Language proficiency as a modulator of the processing of unattended text

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.