Introduction to Experimental Methods and Second Language Acquisition Iria Bello Viruega (UIB)

Hello everyone and welcome to the second talk in

the series organized by most of this year.

My name is David David Ueda and I'm currently

working at the university of the balearic islands.

However, I was born in Kelowna. I did all my

Education at the University of Bologna and I have been a member

of research of the most research group for over 15 years already.

Today I'm here with you to offer a brief introduction

to experimental methods in the field of second language acquisition.

That is the learning of the language of a second language,

which has been my main field of specialization in the last years.

Before we start, let me offer you a personal experience, personal example.

That's because when I was doing my B. A.

In english studies at the University of Comedy, I had two ideas in my mind.

On the one hand I knew I like languages, I wanted to study linguistics.

I like to travel to meet new people in international contexts,

to learn their languages, to learn more about the culture.

I was good at it, I liked it. I was happy with with what I was studying

and I have no doubt about it.

On the other hand, uh I had this idea of science with capital letters in my mind.

I always wanted to become a woman of science for me

that was had to do that was associated with me.

Working in a lab, being able to formulate hypothesis test hypothesis,

reach conclusions, gather data.

Um

and in a way that also meant giving answers of

providing answers for big questions and providing solutions for society.

I have a province in society

for me that that was I felt that that was reserved for other kinds of sciences.

And at that time I didn't know whether these two ideas languages,

linguistics and big science.

Um, we're the same whether they could be combined eventually with a person of time.

I understood that of course we linguists, we can also conduct experiments.

We are also big scientists.

We can also design experiments, gather data, use statistics

in

reach conclusions,

answer big questions and be useful for society just in the

same way psychologists or biologists or medical doctors can be.

In my case,

I decided to specialize in cognitive linguistics.

That's because I took a course in my masters,

I took a course on cognitive linguistics

in,

if you don't know,

cognitive linguistics is a branch of linguistics that

is concerned on how our brain works.

So they're not only in cognitive science, they're not only linguists,

they're also neurologists,

psychologists,

philosophers, sociologists, a lot of

different specialists, linguists as well who try to understand how our brain works

facing the case of linguists were especially interested in learning

how our brain works when we're using language.

That means when we're speaking when we're

reading when we're listening when we're writing.

And as I said in my case,

I really liked that course and I

became really interested in cognitive linguistics.

Then with the passing of time I became

a specialized also in second language acquisition.

So the kind of questions I would ask myself what

I would aim at answering with a little bit different

because I was not only concerned with this idea of

ideal speaker or the speaker of a mother tongue,

L one speaker, that's how we call them,

but also differences or similarities with the mind of an elder speaker.

There is the learning of the language.

So and secondly, which position we're trying to

uh answer questions like

do does the mind of a native speaker in the in the mind of

learning a second language work in the same way when they're using the same language

or in other words,

am I am I using my brain doing the same work when I'm using my mother tongue in english,

which is my second language.

Are there similarities or the differences?

How are those differences?

There's still a lot of questions and resolve questions. Why do we do this?

What is the aim? Well, how can we be useful for society?

Well the premise is that if we're able to understand what's going on in our minds,

we will be in a better position to

provide solutions.

That means given advice to people who are

learning a language that means also write better

books, textbooks,

methods

mm If we know more about our mind works will

be able to teach better to learn foreign languages better

and hopefully there will be less misunderstanding saying in society

Okay with that idea in mind.

Let me also tell you that there's a wide range of techniques that we can use

to to study how our brain works.

Their online techniques and their offline techniques.

I'm sure you've heard about offline techniques already or you've used them before.

The things like questionnaires or test

and they are characterized or there you can easily recognize them

because in offline techniques we don't have access to what direct,

we don't have direct access to what is going on in our minds.

We cannot really see what is going on there. We can only analyze and test the effect

of our brain activity.

However,

in online techniques we have that we can measure directly what is going on in a range,

so there are more direct, so to speak.

Okay. In my case today, I'll be talking about one specific online technique.

Again, those are the ones that have direct access to

cognitive processes in Armand and the technique I'm

gonna be talking about today is eye tracking.

Uh some of you might have heard already

the word eye tracking because let me tell you this is

this technique is not only using linguistics is actually i uh,

technique that has been going on for some decades already

and it's well established in all the disciplines like psychology,

medicine for its

and

especially in marketing and advertising.

So I'm sure you've seen something in the news.

Some studies is an eye tracking in advertisement.

