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Part of
Research on Second Language Processing and Processing Instruction: Studies in honor of Bill VanPatten
Edited by Michael J. Leeser, Gregory D. Keating and Wynne Wong
[Studies in Bilingualism 62] 2021
► pp. 153–182

Chapter 5
VanPatten (1990)’s long and winding story and the nature of replication studies

| Georgetown University
| Georgetown University

VanPatten’s (1990) investigation of attention to form and meaning during input processing remains among the most cited and replicated studies in second language research. Early replications (Barcroft, 2001; Greenslade, Bouden, & Sanz, 1999; Wong, 2001) kept materials intact, changing modality or language, yielding comparable results. Later replications operationalized comprehension differently, changing text and assessment, and concluded even low proficiency learners can consciously process form, regardless of salience or meaning, without detriment to comprehension (Leow, Hsieh, & Moreno, 2008; Morgan-Short, Heil, Botero-Moriarty, & Ebert, 2012; Morgan-Short et al., 2018). This chapter compares these texts and assessments. Results suggest the new assessment obscures differences between proficiencies and modalities, and the new, more complex text hides task effects identified in the original strand.

Keywords: replication, attention, language processing, form versus meaning, second language
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The initial study
  • The replication agenda and the replication crisis in SLA
    • The replication agenda: Replication round 1
    • The replication agenda: Replication round 2
  • The current study
  • Methodology
    • Participants
    • Materials
    • Procedure
  • Analysis and results
    • Coding
    • Quantitative analyses
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 17 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.62.05san
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Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Marsden, Emma & Kara Morgan‐Short
2023. (Why) Are Open Research Practices the Future for the Study of Language Learning?. Language Learning DOI logo
Pan, Junlan, Yuyang Zhang & Wen Zhang
2023. Revisiting attending to form during meaning comprehension in learning Spanish as an additional foreign language. Foreign Language Annals 56:1 ► pp. 214 ff. DOI logo

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