Phillip Hamrick

Kent State University, English, Faculty Member

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I am Associate Professor at Kent State University, where I teach and conduct research. I am Principal Investigator of the Language and Cognition Research Laboratory. I am an expert on (neuro)cognitive and psycholinguistic aspects of language acquisition, particularly those involving general learning and memory mechanisms (e.g., implicit learning, statistical learning, declarative memory, procedural memory, etc.).

My research has appeared in numerous scholarly venues, such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Language Learning, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, and Learning and Individual Differences.

You can find out more about my work and my lab at lcrlab.weebly.com

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Papers by Phillip Hamrick

A neurocognitive perspective on retrieval interference in L2 sentence processing

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ESTABLISHING EVIDENCE OF LEARNING IN EXPERIMENTS EMPLOYING ARTIFICIAL LINGUISTIC SYSTEMS

Artificial linguistic systems (ALSs) offer many potential benefi ts for second language acquisiti... more Artificial linguistic systems (ALSs) offer many potential benefi ts for second language acquisition (SLA) research. Nonetheless, their use in experiments with posttest-only designs can give rise to internal validity problems depending on the baseline that is employed to establish evidence of learning. Researchers in this area often compare experimental groups' performance against (a) statistical chance, (b) untrained control groups' performance, and/or (c) trained control groups' performance. However, each of these methods can involve unwarranted tacit assumptions, limitations, and challenges from a variety of sources (e.g., preexisting perceptual biases, participants' fabrication of rules, knowledge gained during the test), any of which might produce systematic response patterns that overlap with the linguistic target even in the absence of learning during training. After illustrating these challenges, we offer some brief recommendations...

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(In)sensitivity to input statistics in L2 formulaic sequences: Proficiency or Maturation?

by Nick B Pandža and Phillip Hamrick

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Declarative and procedural memory as individual differences in incidental language learning

This study investigated whether individual differences in declarative and procedural memory abili... more This study investigated whether individual differences in declarative and procedural memory abilities predicted
the learning and retention of second language (L2) syntactic structures under incidental conditions. Participants
were exposed to novel syntactic structures in a semi-artificial language paradigmunder incidental learning conditions.
After exposure, theywere given a surprise recognition task inwhich they were asked to discriminate old
and new sentences, which only could be done on the basis of their syntactic structures. Participants were then
given an identical surprise test after a period of no exposure. Declarative memory abilities predicted performance
on the immediate, but not delayed, recognition task, whereas procedural memory abilities predicted performance
on the delayed, but not immediate, recognition task. The results demonstrate that the previouslyreported
relationships between declarative and procedural memory abilities and L2 development under intentional learning conditions can also be found under incidental learning conditions.

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Triangulating measures of awareness: A contribution to the debate on learning without awareness.

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Competitive lexical activation during ESL spoken word recognition

Recognizing a spoken word involves the activation of multiple candidate words in memory and subse... more Recognizing a spoken word involves the activation of multiple candidate words in memory and subsequent competition between those candidate words. This process of word candidate activation and competition are increased and protracted in second language learners, relative to native speakers . While previous work has established that accurate second language word recognition is influenced by word frequency and neighborhood density, little work has focused on the frequencies and neighborhood densities of the lexical candidates that are activated and compete before accurate word recognition occurs. The present study investigated whether frequency and neighborhood density contribute to the sustained activation and competition of second language words by focusing on word recognition by Arabic learners of ESL using a variant of the gating task. Participants listened to fragments of 24 monosyllabic English words presented repeatedly, pseudo-randomized, with the amount of the word presented increasing in 70 millisecond increments. After hearing each fragment, participants indicated the word they believed they were hearing. The results revealed that, prior to successful word recognition, participants consistently produced words that were higher in frequency and from denser phonological neighborhoods than the target words they were hearing, suggesting that activation levels of lexical competitors are driven at least in part by frequency and lexical neighborhood density. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

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A role for chunk formation in statistical learning of second language syntax

Language Learning, 2014

Humans are remarkably sensitive to the statistical structure of language N. Ellis, 2008). However... more Humans are remarkably sensitive to the statistical structure of language N. Ellis, 2008). However, different mechanisms have been proposed to account for such statistical learning. The present study compared adult learning of syntax and the ability of two models of statistical learning to simulate human performance: Simple Recurrent Networks , which learn by predictive computation, and PARSER (Perruchet & Vinter, 1998), which learns chunks as a byproduct of general principles of associative learning and memory. The computational models and human adults were trained on sentences from a semiartificial language with probabilistic syntax and their learning outcomes compared. Neither model was able to fully reproduce the human data, which may indicate less robust statistical learning effects in adults; however, PARSER was able to simulate more of the adult learning data than the Simple Recurrent Network, suggesting a possible role for chunk formation in early phases of adult learning of second language syntax.

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Recognition memory for novel syntactic structures

Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Frequency effects, learning conditions, and the development of implicit and explicit lexical knowledge

■ FREQUENCY EFFECTS IN LANGUAGE are robust, but they interact in complex ways with other internal... more ■ FREQUENCY EFFECTS IN LANGUAGE are robust, but they interact in complex ways with other internal and external factors. An experiment investigated such an interaction between frequency, awareness (internal), and learning conditions (external) in adult lexical development. Participants were exposed to pseudowords and images under either incidental or intentional conditions and were then given a picture-matching task with subjective measures of awareness (Rebuschat 2008). We report two primary ndings: rst, frequency effects in lexical development are similar for implicit and explicit knowledge, consistent with theories of SLA proposing a single memory system for implicit and explicit lexical knowledge. Second, frequency effects were larger under incidental than intentional learning conditions. Overall, the results suggest complex interactions between frequency, learning conditions, and awareness.

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How Implicit is Statistical Learning?

An important difference between implicit learning and statistical learning research is that impli... more An important difference between implicit learning and statistical learning research is that implicit learning studies contain measures of awareness, while statistical learning studies do not. As such, it is unclear whether statistical learning typically results in explicit (conscious) or implicit (unconscious) knowledge. To address this gap, the present study investigated whether a typical statistical learning experiment results in implicit knowledge, explicit knowledge, or both. The experiment combined the cross-situational word learning paradigm (Yu & Smith, 2007) and subjective measures of awareness (Dienes & Scott, 2005). Thirty subjects were exposed to an artificial vocabulary under incidental or intentional learning conditions. The results show a clear learning effect in both learning conditions, with a more robust performance in the intentional group. The subjective measures of awareness further indicate that subjects in the intentional group developed both implicit and explicit knowledge, while the subjects in the incidental group developed primarily implicit knowledge. The experiment illustrates the usefulness of including measures of awareness when researching statistical learning.

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The developmental outcomes of interaction in conversation groups

This exploratory study examines the potential learning opportunities of interactions in the natur... more This exploratory study examines the potential learning opportunities of interactions in the naturalistic setting of a German conversation group. Eleven intermediate L2 German learners participated in weekly conversation groups, which were recorded and then transcribed. In addition, information regarding learners' perceptions, con dence, and willingness to communicate was obtained by means of self-report surveys and interviews. A discourse analytic approach indicated that learners' styles were more passive or active depending on their ability to identify and use, consciously or unconsciously, German conversational style in the group interactions.

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A prototype approach to teaching auxiliary selection in the Italian passato prossimo

Notes on some cognitive mechanisms of humor

Phillip Hamrick

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