The effect of modality on a grammaticality judgement task

Abstract

Typical experiments investigating the accessibility and/or role of principles of Universal Grammar (UG) in adult second language acquisition (SLA) use a written grammaticality judgement (GJ) task to infer knowledge of principles of UG. This investigation examined whether subjects would judge sentences differently in the aural modality from the visual. It was hypothesized that subjects in the aural condition would be less accurate and slower at judging sentences than subjects in the visual condition. Four language groups were tested: ESL (English second language), FSL (French second language), L1.E (English first language) and L1.F (French first language). Subjects were assigned to either an aural or a visual condition. The target sentences presented to the subjects were declarative sentences involving embedded questions, as well as ungrammatical wh-questions which violated Subjacency. The presentation times for all sentences were matched across conditions. Accuracy and reaction time to grammaticality judgement were measured. The hypothesis that subjects would be slower and less accurate in the aural condition than the visual one was supported. Furthermore, subjects were less accurate and slower to judge violations of Subjacency than other sentences, in both modalities. The detrimental effects of the auditory task on judgements were most pronounced for the L2 learners. These results are discussed in the context of the informativeness and validity of outcomes derived from GJ tasks, and the ways in which they are presented.