Applied Linguistics 2014 354 483ndash503 Oxford University Press 2014

doi101093applinamu013 Advance Access published on 23 April 2014

Language Aptitude and Long-termAchievement in Early Childhood L2Learners

GISELA GRANENA

School of Languages Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

E-mail ggranenauocedu

Language aptitude comprises cognitive and perceptual abilities that predispose

individuals to learn well or rapidly (Carroll 1981 Doughty et al 2007) and that

can interplay with age by moderating its effects on learning outcomes Although

there is agreement regarding the importance of aptitude findings have been

mixed regarding its role in child second language acquisition (eg

Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam 2008 vs DeKeyser 2000) This study set out to

investigate whether aptitude played a role in ultimate morphosyntactic attain-

ment by a group of early childhood learners Participants completed a speeded-

response and a non-speeded-response grammaticality judgement test (GJT) and

the LLAMA aptitude test (Meara 2005) Results showed the presence of an

interaction between aptitude test and target structure Aptitude was signifi-

cantly related to early learnersrsquo attainment in structures involving grammatical

agreement on the non-speeded-response GJT This was interpreted as showing

the compensatory role of aptitude in structures for which age effects are the

strongest and a relationship between measures of aptitude weighted in favour of

explicit cognitive processes and untimed measures that induce learners to

approach language analytically

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Long-term achievement in second language (L2) acquisition is characterized

by high inter-individual variability Such variability in learning outcomes has

been attributed apart from age to a broad array of external socialenviron-

mental factors and to individual learner differences in the cognitive and affect-

ive domains In naturalistic contexts where acquisition takes place through

immersion in the L2-speaking environment several of these learner and en-

vironmental variables have been investigated for their potential in moderating

the effects of age on long-term learning outcomes One of these variables has

been language aptitude a complex construct that comprises cognitive and

perceptual abilities that predispose individuals to learn well or rapidly

(Carroll 1981 Doughty et al 2007) Its relevance to second language acquisi-

tion (SLA) has been consistently shown by an increasingly larger number of

studies that have recently made aptitude research a revitalized area of study

spurred by advances in cognitive and educational psychology in

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understanding how languages are learned as well as by recent developments

in the measurement and conceptualization of aptitude (eg Doughty et al

2010 Granena 2013a)

Skehan (1989) in fact argued that aptitude could be even more relevant for

learning in naturalistic (acquisition-rich) contexts than in instructed contexts

because of the greater amount of input that the learner has to process and the

pressure to discover regularities and make generalizations merely from L2 ex-

posure The nature of such a relationship however is still controversial and

research findings have been mixed Some studies have found that aptitude is

differentially related to learning outcomes in early and late L2 learners

Specifically these studies found that aptitude was related to variation in late

learnersrsquo morphosyntactic attainment but not in early learnersrsquo attainment

(DeKeyser 2000 DeKeyser et al 2010) or that different components of aptitude

were not equally related to L2 attainment in the two populations (Harley and

Hart 1997) All these studies have provided evidence in support of an interaction

between age and language aptitude Other studies however have found no

evidence of such an interaction either because aptitude played a similar role in

both early and late learnersrsquo morphosyntactic attainment (eg Abrahamsson

and Hyltenstam 2008) or because it did not play a role in either early or late

learnersrsquo morphosyntactic attainment (Granena and Long 2013)

The study by Harley and Hart (1997) is commonly cited as the first study that

documented an interaction between age and aptitude in early and late L2

learners The study conducted with learners in immersion programmes in

Canada found significant positive correlations between memory and L2

outcomes in early immersion learners and between analytical ability and

L2 outcomes in late immersion learners Although this study is usually cited

as evidence in support of an interaction between age and aptitude the fact

that early and late learners were exposed to two different types of instruction

(ie holistic memory-based vs language analysis) allows for an alternative

competing explanation since the relationship between age and aptitude

could be in fact the result of an interaction between aptitude and instructional

method

Unlike Harley and Hart (1997) the two studies by DeKeyser (DeKeyser 2000

and DeKeyser et al 2010) were carried out with long-term residents in an

L2-speaking country In DeKeyser (2000) Hungarian speakers of L2 English

in the USA were tested on various elements of morphosyntax via an auditory

grammaticality judgement test (GJT) Aptitude was operationalized as L1

verbal analytical ability The results showed a significant correlation between

GJT scores and language aptitude among late arrivals (ie participants who had

arrived in the country after age 15 years) but a non-significant correlation

among early arrivals Those participants who were late arrivals and scored

within the range of child arrivals or came close were all high-aptitude par-

ticipants The exception was a participant who did not have high aptitude but

who nevertheless scored within the range of child arrivals on the GJT

DeKeyser argued that this participant a postdoctoral student in the natural

484 LANGUAGE APTITUDE AND EARLY L2 ACQUISITION

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sciences was probably of above-average analytic ability but that his true skills

had not been captured by the aptitude measure used the Words-in-Sentences

subtest in the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT Carroll and Sapon

