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Informally, these principles can be seen as a set of limitations and biases that naturally
confront second language learners as they try to understand utterances or texts in their
target language.
In the following sections, I
discuss VanPatten’s principles of input processing with an eye
toward automatic analysis. Those principles that cannot be implemented reliably with
current language technology are discussed only briefly.
Input Processing: cognitive load
Not surprisingly, some of VanPatten's principles of input processing are concerned with
cognitive load. The result of learners’ “push to get meaning”,
combined with limited
cognitive resources, is that some forms may not be processed. In a loose sense, these
principles get at the same issue addressed by readability analysis, i.e. whether a text is
unattainable or makes too many demands on cognitive resources. In fact, operationalizing
these principles would yield features that are very similar to features already widely used
in
readability research, and so they will not be discussed extensively. Two of these
principles are listed below:
1.
The Primacy of Content Words Principle:
Learners process content words in the input
before anything else.
2.
The Availability of Resources Principle
: For learners to process [grammatical forms],
the processing of overall sentential meaning must not drain available processing
resources
.
Determining the cognitive load of a sentence would be facilitated greatly by the availability
of a student model specifying known vocabulary and grammar knowledge. This is
especially true of early
and intermediate learners, whose repertoire is limited. Currently,
no authentic text ICALL systems make use of such student models.
3.
The Sentence Location Principle
: Learners tend to process items in sentence initial
position before those in final position and these latter in turn before those in medial
position (Klein 1986; Barcroft & VanPatten 1997; Rosa & O’neill 1998).
A common sense explanation for principle (3) is that the first few words of an utterance
consume available cognitive resources, leaving fewer resources for remaining parts of the
utterance.
In addition, words in utterance-final position are more easily processed than
those in the medial position because the listener has the benefit of reflection. Although this
principle has only been established empirically with auditory input, it is at least possible
that an analogous effect is present with textual input, as well. Textual input is primarily
processed
linearly
–
like an auditory signal
–
but the reader’s ability to control pace and
repetition may diminish or negate the sentence location effect. Without empirical evidence
for a sentence location effect in textual input, operationalizing principle (3) is not
straightforward. I suggest the following revision, but stress that it is untested.
4.
The Sentence Location Principle
(for textual input): Learners tend to
process items in
sentence initial position before those in later positions.
Since both auditory input and textual input are processed in a linear fashion, I assume that
the first few words of a sentence do have a processing advantage. However, since the
reader controls pace and can pause to reflect at any time, I assume that there is no
processing advantage for words near sentence-final position. Given these assumptions,
operationalizing (4) is very straightforward: promote token sentences in which the target
grammatical form is among the first
x
words
of the sentence, where
x
represents a
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hypothesized cognitive processing threshold.
7
Although an arbitrary general-purpose
number could be used for
x
, Hulme et al. (1995) showed that the limits of working
memory are dependent on the lexical status of the words being processed, i.e. whether
they are stored in long-term memory. This means that the threshold
x
given above should
ideally change according to the learner’s knowledge. Once again,
a student model
specifying known words would aid dramatically in automatic assessment of principle (4).
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