Investigating the roles of working memory and oral language abilities in elicited imitation performance

Resulting Publication:

Park, H., Solon, M., Henderson, C., & Dehghan-Chaleshtori, M. (2020). The Roles of Working Memory and Oral Language Abilities in Elicited Imitation Performance. The Modern Language Journal. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12618

Summary of the Work:

In this study, me and my colleagues investigated how well an EIT measures language skills by looking at memory and language abilities. We studied 78 people learning Spanish as a second language at different skill levels. We found that people's performance on the EIT was mainly related to how well they could speak Spanish, rather than how good their memory was. In other words, the ability to speak fluently, accurately, and in complex ways was more important than memory capacity. Additionally, memory might affect EIT performance differently depending on a person's experience with Spanish. Less experienced learners might benefit from better memory, but this wasn't the case for more experienced learners. This study helps us understand how memory and language abilities affect performance on language tests like the EIT.

Significance of the Work:

This project is important because understanding the roles of working memory and oral language abilities in language assessment has implications for designing more tailored and effective language instruction strategies.