1959) On the basis of these results DeKeyser concluded that above-average

analytic abilities are required to reach near-native levels in the L2

DeKeyser et al (2010) replicated the findings in DeKeyser (2000) with

Russian speakers of L2 English and L2 Hebrew in the USA and Israel respect-

ively In these two parallel cross-linguistic studies aptitude [operationalized as

L1 verbal aptitude and measured by a test comparable with the verbal

Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)] was significantly correlated with ultimate at-

tainment for the adult learners but not for the early learners Specifically the

significant correlation was found for the 18ndash40 years age of acquisition range

but not for the age of acquisition lt18 years group The correlation in the age of

acquisition gt40 years group was not significant either which was interpreted

as the result of factors related to aging

While language aptitude was not related to ultimate morphosyntactic attain-

ment among early acquirers in the studies by DeKeyser (2000) and DeKeyser

et al (2010) Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam (2008) and Bylund et al (2012)

found aptitude effects in pre-pubescent L2 learnersrsquo ultimate attainment who

were first exposed to the L2 before age 12 years In Abrahamsson and

Hyltenstam (2008) there was a significant and moderately strong relationship

between aptitude and ultimate attainment in the early L2-learner group

In this group 72 per cent of the learners who performed within the native

speaker (NS) range had high aptitude operationalized as being above

the grouprsquos average level of aptitude In the group of late learners the four

learners who were able to score within the NS range were all also above

average in terms of aptitude In Bylund et al (2012) aptitude was reported

as the only significant predictor for nativelike performance in both the L1

and the L2

Like DeKeyser (2000) and DeKeyser et al (2010) Abrahamsson and

Hyltenstam (2008) and Bylund et al (2012) relied on grammaticality judge-

ments to measure ultimate attainment Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam (2008)

combined the scores of two different GJT modalities auditory and written

while Bylund et al (2012) used an untimed cloze test and an auditory GJT

that gave participants a time frame of 10 s to respond after the end of each

sentence Unlike DeKeyser (2000) and DeKeyser et al (2010) where aptitude

was operationalized as L1 verbal ability Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam and

Bylund et al used a non-L1-based omnibus test of aptitude the Swansea

Language Aptitude Tests (LAT Meara et al 2003) a combination of five dif-

ferent subtests phonetic memory analytical ability grammatical inferencing

sound recognition and soundndashsymbol correspondence On the basis of the

results of their study Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam (2008) concluded that

lsquoDeKeyserrsquos claim that language aptitude lsquolsquoonly plays a role for adult learnersrsquorsquo

should be modified to state that language aptitude plays not only a crucial role

for adult learners but also a certain role for child learnersrsquo (p 499)

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However another study Granena and Long (2013) did not find an effect of

aptitude in either early or late learnersrsquo morphosyntactic attainment Like

Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam (2008) they used a non-L1-based omnibus

measure of aptitude the latest version of the LAT the LLAMA aptitude test

(Meara 2005) but unlike Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam (2008) DeKeyser

(2000) and DeKeyser et al (2010) they measured morphosyntactic attain-

ment by means of a battery of five different tests which were used to create

an overall composite score This battery included a GJT but also an oral nar-

ration task two word order tasks and a gender assignment task Granena and

Long (2013) concluded that the conflicting results of the studies were mostly

due to methodological differences concerning sampling and sample sizes as

well as the aptitude tests procedures and outcome measures employed

Aptitude as measured by tests such as the MLAT or the LLAMA loosely

based on the MLAT may be important in morphosyntactic attainment when

this is assessed by means of tasks that focus on language forms and language

correctness such as GJTs However findings may be different when L2 attain-

ment is measured by means of oral production tasks or other meaning-based

tasks that do not call for the same analytic andor metalinguistic abilities that

also characterize explicit language aptitude measures

The issue of whether a cognitive factor such as language aptitude plays a role

in early L2 acquisition has relevant implications for SLA theory and practice

The rationale behind DeKeyserrsquos (2000) claim in support of a differential role

of aptitude in child and adult L2 acquisition was Bley-Vromanrsquos (1988 1990)

