Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis investigates the modulatory role of proficiency in implicit attentional processes that co-occur with noticing (Schmidt, 1990). The primary hypothesis was that higher Japanese proficiency would go hand in hand with a stronger inhibition of irrelevant stimuli made of Japanese hiragana characters. A secondary purpose was to explore a hypothesized link between saliency and proficiency upon which the primary hypothesis depends. The findings regarding the inhibitory effect were inconclusive. However, a significant correlation was found between language proficiency, as measured by a lexical decision task, and reaction times in a task originally designed to investigate Inattentional Blindness. This is taken as supporting the hypothesized link between proficiency and the visual saliency of written text. This thesis makes a first step towards bringing methods from Inattentional Blindness research into the field of SLA, and it is hoped that this foundation can be improved and built upon in future research.
Author: Ryan Peters
Language: English
Subfield: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2237498974