The Relationship Between Domain-General Auditory Processing and Second/Additional Language Acquisition

Domain-general auditory processing (DGAP), the ability to perceive and recall sound features (Mueller et al., 2012), is linked to disparities in L2/A phonological and speech learning. While evidence suggests its role in L2/A proficiency and grammar learning (e.g., Saito et al., 2022), other domains remain underexplored.

Intermediate L2/A Spanish learners completed four auditory discrimination tests (duration, rise-time, pitch, formant; Kachlicka et al., 2019), an elicited imitation task (EIT), and a standardized test (DELE) to assess proficiency. A grammaticality judgment task (GJT) measured grammatical knowledge on phrase structure (PS), subject-verb (SV), and noun-phrase agreement (AGn, AGg). ERP responses during the GJT examined (morpho)syntactic processing.

Preliminary analyses (N=13) showed variation in auditory processing, with lower scores indicating better abilities. Participants performed at intermediate levels for proficiency (EIT: M=75.69, SD=23.43; DELE: M=20.60, SD=3.59) and the GJT (PS: M=0.799, SD=0.172; SV: M=0.797, SD=0.147; AGn: M=0.794, SD=0.175; AGg: M=0.64, SD=0.15). Correlation analyses showed small-to-medium negative associations between spectral processing and proficiency (EIT: r=-0.339; DELE: r=-0.348), and grammatical knowledge (PS: r=-0.445; SV: r=-0.339; AGn: r=-0.40; AGg: r=-0.356). Similar associations emerged between temporal processing and grammatical knowledge (SV: r=-0.255; AGg: r=-0.564). ERP analyses showed P600_PS and P600_SV effects for spectral processing, and P600_AGn and P600_AGg effects for temporal processing. Participants showed a P600 trend for number agreement (PS: M=0.33, SD=5.00; SV: M=0.60, SD=3.55; AGn: M=1.28, SD=2.52). Two medium negative correlations were found for spectral processing (r=0.49) and three small-to-medium negative for temporal processing (r=0.48).