A Study on L1 and L2 Acquisition Parallels: Looking Focus as a Learning Instrument for Second Language Acquisition

Abstract

There is an ongoing debate on whether language acquisition processes supporting first language acquisition extend to the acquisition of a second language. Previous research suggests young infants make use of a language acquisition mechanism in the form of an increased looking focus towards the mouth of the interlocutor when hearing their native or foreign language. However, this increased focus was not seen in the attention distribution of adult controls. The present study aimed to find out whether this increased focus is still present in the attention distribution of adolescent learners as they listen to foreign language, whether attention distribution relates to a foreign language being learned or not, and ultimately whether L2 learners seem to adopt selective attention towards the mouth as an instrument for L2 acquisition. This was done by means of an eye-tracking experiment in which a total of 80 Dutch secondary school students who learned English a second language watched and listened to videos featuring two speakers speak Dutch, English, and Hungarian. Second language proficiency, measured using a phoneme discrimination task and LexTALE, was shown to have no effect on attention distribution. Crucially, there was an increased focus on the mouth when non-native language is heard, regardless of whether it was a language that was learned or not.