Abstract Summary
This longitudinal intervention study analyzes (1) when and why L2 English and L2 Spanish development in the third age is statistically significantly increasing (or decreasing), and (2) whether our set of predictors (age, cognitive fitness, bilingualism, socio-affect, EEG) has a significant effect on the 140 trajectories under investigation.
Abstract :
The present longitudinal intervention study aims to shed light on the hypothesis that second language (L2) acquisition has the potential to be an “anti-aging activity” (Ryan & Dörnyei, 2013: 93), being a cognitively challenging activity that seems in specific circumstances to promote neural plasticity and to foster social interaction and individual mobility (e.g. Antoniou, Gunasekera & Wong 2013). Specifically, we make use of an equal-status concurrent mixed methods design, systematically integrating qualitative content analyses with generalized additive mixed-effects regression models (GAMMs), to analyze the short-term and long-term developmental trajectories of older adults (aged 62+) in Austria and Switzerland who took part in either an intensive English course (classroom instruction) or an intensive Spanish course (computer program). Some of the key questions we ask the models are (1) when and why L2 development is statistically significantly increasing (or decreasing), and (2) whether our set of predictors (age, cognitive fitness, bilingualism, socio-affect, EEG responses) has a significant effect on the trajectories under investigation. Our data set contains 140 learning trajectories – 60 participants on a mono/bilingual continuum in the experimental group (L2 training), 40 participants in the active control group (playing strategy games), and 40 participants in the passive control group – each represented by 30 measurements taken at equal intervals over 7 months, amounting to 4,200 data points per test altogether. Participants are assessed on a range of behavioral (e.g. working memory), L2 (receptive and productive skills), socio-affective (survey) and neurophysiological (EEG) parameters, with the aim of identifying factors that facilitate L2 learning and help explain inter- and intra-individual variation. Results show, inter alia, that it is partly through the stimulation of social well-being that the cognitive effects that are being observed for the L2 training conditions emerge.