Fundamental Difference Hypothesis according to which there is a qualitative

difference between the learning mechanisms of child and adult L2 learners

younger learners learn mostly implicitly using domain-specific mechanisms

whereas older learners learn mostly explicitly using problem-solving or

domain-general mechanisms and therefore have to rely more on language

aptitude As a result of this qualitative difference between child and adult L2

learning DeKeyser predicted that aptitude would have a differential role in the

two populations If instead language aptitude is found to be equally related to

ultimate attainment in both child and adult L2 learners this could suggest that

child and adult L2 learners are more similar than predicted so far in terms of L2

learning processes

AIMS OF THE PRESENT STUDY

This study focused on the interplay of aptitude and age by investigating the

role of aptitude in early childhood morphosyntactic acquisition in a naturalistic

learning context Unfortunately there is no consensus in the literature regard-

ing a cut-off point between early and late L2 learners and different theoretic-

ally andor empirically motivated cut-offs have been suggested age 12 years

(eg Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam 2008) age 15 years (Johnson and Newport

1989 DeKeyser 2000) and age 18 years (eg DeKeyser et al 2010) Unlike

previous research the present study set out to investigate the role of aptitude

486 LANGUAGE APTITUDE AND EARLY L2 ACQUISITION

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in early childhood acquisition exclusively defined as L2 learning that started in

the age range between 3 and 6 years Age 3 years was considered a reasonable

choice for dividing simultaneous (2L1) and sequential bilinguals (L2) based on

Meisel (2001 2009) Successive or sequential bilinguals learn one language

first in a given context and the L2 later and in a different context whereas

simultaneous bilinguals learn the two languages since birth and in the same

context According to Meisel (2009) successive language acquisition in early

childhood (as early as age 3 years) can be affected by early maturational

changes which justifies the classification of these sequential bilinguals as

child L2 learners

While there is considerable research on early L2 learners there is not much

research on early childhood learners whose L2 onset began after age 3 years

but before age 6 years From the point of view of learning mechanisms this is a

relevant L2 learner population since they are not expected to be fundamen-

tally different in terms of learning mechanisms from simultaneous bilinguals or

NSs Paradis (2009) for example discusses age 6 years in terms of changes in

explicitndashimplicit learning mechanisms since metalinguistic abilities start de-

veloping around that age Although early childhood L2 learners are not ex-

pected to be fundamentally different in terms of learning mechanisms from

simultaneous bilinguals or NSs they may crucially differ in linguistic attain-

ment and degree of variability (Meisel 2009) In addition early childhood

learners can be expected to be a more homogeneous population with respect

to variables such as type of L2 input available (eg interactional support and

scaffolding patterns) and other social factors that could play a role in

acquisition

The above considerations led to the following research questions

1 Is language aptitude related to early childhood L2 learnersrsquo ultimate mor-

phosyntactic attainment

2 If so is language aptitude equally related to ultimate morphosyntactic

attainment as measured by different language tests andor structures

METHODOLOGY

Participants

A total of 50 Chinese L1ndashSpanish L2 sequential bilinguals (42 per cent males

and 58 per cent females) participated in the study They were all long-term

residents in Madrid (Spain) with no less than a high-school diploma (80 per

cent of them had or were studying a college degree) who arrived in the coun-

try in early childhood (ie between ages 3 and 6 years) or were born in Spain1

In either case these early L2 learners had been born to Chinese-speaking

parents who did not speak the L2 at home as the participants themselves

reported in the biographical questionnaire (see Supplementary Appendix A)

As a result even those early L2 learners who had been born in Spain were not

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significantly exposed to the L2 until the beginning of preschool at age 3 years

Until that age they were primarily exposed to Chinese and therefore were

considered sequential not simultaneous bilinguals Specifically 24 of the

early learners started learning the L2 at age 3 years five of them started at

age 4 years 11 at age 5 years and 10 at age 6 years Most of them (88 per cent)

self-reported being Spanish-dominant and the rest (12 per cent) reported being

equally dominant in both Spanish and Chinese These six participants had

started learning the L2 at age 3 (n = 1) 4 (n = 2) 5 (n = 2) and 6 (n = 1) years

Participants were informally screened into the study via a telephone inter-

view conducted by the researcher in order to make sure that participants were

advanced L2 speakers and to exclude those L2 learners who might have been

living in a linguistic ghetto despite having a long length of residence The

inclusion criterion was a score of at least 4 on a 5-point scale that rated their

degree of nativelike pronunciation 5 = Native or near-native pronunciation

no foreign accent 4 = Generally good pronunciation but with occasional non-

native sounds slight foreign accent pronunciation does not interfere with

comprehensibility 3 = Frequent use of non-native sounds noticeable foreign

accent pronunciation occasionally impedes comprehensibility 2 = Generally

poor use of nativelike sounds strong foreign accent pronunciation frequently

impedes comprehensibility 1 = Very strong foreign accent definitely non-

native The average screening score in the group was 48 (SD = 040)

