Author Date

2025-03-13

Degree Name

Department

Linguistics

College

Humanities

Defense Date

2025-03-03

Publication Date

2025-03-13

First Faculty Advisor

Dan Dewey

First Faculty Reader

Jeff Green

Honors Coordinator

Holly Baker

Keywords

second language acquisition, neurolinguistics, social interaction, memory

Abstract

This thesis addresses the question of what effect social learning has on successful second language acquisition behaviorally and neurologically. Participants were taught novel L2 words in a social learning condition and a non-social translation condition. They were then tested with a social testing condition and a non-social translation condition right after learning and at a later date, either 1 week, 4 weeks, or 2 months after learning. Brain activity was measured by comparing oxygenated hemoglobin levels with an fNIRS device. A significant positive effect of sociality was found for response accuracy, as words learned in the social condition performed better than non-socially learned words during the second testing session. During the learning task, increased neural activity was witnessed in the left superior temporal sulcus, bilateral posterior middle temporal gyrus, right inferior temporal gyrus, and right temporal parietal junction. These areas are responsible for social and semantic processing. Together, these results suggest that L2 vocabulary learned in a social context activates areas of the brain related to social processing. This results in richer semantic information that is consolidated to long-term memory, allowing for better recall and retention of L2 vocabulary over time.