That's because well designers of marketing campaigns,

they want to understand what guys are decisions when we're about to buy an article.

So they would in the Sinai tracking experiments to understand what our eyes do,

what do we do when we're trying to

to make a decision to be able to

place the slogan or a keyword or the brand name in a particular point in the in the ide.

So

I'm sure you've seen some results of eye

tracking already in the news in developed linguistics.

We can use it as well because well we use our eyes

are one of the senses that we use when we're using language,

we use them to read those are the way and with eyes are the senses

through which our mind has access to written material.

So we can also use eye tracking in linguistics and reading experiments.

And I tracked in this useful because of

this hypothesis is called the Riemann hypothesis.

It was first promulgated by Justin Carpenter in the early

in 19 eighties.

And according to this hypothesis,

our brain is always where our eyes are.

That means that if we're reading a text and we stopped in a particular word,

our brain is there are brain is trying

to decode to process the information in that word

or if we go back to to appoint a previous point.

And in this course that means because well a lot of

reasons they're right because it was difficult or was aware that we

didn't understand or our mind couldn't really make sense of it

because of the information that is already stored in our minds.

A lot of explanations as they said.

But what is important is that there's no lag between what is

excited where where our eyes are are and what is processed in in

in our brains. Right.

Okay. So why I told you what high Turkey was? But why do we want to use eye tracking?

Well,

I tracking allows us to have direct access to the

cognitive processes that are taking place when we're reading.

Right? So in this case we're not talking about listening, speaking or writing.

We're concerned here with reading to understand how

information is processed in our in our brain.

Okay. And how are we gonna do this?

So let me offer you a brief guide technical guide to measures in tracking.

And we need to talk here about two types of eye movements

and they're called fixation and sack a sack. Has this again. These are movements.

And that's because when we're when we're using our eyes and when we're reading,

we have this impression that everything is linear that

we don't stop and we want to write.

But that's not that's not reality. That's not real.

Actually, when we're reading we're performing two kinds of movements.

One

one movement is our expectations. Those are when our eyes top at a particular point

and the information that is further through our eyes gets to

our brain, our brain has started access to the information that comes from the eyes,

through the nerves.

In

in on the other hand, during sex cats like a star movements in, in during the cat.

This access, um, this, this communication between the ice and the brain is stopped.

So they they access to the brain or the access to the eyes is blocked momentarily

Because the eyes are moving right from one point to the other.

So in the end in our mind and that's the trick.

It does something like a copy paste edition

and shows us the information or we train.

We assume that we're getting all the information from the taxation

and, and that everything is linear and there's no jumps.

But actually in reality what is happening is that

we're jumping from one point to the other.

But that this information information from the circus

gets to get deleted by by the brain

somehow.

So I'm gonna show you a video which will be,

you will see clearly these two movements fixations and circus also let me tell you

and an important bit of information said cast can go to move.

So when we're moving, we can move forwards or backwards

when we're moving backwards. Those are called regressions.

Okay, so we may want to go back and read again a a piece of

of course the sentence over a word because we didn't,

we didn't understand because I just spoke information because

we want to make sure that what we understood was

was written.

So we may performance the cat and read again. Okay,

so in the video you will see fixations.

You will recognize them because they're they're

they're circles and the cats are lines.

Okay.

So let me play this,

do you?

This is a limited form an experiment I did some some years ago

spanish.

So let me play it again for you.

You can see if you understand spanish,

you can see that the first two sentences don't make

sense together because these two people daniel and Clara,

they compose bad songs and they sell a lot of records.

That doesn't make sense.

It is is not realistic, right? That's why the speaker,

I guess the speaker wanted to read it again because he

couldn't he couldn't understand what was going on right now.

Play it again.

So when he or she finishes the second sentence decides to

re read it again before following before continuing reading the text.

Okay,

this and this movement is that eye movements are made be more

or less voluntarily because we're not all the time conscious that that

it didn't make sense and that we want to read it again.

Sometimes we are, sometimes we're not.

That's why online measures are important because if

I ask this person after reading the text,

how many times do you need to understand this text?

The person most probably couldn't. No. Okay.

But here we have direct access to what's going on in our eyes,

to the movements that our eyes are performing.

And that's that's interesting. That's really interesting.

Okay, so we're done with fixations and see cats and regressions as well.

Another important key word here is uh Howie area of interest.

And this is because it's especially interesting.

Introduction to Experimental Methods and Second Language Acquisition Iria Bello Viruega (UIB)

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