A group of 20 NSs of Spanish (50 per cent males and 50 per cent females)

born in Madrid and with no less than a high school diploma served as controls

Their average age at testing was 2735 years (SD = 518) Table 1 summarizes

the information regarding the L2 learnersrsquo age at testing age of onset of L2

learning length of residence and percentage of Spanish (L2) and Chinese (L1)

use daily The percentages of language use were elicited by means of a question

that asked participants to rank the languages they used on a regular day

indicating an approximate percentage of use

Table 1 L2 learnersrsquo information

Early L2 learners (n = 50)

M Range

Age at testing 2238 (445) 18ndash33

Age of onset 414 (123) 3ndash6

Length of residence 1788 (449) 11ndash28

Percentage of daily L1 use 2850 (1543) 5ndash80

Percentage of daily L2 use 6980 (1552) 40ndash100

Standard deviations appear in parentheses

488 LANGUAGE APTITUDE AND EARLY L2 ACQUISITION

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Target structures

A variety of target structures in Spanish known to be notoriously difficult for

Spanish learners were investigated In total there were six structures Three of

them involved grammatical agreement relations (i) nounndashadjective gender

agreement (ii) subjectndashverb agreement and (iii) nounndashadjective number

agreement These three structures were referred to as [+ agreement] struc-

tures The other three structures made essential contributions to meaning

(iv) subjunctive mood (v) perfectiveimperfective aspect and (vi) passives

with serestar These three structures were referred to as [ agreement]

structures

Instruments and procedures

Participants were administered a speeded-response and a non-speeded-re-

sponse auditory GJT as part of a larger test battery that was presented following

a balanced Latin square design A pool of items was first created and items

were then randomly assigned into the tests (see Supplementary Appendix B

for samples) SuperLab Pro (Cedrus 2003) was used to administer the tests The

choice of GJT measures was based on Ellisrsquo 2005 psychometric study also

replicated by Bowles (2011) according to which tests that do not allow time

to plan responses (ie online measures) may be tapping into implicit language

knowledge whereas tests that allow time to think may be tapping into explicit

language knowledge Participants also completed the LLAMA aptitude test

battery (Meara 2005) and a detailed biographical questionnaire

Speeded-response auditory GJT (k = 60)

The speeded-response GJT was a computer-delivered test with sentences pre-

sented aurally Participants indicated whether each sentence was grammatical

or ungrammatical by pressing a response button within a fixed time-limit

They were asked to press a key as soon as an error was detected in the sen-

tence Once participants pressed a key the computer automatically moved on

to the next sentence without a pause Following Ellis (2005) the time-limit for

each item was established on the basis of NSsrsquo average response time in a pilot

study (n = 10) Following Ellis as well an additional 20 per cent of the time

taken for each sentence was added to allow for the slower processing speed of

L2 learners The time allowed for judging each sentence ranged between

340872 (34 s) to 1004592 ms (10 s) (M = 580798 SD = 100076) from the

onset of the sentence In terms of target structure NSsrsquo longest average re-

sponse times were on aspectual contrasts (M = 536509 SD = 115664) fol-

lowed by gender agreement (M = 510260 SD = 47169) the passive

(M = 498820 SD = 43240) person agreement (M = 489222 SD = 60858)

number agreement (M = 469173 SD = 84426) and the subjunctive

(M = 400005 SD = 71431)

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Each item was scored dichotomously as correctincorrect and percentage

accuracy scores were calculated for grammatical and ungrammatical items

overall The internal consistency of the test according to Cronbachrsquos alpha

which measures the rank-order stability of individualsrsquo scores on different

items of the test was 92

Non-speeded-response auditory GJT (k = 60)

The non-speeded-response GJT was a computer-delivered test with sentences

presented aurally Participants were required to indicate whether each sen-

tence was grammatical or ungrammatical by pressing a response button

Unlike its time-pressured counterpart this test presented each sentence

twice before participants were allowed to provide a response Following

DeKeyser (2000) and DeKeyser et al (2010) each sentence was played

twice with a 3-s interval between the repetitions and a 6-s interval between

sentence pairs

Each item was scored dichotomously as correctincorrect and percentage

accuracy scores were calculated for grammatical and ungrammatical items

overall The internal consistency of the test according to Cronbachrsquos alpha

was 89

Language aptitude test (k = 90)

