A Preliminary Study On The Age Factor In English Syntactic Processing In Chinese Learners Of English As A Foreign Language: An ERPs Study

Ever since the 60s of last century, the critical period hypothesis made age factor a hot issue. Cognitive behavioral researches gradually achieve consensus on speech acquisition based on this theory, however, age effect was not uniform on other language acquisition levels, especially on the syntactic processing level. With the development of cognitive neuroscience in recent years, researchers probe into this theory with the help of more direct and advanced techniques, such as the Event-related Potentials (ERPs), Functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) and Magneto Encephalography (MEG). Whereas age effect on the acquisition of English syntactic processing in formal instruction environment lacks empirical evidence, therefore the present study investigated the role of age on syntactic processing in early and late Chinese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL learners) by ERPs.Since the theory assumes that early learners probably achieve high proficiency, late learners should be equal proficiency level, differences of results or ERPs effects due to age factor, could be comparable. Two groups were included: 13 high proficient EFL learners with early age of acquisition (AOA) = 9.4 years (EAHP), and 11 high proficient EFL learners with late mean AOA =12 years (LAHP). Based on the experimental stimuli patterns in Rossi et al (2006), stimuli in the current study consisted of 120 passive sentences including a word category violation, a morphosyntactic agreement violation and correct sentences. Two experiments were conducted to study whether EAHP and LAHP EFL learners in China reveal comparable ERPs effects in processing word category/morphological agreement violation. Both EAHP and LAHP Chinese EFL learners showed the same reliable event-related potentials (ERPs) components for word category violation: an early anterior negativity (ELAN), P300 reflecting reference-related process, and P600 evidencing processes of reanalysis. Quantitative differences were found for the mean amplitude analysis with amplitude reduction in LAHP in addition to distribution differences. For morphosyntactic agreement violation, only a marginal P600 showed for EAHP EFL learners and a reliable P600 for LAHP EFL learners with absence of LAN for both groups. Besides the qualitative differences, distribution differences also revealed and mean amplitude analysis exhibited reduction for EAHP EFL learners. These findings emphasize that AOA seems to play no significant role in syntactic processing for Chinese EFL learners. And the appearance of ELAN in both groups provides further evidence to the three-stage sentence processing model proposed by Friederici (2002). The foreign language learning environment with limited exposure to English and limited use of English may explain the absence of age effect in EAHP and LAHP Chinese EFL learners.Suggestions to implications, limitations and future researches of the study are discussed at last.