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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. 327–356

Chapter 11
Online methods in research on input processing and processing instruction

| San Diego State University

Evidence for the input processing (IP) model (VanPatten, 1996, 2004, 2007, 2015a, 2020) and the benefits of processing instruction (PI) comes largely from offline tasks, despite the fact that both are concerned with online sentence comprehension. This chapter aims to stimulate more online research in these areas. I first provide a brief summary of techniques that measure real-time sentence comprehension and then offer suggestions for how they can be used in research on the IP model and PI. Lastly, I review recent online studies of the effects of PI on second language (L2) learners’ real-time sentence comprehension. I end by proposing two new hypotheses regarding the potential that PI has to benefit L2 learners’ online processing of input.

Keywords: online methods, input processing, processing instruction, structured input
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Online measures of sentence comprehension
    • Spoken language comprehension
      • The visual world paradigm
      • Mouse tracking
      • Cross-modal priming
    • Written language comprehension
      • Self-paced reading
      • Eye tracking during reading
      • Event-related potentials
  • Online methods and VanPatten’s IP model
    • The primacy of content words principle
    • The lexical preference principle
    • The preference for nonredundancy principle
    • The meaning-before-nonmeaning principle
    • The first noun principle
    • The sentence location principle
  • Current directions in the online study of IP and PI
    • Using online measures during PI/SI treatments
    • Using online measures in pre- and post-test assessments
  • Future directions in the online study of IP and PI
    • PI and predictive processing
    • PI and morphological decomposition
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.62.11kea
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