The language aptitude test was the LLAMA (Meara 2005) the most recent

version of the LAT (Meara et al 2003) The LLAMA is a computer-based ap-

titude test battery that grew out of a series of projects carried out at the

University of Wales Swansea The tests which have an exploratory nature

take approximately 25 min Each subtest is individually and automatically

scored Although largely based on the MLAT the LLAMA tests are described

as being language-independent unlike the MLAT They rely on picture stimuli

and verbal materials adapted from a British-Columbian indigenous language

and a Central-American language The LLAMA includes four sub-tests

LLAMA B a test of vocabulary learning LLAMA D a test of sound recognition

that requires previously heard sound sequences to be identified in new se-

quences LLAMA E a test of soundndashsymbol associations and LLAMA F a

test of grammatical inferencing With the exception of sound recognition

(LLAMA D) the sub-tests include default study phases that last between 2

and 5 min After the study phase test-takers are required to respond to a

series of items with no time pressure The score for each of the LLAMA

sub-tests ranges between 0 and 100 (LLAMA B E and F) and between 0

and 75 (LLAMA D) Feedback is provided after each response in the form of

an acoustic signal

The reliability of the LLAMA test (k = 90) in terms of internal consistency

according to Cronbachrsquos alpha was 77 (an acceptable research standard is

considered to be 70 according to Nunnally and Bernstein 1994)

490 LANGUAGE APTITUDE AND EARLY L2 ACQUISITION

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RESULTS

The average raw aptitude score in the early childhood learner group was 6235

(SD = 1124) The highest scoring participant obtained 8250 and the lowest

scoring participant obtained 4125 (the maximum score possible was 100)

In the NS control group the average aptitude score was 5763 (SD = 1104)

The highest score was 75 and the lowest 30 The distribution of scores in both

groups was normal according to one-sample K-S tests (p = 945 and p = 895

respectively) An overall aptitude composite score was computed for each

group by converting each of the LLAMA subtest scores into z-scores and

adding them up Although the early learners scored descriptively higher

than the NSs as can be observed in Figure 1 there were no statistically sig-

nificant differences between the two groups according to an independent-

samples t-test [t(68) =1648 p = 104] The equality of variance assumption

(Levenersquos test) was met (p = 757) The size of the effect according to Cohenrsquos d

was 42 (medium) Given the lack of a significant difference the two groups

were considered comparable with regard to aptitude level2

Table 2 displays the descriptive statistics for the grammaticality judgements

on the speeded- and non-speeded-response tests as well as a breakdown of

Speaker Group

Early BilingualsNative Speakers

LL

AM

A te

st m

ean

sco

re

9000

8000

7000

6000

5000

4000

3000

Language Aptitude

Figure 1 Distribution of language aptitude scores by group

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Table

2

Des

crip

tive

stati

stic

s(m

ean

san

dst

an

dard

dev

iati

ons)

for

gram

mati

cali

tyju

dge

men

ts

NS

con

trols

Earl

yL2

learn

ers

[+A

gre

em

en

t][

Agre

em

en

t]Tota

l[+

Agre

em

en

t][

Agre

em

en

t]Tota

l

Speeded

GJT

901

(93

)898

(96

)900

(86

)737

(119

)786

(103

)762

(100

)

Non

-speeded

GJT

937

(67

)922

(89

)930

(63

)759

(142

)829

(82

)794

(97

)

Tota

l919

(67

)91

(77

)747

(121

)807

(82

)

Sta

ndard

devia

tion

sappear

inpare

nth

ese

s

492 LANGUAGE APTITUDE AND EARLY L2 ACQUISITION

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scores according to type of structure [+ agreement] The three structures

labeled as [+ agreement] were gender agreement number agreement and

subjectndashverb agreement whereas the three structures labelled as [ agree-

ment] were aspect contrasts the subjunctive and the passive (see section on

lsquoTarget Structuresrsquo for more information) As can be seen the early L2 learners

scored lower than the NS controls on the two types of measures and structures

The distribution of scores in each of the groups and for each type of meas-

ure and structure was normal according to one-sample K-S tests (pgt 05) All

between-group differences in overall scores were statistically significant and

associated with a large effect size according to Cohenrsquos d speeded-response

GJT [t(68) = 4175 plt 001 d = 148] non-speeded-response GJT

[t(68) = 4175 plt 001 d = 166] [+ agreement] structures [t(68) = 4175

plt 001 d = 176] and [ agreement] structures [t(68) = 4175 plt 001

d = 129] The equality of variance assumption (Levenersquos test) was met in all

the analyses (pgt 05)

