The aim of the present study was establishing to what extent individual differences in cognitive aptitudes were
associated with second language (L2) morphological acquisition under different practice distribution. Sixty participants studied
morphological rules of a novel miniature-language system in order to use them for oral production. They engaged in four training
sessions in either shorter-spaced learning (twice a week) or longer-spaced learning conditions (once a week). Their oral
production performance both during and after the training was related to their metalinguistic rule rehearsal ability (MRRA) and
working memory capacity (WMC). Multiple regression analyses revealed that MRRA predicted learners’ training and posttest
performance mainly under the longer-spaced condition, while WMC played a limited role at best under both learning conditions.
These results suggest that practice distribution may be individualized based on learners’ aptitude strengths to optimize L2
morphological learning.
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