Listening for Imagery by Native Speakers and L2 Learners

Abstract

Slobin's thinking-for-speaking (TFS) hypothesis suggests that speakers are habitually attuned to aspects of an event that are readily codable in the language while they are formulating speech. This TFS process varies considerably cross-linguistically and can be observed in all forms of production and reception including listening for understanding or mental imagery. This study explored whether second language learners (L2) engage in mental simulation of deictic paths while processing motion language online. Forty Chinese native speakers (NSs) and eighty English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese participated in an online judgment task. They listened to motion sentences containing deictic paths while simultaneously watching a motion display of a toward-or away-direction. Since simultaneous presentation of the sentence and the display of the same directionality require the same neural structures to process competing inputs, interference effects are expected and the reaction time to respond should take longer. Results of repeated measures ANOVA show interference effects for the NSs, but not for the L2 learners of both heritage and foreign language backgrounds, suggesting that while the NSs were sensitive to the deictic cues and automatically performed mental simulations of the deictic paths, the L2 learners' listening for imagery did not pattern with the NSs. The results added to our understanding of L2 learners' development of TFS in the new modality of listening for imagery.

Are schematic diagrams valid visual representations of concepts? Evidence from mental imagery in online processing of English prepositions

“…Similar to the patterns of L1 mental imagery, both compatibility (Ahn & Jiang, 2018;Dudschig et al, 2014;Koster et al, 2018;Tomczak & Ewert, 2015) and interference effects (Bergen et al, 2010;Buccino et al, 2017;Vukovic & Williams, 2014;Wheeler & Stojanovic, 2006) have been found in L2 mental imagery research. However, some studies have reported no effects or attenuated effects in L2 mental imagery relative to L1 mental imagery (Chen et al, 2019;Norman & Peleg, 2022;Wu, 2016) due to a reduced degree of embodiment in an L2 compared to L1 (Foroni, 2015), or the formation of different mental representations in L1 and L2 (Dudschig et al, 2014;Monaco et al, 2019). Most existing studies using linguistic and visual stimuli support the perceptual-motor activation in L2 processing, covering various aspects like size and orientation (Koster et al, 2018), shape (Ahn & Jiang, 2018), motion (Tomczak & Ewert, 2015) and emotion (Dudschig et al, 2014;Foroni, 2015).…”