At the within-subjects level the early L2 learners scored significantly lower

on [+ agreement] than [ agreement] structures in both GJTs speeded and

non-speeded [t(49) =3625 plt 001 and t(49) =3944 plt 001] These re-

sults were associated with a medium effect size (d = 044 and d = 060 respect-

ively) In addition L2 learnersrsquo scores on [+ agreement] structures displayed

higher inter-individual variability in both tests as shown by the higher

standard deviations Finally while the correlation between age of onset and

[+ agreement] structures reached significance (r =28 p = 048) the corres-

ponding correlation for [ agreement] structures did not (r =22 p = 123)

suggesting that the strength of the relationship between age of onset and

[+ agreement] structures was slightly stronger than between age of onset

and [ agreement] structures NS controls on the other hand scored descrip-

tively higher on structures involving agreement but unlike in the L2 learner

group in the control group there were no significant differences between the

two types of structures in either test speeded-response GJT [t(19) = 219

p = 829] or non-speeded-response GJT [t(19) = 755 p = 459] The size of the

effect was small in both cases (d = 003 and d = 019)

In order to investigate the role of aptitude in the early L2 learner group

a repeated measures analysis of variance was run with two within-subjects

factors measure (speeded and non-speeded) and structure ([+ agreement] and

[ndash agreement]) and language aptitude as a covariate The results of the multi-

variate tests revealed a significant three-way interaction between type of meas-

ure type of structure and aptitude [F(1 48) = 5286 p = 026 Z2p = 1013

= 899] indicating that aptitude moderated the scores on the two types of

structures differently depending on the type of test (speeded or non-speeded)

Follow-up analyses in the form of pairwise comparisons confirmed that apti-

tude played a role in the non-speeded-response GJT as indicated by a signifi-

cant interaction between type of structure and aptitude [F(1 48) = 4194

p = 046 Z2p = 082 = 918] This interaction was not significant in the case

of the speeded-response GJT [F(1 48) = 006 p = 937 Z2p = 000 = 1000]

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A summary of the correlations between aptitude and type of structure in each

of the tests is displayed in Table 3

In the NS control group the repeated measures general linear model did not

yield any significant results in terms of language aptitude The interactions

between aptitude and type of measure or aptitude and type of structure

were not significant [F(1 18) = 002 p = 961 Z2p = 000 = 1000 and

F(1 18) = 531 p = 476 Z2p = 029 = 971] The three-way interaction be-

tween aptitude type of measure and type of structure was not significant

either [F(1 18) = 1178 p = 292 Z2p = 061 = 939] Table 4 displays the

simple correlations between aptitude and each of the dependent variables in

the NS control group As can be seen none of the correlations was significant

and no clear patterns could be observed regarding the r values either even

though the magnitude of the effect for the speeded-response GJT with struc-

tures that did not involve agreement [ agreement] was similar to that

observed in the L2-learner group

A last set of analyses was conducted to examine whether language aptitude

was a necessary condition for early childhood L2 learners to score within NS

range as determined by the lowest-scoring NS in each of the measures

Participants were first divided into high- and low-aptitude according to the

median-split method According to this method 24 L2 learners and 10 NSs had

high aptitude (M = 7188 SD = 547 and M = 6625 SD = 421 respectively)

whereas 26 L2 learners and 10 NSs had low aptitude (M = 5356 SD = 726

and M = 490 SD = 862 respectively)

GJT scores were then regressed on age of onset as shown in Figures 2 and 3

The aptitude dimension was added in order to distinguish between high- and

low-aptitude participants As can be seen there were low-aptitude L2 learners

who scored within the NS range in the two tests Overall however the per-

centage of high-aptitude L2 learners with GJT scores within the NS range was

higher than that of low-aptitude L2 learners in both GJTs the speeded (583

vs 385 per cent)4 and the non-speeded (75 vs 46 per cent) In addition the

only five L2 learners who were able to score within the NS range in the two

tests examined were high-aptitude individuals

To summarize language aptitude as measured by an omnibus test of apti-

tude (the LLAMA test) was significantly related to variation in early childhood

Table 3 Correlations between aptitude and scores in early L2 learner group(n = 50)

Non-speededGJT[ agreement]

Non-speededGJT[+ agreement]

Speeded GJT[ agreement]

Speeded GJT[+ agreement]

