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Elicited imitation (EI), a short-cut measure of global proficiency in second language (L2) research, requires participants to listen to sentences and repeat them as closely as possible. To support instrument sharing and assessment of L2 proficiency for longitudinal and crosslinguistic research, we created a parallel form of an EI task (EIT) for L2 English originally developed by the third author and colleagues and investigated the reliability and validity of the original and new forms. Eighty-two participants completed the two EITs, an oral narrative task, and a self-diagnostic survey. Both forms exhibited high reliability and good alignment with external criterion measures. Both distinguished well among four proficiency levels in the sample. Further, participants’ perception of EI difficulty aligned well with their EI scores. We suggest some improvements to boost forms equivalence and discuss new insights about the nature of EI as reconstructive, integrative, modality independent, and with indirect links to communicative abilities. Our study seeks to make this English EIT instrument widely useful to the L2 research community.

Elicited imitation (EI), a short-cut measure of global proficiency in second language (L2) research, requires participants to listen to sentences and repeat them as closely as possible. To support instrument sharing and assessment of L2 proficiency for longitudinal and crosslinguistic research, we created a parallel form of an EI task (EIT) for L2 English originally developed by the third author and colleagues and investigated the reliability and validity of the original and new forms. Eighty-two participants completed the two EITs, an oral narrative task, and a self-diagnostic survey. Both forms exhibited high reliability and good alignment with external criterion measures. Both distinguished well among four proficiency levels in the sample. Further, participants’ perception of EI difficulty aligned well with their EI scores. We suggest some improvements to boost forms equivalence and discuss new insights about the nature of EI as reconstructive, integrative, modality independent, and with indirect links to communicative abilities. Our study seeks to make this English EIT instrument widely useful to the L2 research community.

In recent years, within research on the relationship between language and cognition, there has been growing interest in examining how language-specific features, such as Mandarin Chinese numeral classifiers (NCs), influence cognitive processing (Kuo & Sera, 2009; Srinivasan, 2010). This dissertation project aims to understand the impact of language learning on cognitive processing of categorization, inhibition, and count-mass distinction. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the extent to which potential moderator variables mediate the impact of language on the cognitive outcome measures. Experiment 1 investigated the effectiveness of implicit and explicit instruction by assessing classifier knowledge transferability with delayed testing. In contrast, Experiment 2 examined cognitive processing (i.e., categorization and individuation) as a function of classifier language experience and the context of language exposure via a web-based research design. Experiment 1 (n = 128) indicated that participants that received classifier training display transferability of classifier knowledge in an object categorization task but did not demonstrate a relative advantage of one instructional method over another (i.e., explicit vs. implicit). Findings from Experiment 2 (n = 191) showed that speakers of one and two classifier languages (i.e., Chinese and Chinese-Malay speakers) have a significantly higher classifier-based object categorization preference and significantly lower proficiency in discriminating between count and mass nouns than the control group (English speakers). The Chinese speakers relied more strongly on size to differentiate count and mass nouns. Lastly, the findings combining the groups from Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 suggested that language exposure (intensive lab-based vs. naturalistic long-term immersion) affects learner’s performance on object categorization tasks. In summary, the instructional method and time of testing and language exposure played a significant role in language learning, retention, and transferability of classifier knowledge: This study has established a research program that systematically examines the effect of the learning of Chinese numeral classifiers on learners’ cognitive performance. Understanding the interaction between the experience-based factors and the transferability of classifier knowledge advances our understanding of the dynamic experience of language learning.

This study examines the relationship between language and cognition with a focus on Chinese numeral classifiers (CNCs). NCs are ideally suited to exploring the link between language and semantic categorization, as classifier selection depends on the physical attributes of the associated noun (e.g., Mandarin zhi is used for long and rigid objects and tiao for long and flexible objects). Previous studies on numeral classifiers have addressed the language-cognition link by comparing the cognitive performance of monolingual as well as bilingual speakers of different languages (Lucy, 1992; Saalbach & Imai, 2005; Gao & Malt, 2009). In contrast, the present study sought to address the cognitive effects of numeral classifiers via a training study that investigated whether exposure to CNCs influenced Native-English speakers’ object categorization preferences, inhibitory control and memory retrieval. The participants of this study were 99 Native-English speaking College students. They were randomly assigned to an experimental group, which received training on four commonly used CNCs during the initial phase of the experiment, or a control group, which did not receive similar treatment during the initial phase. After the initial phase, the experimental group and the control group were assessed on a Forced Choice Task, a Go/No-Go Task and a Memory Task. A Mixed-design ANOVA indicated that the experimental group displayed a preference for objects sharing the same classifier in the Forced Choice Task and the Go/ No-Go Task (i.e. Go trials) when compared to the controls. The effect of exposure to numeral classifiers on inhibitory control was supported with a significantly lower false alarm rate (in the No-Go trials) for the experimental group. However, no group differences were observed in the results of the analysis of the participants’ median reaction times in the Go/No-Go tasks. Similarly, the differences between the two groups’ scores on the Memory Task was not found to be significant. The results of the study indicated that exposure to CNCs influenced Native-English speakers’ categorization. The results also revealed partial support for the influence of exposure to CNCs on inhibitory processing, but not in the case of object clustering.