Psycholinguistic approaches to second language Spanish

This chapter focuses on the studies of Spanish second language (L2) morphosyntax processing to illustrate the variety of experimental paradigms, methodologies, and techniques typical of a psycholinguistic approach to Spanish L2 acquisition (SSLA). Nowadays the "psycholinguistic approach" to SSLA is distinguished by its focus on exploring the relationships between mind, brain, and language using laboratory-based experimental paradigms, quantitative methodology involving statistical analyses, and advanced online technology such as eye-tracking, electrophysiology, and neuroimaging. Many of the results about Spanish L2 processing produced so far have been obtained from offline production studies of learner errors. As well as the number and type of errors produced by participants, a more direct way of using behavior to infer the mental processes involved in language processing is to use reaction times. Another fine-grained online technique which is particularly suited to measuring the fast complex brain processes involved in language processing is Event Related Potentials (ERPs).