Language aptitude 26 40 24 20

067 005 096 171

plt 01

494 LANGUAGE APTITUDE AND EARLY L2 ACQUISITION

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L2 learnersrsquo attainment Specifically aptitude was related to early learnersrsquo

scores on structures involving grammatical agreement relations in a non-

speeded-response GJT Although aptitude played a role in the early L2 learner

group it was not a necessary condition for early learners to attain a score

within the NS range in each of the tests when the tests were considered

separately It was necessary however for nativelike performance across-

the-board in both of the tests examined Finally no relationship was found

between aptitude and language attainment in the NS control group

DISCUSSION

This study set out to investigate the interplay between aptitude and age in

early morphosyntactic acquisition specifically in a group of early childhood L2

learners with ages of onset between 3 and 6 years Although these learners had

50

55

60

65

70

75

80

85

90

95

100

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Mea

n

Acc

urac

y Sc

ore

Age of Onset

Speeded Auditory GJT

High-Aptude Low-Aptude

Figure 2 Speeded auditory GJT scores as a function of age of onset with theaptitude dimension added

Table 4 Correlations between aptitude and scores in NS control group(n = 20)

Non-speededGJT[ agreement]

Non-speededGJT[+ agreement]

SpeededGJT[ agreement]

SpeededGJT[+ agreement]

Language aptitude 10 21 25 01

677 378 293 972

G GRANENA 495

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started learning the L2 at a very early age their language attainment was

significantly lower than NSsrsquo and characterized by greater inter-individual

variability These results indicate that the acquisition of morphosyntax for

certain L1ndashL2 pairings (Chinese L1ndashSpanish L2 in this case) may be affected

even when the L2 is acquired as early as age 3 years Chinese and Spanish are

two typologically distant languages with very different inflectional paradigms

(uniform vs complex) Unlike Spanish Chinese is an isolating language in

which almost every word consists of a single morpheme There is no nounndash

adjective gender or number agreement and no subjectndashverb agreement or

mood (indicativesubjunctive) Chinese has a marker for the passive but no

alternation between two copula verbs like Spanish Finally Chinese encodes

aspect in the form of free-standing morphemes but there is no one-to-one

mapping between aspect contrasts in the two languages These findings are

similar to some of the findings reported by Meisel (2009) who claimed that in

certain areas of morphosyntax child L2 acquisition can resemble adult L2

acquisition and differ from L1 acquisition In order to explain these empirical

findings he proposed a modified version of the Critical Period Hypothesis as

suggested by Lenneberg (1967) and others His modifications (eg Meisel

2008) concerned the age at which maturation starts affecting L2 morphosyntax

(around age 4 years) much earlier than the critical age range hypothesized by

Lenneberg (1967) (ie puberty) and the scope of the Critical Period which as

already pointed out by Long (1990) does not equally affect all language do-

mains and grammatical properties

In the current study the target structures where language attainment

was the poorest in the early L2 learner group were the three structures invol-

ving grammatical agreement (gender agreement number agreement and

50

55

60

65

70

75

80

85

90

95

100

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Mea

n

Acc

urac

y Sc

ore

Age of Onset

Non-speeded Auditory GJT

High-Aptude Low-Aptude

Figure 3 Non-speeded auditory GJT scores as a function of age of onset withthe aptitude dimension added

496 LANGUAGE APTITUDE AND EARLY L2 ACQUISITION

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subjectndashverb agreement) Early L2 learnersrsquo performance on these structures

was significantly lower than on structures that did not involve grammatical

agreement These results were consistent across the two language measures

investigated (speeded and non-speeded GJT) and differed from the pattern

observed in the NS control group where scores were descriptively higher for

agreement structures and where there were no significant differences between

the two types of target structures These findings provide evidence of the large

range of variation in early childhood acquisition not only across individuals

but also within learners as a function of grammatical structure They also

suggest that certain grammatical properties are affected by early maturational

changes to a larger extent than others Specifically structures in the area of

inflectional morphology (gender number and subjectndashverb agreement) seem

to be particularly sensitive to maturational changes as hypothesized by Meisel

(2009) These are structures that L1 Spanish children acquire very early (ie by

age 3 years) whereas structures such as the subjunctive the passive and

aspect contrasts are acquired later (ie at least age 7 years or later) (see

Lopez Ornat 1994 Montrul 2004)

