Individual Differences in Learners' Working Memory, Noticing of L2 Forms in Recasts and Their L2 Development in Task-based Interactions

The exploratory study conducted by Mackey, Philp, Egi, Fujii and Tatsumi (2002) first probed into the internal relationship among learners' working memory capacity, noticing of recasts of English question formation in interactional feedback and their L2 development. The researchers in that study proposed that as a small-scale study, research findings were suggestive rather than conclusive and that further exploration would be helpful.;Responding to that research call, the present study further investigated the influence of individual variables on learners' awareness and performance in interactional tasks. Learners' working memory capacity and their L2 proficiency level were both regarded as independent variables in the present study to link with their noticing of recasts of two different target forms: English question formation and English past tense. Immediate stimulated recall, as a newly developed method in the present study, was used to collect noticing data as well as the use of traditional stimulated recall. The pretest-treatment-posttests design was adopted with two experimental groups and one control group involved in the experiment. The control group was asked to complete interactional tasks with interlocutors without any recasts provided. Two experimental groups were recasts groups with one of them attending stimulated recall interview after the immediate posttest and the other attending immediate stimulated recall interview every day immediately after the treatment and before the immediate posttest.;To find whether there was a relationship between WM and noticing of recasts of L2 forms was the first research goal in the present study. The effect of L2 proficiency level on noticing of L2 forms was another goal. While only a limited number of studies have investigated the role of WM in L2 implicit learning conditions, this issue will also be addressed. Finally, the effectiveness of recasts in instruction and the reactivity issue of immediate stimulated recall as a new method to detect noticing are two other focuses in the present study.;Research results found that there was a significant relationship between WM and noticing of English past tense but not English questions, which indicates that the relationship between WM and noticing of L2 forms may be target-specific. No significant effect of L2 proficiency on noticing was found. However, descriptive data showed a possible trend that the low-proficiency group reported more noticing of L2 forms than the high-proficiency group. The effect of WM capacity on L2 development under all those three implicit learning conditions was found insignificant. There may be a delayed effect of recasts in learners' L2 development; however, due to the limitation in research design, this delayed effect may result from both recasts and stimulated recall interviews. Immediate stimulated recall was found non-reactive in the present study.