two version of the VST as the mean-difference between the two versions of the VST did not reach statistical significance for this last group. Hence, it is argued that advanced learners are competent enough so that their performance is not affected by grammar and reading demands of the long options in the monolingual version.

Bilingual and monolingual adults learning an additional language: ERPs reveal differences in syntactic processing

It has been suggested that bilinguals learn additional languages ‘better’ than monolinguals. However, evidence is sparse, particularly for grammar. We examined behavioral and neural correlates of learning an additional (artificial) language in early Mandarin–English bilinguals, compared to English monolinguals. Following grammar instruction, participants practiced comprehension and production, and judged grammaticality at low and high proficiency while event-related potentials (ERPs) were acquired. Bilinguals and monolinguals did not differ on behavioral measures, but showed distinct ERP patterns. At low proficiency only bilinguals showed a P600, a common ERP correlate of syntactic processing in native speakers of languages. At high proficiency both groups showed P600s, though the monolinguals also evidenced an anterior positivity not typically found in native speakers of languages during syntactic processing. These findings suggest that, even without bilingual/monolingual behavioral differences, bilinguals show ERP patterns for an additional language that are more similar to those of native speakers of languages.

Effects of task language and second-language proficiency on the neural correlates of phonemic fluency in native Japanese speakers: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.

Data collected during a phonemic fluency task (or 'FAS test'), a standard component of neuropsychological batteries for assessment of cognitive deficits, may be language-dependent and may differ depending on second-language proficiency. The unique orthographic/phonological system of the task language, and the reported cognitive advantages inherent to bilinguals, may each influence the task's neural correlates. However, language background is not currently assessed in most studies testing phonemic fluency. Here, we used 52-channel functional near-infrared spectroscopy in college-aged native-Japanese subjects to examine functional changes in oxygenated hemoglobin elicited during a phonemic fluency task performed in Japanese and in English. We found activity differences that were related to task language and second-language proficiency. Besides loci activated in the Japanese test, bilateral precentral channels were specifically recruited in the English test. Furthermore, the higher-proficiency group showed almost no increase in oxygenated hemoglobin in either language context, whereas participants with lower proficiency showed widespread increases for both contexts. We interpret precentral increases as the consequence of additional articulatory resource recruitment in a second-language context. As for the lack of such variation in the higher-proficiency group, it may reflect an advantage in nonverbal executive control in this group. Together, our results point to language background and proficiency as confounding variables in neuroimaging studies of phonemic fluency and that the adequacy of such measures in populations with varying language backgrounds needs to be considered in future studies.

The Causes of English Spelling Errors by Arabic Learners of English

This study investigates the possible cause(s) of English spelling errors by Arabic learners of English (ALEs). Studies show that ALEs make significantly more English spelling errors than other English second-language learner groups. Studies also show ALEs make more errors with vowels. The omission of short vowels in Arabic writing has been proposed to cause vowel blindness in English, resulting in the poorer spelling performance. This study evaluates this claim by comparing the distribution of short and long-vowel errors and vowel and consonant error types from handwritten texts by ALEs. While this study found more vowel than consonant errors, only the distribution of vowel graph-choice and insertion errors significantly differed from the number of consonant errors by subcategory. Graph-choice errors, not omission errors, were exceedingly the most common error type. Vowel length was not significantly associated with either vowel omission or graph-choice as expected under the vowel blindness hypothesis. The results, thus, did not indicate a missing vowel orthographic transfer effect as the primary reason for ALE orthographic production difficulty in English. Instead, this paper proposes an underdeveloped lexical-orthographic-representation hypothesis to account for both the degree and range of errors found. This study also found that low and high proficiency groups only significantly differed in consonant graph- choice and silent-graph error categories, with the advanced group performing better. These results suggest that ALE spelling skills are not markedly improving with the advancement of other writing skills and that ALEs may need explicit spelling instruction, especially to connect vowel phonemes with multiple graphemes.

Second language acquisition of pragmatic inferences: Evidence from the Frenchc'est-cleft

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the extent to which second language (L2) speakers of French acquire the semantic and pragmatic (or interpretive) properties associated with thec'est-cleft, specifically the exhaustive inference. This phenomenon is relevant to theories of language acquisition because it is situated at the interface of syntax and pragmatics. The results from a forced-choice task challenge the empirical adequacy of the interface hypothesis (Sorace, 2011, 2012; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006), which claims that external interfaces between a linguistic module and a cognitive module remain problematic even at the highest levels of L2 acquisition. The results from 40 L2 learners at three proficiency levels reveal development from nontargetlike to nativelike behavior. In particular, the high-proficiency group interprets thec'est-cleft, as well as canonical subject–verb–object sentences and sentences with exclusives (i.e.,seul(ement)“only”), in a statistically identical way to the French native speaker control group.

Music Proficiency and Quantification of Absolute Pitch: A Large-Scale Study among Brazilian Musicians.

Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify and name the pitch of a sound without external reference. Often, accuracy and speed at naming isolated musical pitches are correlated with demographic, biological, and acoustical parameters to gain insight into the genesis and evolution of this ability in specific cohorts. However, the majority of those studies were conducted in North America, Europe, or Asia. To fill this gap, here we investigated the pitch-naming performance in a large population of Brazilian conservatory musicians (N = 200). As previously shown, we found that the population performance was rather a continuum than an “all-or-none” ability. By comparing the observed distribution of correct responses to a theoretical binomial distribution, we estimated the prevalence of AP as being 18% amongst regular music students. High accuracy thresholds (e.g., 85% of correct responses) yielded a prevalence of 4%, suggesting that AP might have been underestimated in previous reports. Irrespective of the threshold used, AP prevalence was higher in musicians who started their musical practice and formal musical education early in life. Finally, we compared the performance of those music students (average proficiency group) with another group of students selected to take part in the conservatory orchestra (high proficiency group, N = 30). Interestingly, the prevalence of AP was higher in the latter in comparison to the former group. In addition, even when the response was incorrect, the mean absolute deviation from the correct response was smaller in the high proficiency group compared to the average proficiency group (Glass's Δ: 0.5). Taken together, our results show that the prevalence of AP in Brazilian students is similar to other non-tonal language populations, although this measure is highly dependent on the scoring threshold used. Despite corroborating that early involvement with musical practice and formal education can foster AP ability, the present data suggest that music proficiency may also play an important role in AP expression.

Transfer at the level of argument structure or morphology: a comparative study of English and Persian unaccusative and unergative verbs

Abstract Transitivity alternation refers to the causative/inchoative alternation of some unaccusative verbs. Different languages use different patterns to show transitivity alternation morphologically. While some languages like English use zero or no overt lexical marking, other languages (e.g. Spanish, Turkish, and Japanese) use overt morphological markers to show transitivity. This study aims to investigate the degree to which similarities and/or mismatches between English and Persian influence the use of unaccusative and unergative verbs by Persianspeaking learners of English. Based on different verb types in English and Persian, seven verb categories were identified as the basis for comparison. A forced-choice elicitation test including 48 items was developed based on these seven verb categories. A proficiency test was also used to divide participants (116 undergraduate students of English) into high and low proficiency groups. The results revealed findings more in line with transfer at the morphological rather than the argument structure level (Montrul, 2000). Alternating unaccusatives with similar equivalent structures for transitive/intransitive pairs in Persian and non-alternating unaccusatives with different structures for transitive/intransitive pairs in Persian seem to be the most difficult verb categories for learners. The effect of proficiency level was also significant on the recognition of correct structures.