Second Language Acquisition Lab

Our lab uses a range of behavioral and psycholinguistic methods to explore the nature of acquisition and processing in adult second language learners. Our research examines the linguistic and cognitive factors that influence acquisition at varying stages of development, from the initial state to very advanced levels of proficiency.



Projects in the lab have examined a range of topics including the acquisition of aspect, unaccusativity, gender and number agreement, wh-movement, and the role of verbal and non-verbal aptitude in L2 acquisition. These topics have been investigated in a range of languages including Chinese, English, Japanese, and Spanish.

The laboratory, located in Room 4035 of the Dole Human Development Center, consists of three adjacent rooms, two of which are dedicated testing rooms for psycholinguistic studies. There are also three dedicated workstations equipped with software for statistical analysis. All of our psycholinguistic experiments are run with Paradigm by Perception Research Systems, Inc. Several of our projects are collaborative efforts with the Neurolinguistics and Language Processing Laboratory, which is located right next door in Dole 4037 and houses an EEG laboratory.