Meisel (2009) building on Smith and Tsimpli (1995) explains early matur-

ational changes in inflectional morphology as the result of inaccessibility to

parameterized universal grammar (UG) principles specifically inaccessibility to

uninterpretable features of functional categories An alternative non-UG-based

explanation could be that there are very early changes in the capacity for

implicit learning and that this capacity deteriorates with increasing age

(Hoyer and Lincourt 1998) even though it is not lost This would have a

differential impact on the acquisition of grammatical structures Less salient

non-meaning-bearing structures (especially those involving co-occurrence

patterns such as grammatical agreement) could be more affected by changes

in the efficiency of implicit learning mechanisms These are structures to which

infants are extremely sensitive and finely tuned in L1 acquisition but which

become persistent learning problems in L2 acquisition especially when gram-

matical features differ between L1 and L2 as it was the case for the population

investigated since Chinese lacks inflectional morphology

If maturational changes start affecting the acquisition of morphosyntax as

early as age 3 or 4 years one would expect individual differences such as

language aptitude to start playing a compensatory role as early as age 3 or 4

years particularly in those structures that are more affected by maturational

changes The results of this study showed that aptitude is indeed one of the

factors that can account for the high inter-individual variability that was

observed in the early L2 learner data and which contrasted with the high

inter-individual homogeneity observed in the NS control group where apti-

tude did not play any role These findings are in line with Abrahamsson and

Hyltenstam (2008) and give support to their claim that aptitude plays lsquonot only

a crucial role for adult learners but also a certain role for child learnersrsquo (p

499) However they conflict with DeKeyser (2000) DeKeyser et al (2010)

and Granena and Long (2013) where aptitude did not play a role in early L2

G GRANENA 497

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learnersrsquo morphosyntactic attainment The conflicting results of these studies

as also argued in Granena and Long (2013) may be due to methodological

differences concerning sampling and sample sizes as well as the aptitude tests

procedures and outcome measures employed

In DeKeyser (2000) and DeKeyser et al (2010) the lack of a relationship

between aptitude and ultimate attainment in early learners could have been

due to the restricted range (ie little variation) of scores on both the GJT (eg

all the early learners scored above 90 per cent in DeKeyser 2000) and prob-

ably the aptitude test where scores could have been lower and less varied

than in other aptitude measures This test was administered in the participantsrsquo

L1 which could have led to confounds between participantsrsquo proficiency level

and their cognitive capacity since degree of L1 attrition tends to be inversely

related to age of L2 acquisition (Montrul 2008) For example in DeKeyser

(2000) the highest scorer on the aptitude test (an L1 version of the Words-

in-Sentences MLAT subtest) was the latest arrival (age of arrival = 38 years)

The next highest aptitude scorers were also late arrivals Conversely early

arrivals were not able to score as high as late arrivals perhaps because early

L2 learners do not typically receive formal education in their L1 usually used

in the home environment for conversations with friends and family As a

result they tend to develop poorer L1 literacy skills (reading and writing)

probably affecting language aspects such as vocabulary richness indices

which could play a role in L1 verbal aptitude measures such as the one used

in DeKeyser et al (2010) a test comparable with the verbal SAT a standar-

dized test for most college admissions in the USA

In Granena and Long (2013) on the other hand the lack of a relationship

between aptitude and ultimate attainment seems to have been due to the fact

that morphosyntactic attainment was assessed by means of a combination of

different morphosyntactic measures and not just by means of a GJT This is a

relevant factor when aptitude is measured via tests such as the LLAMA loosely

based on the MLAT because language tests that encourage a focus on language

form and language correction (GJTs) and aptitude tests that are weighted in

favour of explicit processes (eg language analytic ability) may be actually

measuring the same underlying abilities (Long 2007)

This is in fact an explanation that could account for the findings in

Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam (2008) as well as in the present study since

both studies used GJTs as a measure of ultimate attainment and tests loosely

based on the MLAT as a measure of aptitude Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam

(2008) combined the scores of two different GJT modalities an auditory

(online) and a written (offline) with no time pressure and they found a sig-

nificant relationship for aptitude in the early group (r = 70 plt 001) In the

present study that relationship was only significant for the non-speeded-re-

sponse auditory GJT (r = 40 p = 005) a test with offline features since it

allowed participants to listen to each stimulus sentence twice with a 3-s inter-

val between the repetitions and a 6-s interval between sentence pairs

Untimed L2 measures that focus on language correctness such as this one

498 LANGUAGE APTITUDE AND EARLY L2 ACQUISITION

at Nipissing U

niversity on October 10 2014

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ownloaded from

may induce learners to approach the task more analytically by placing a great

deal of conscious (ie controlled) attention on sentence structure As a result

L2 learners with higher analytic abilities as measured by tests such as the

LLAMA could be more successful at detecting grammatical errors under un-

timed test conditions especially on those structures with the greatest inter-

individual variability The lack of any significant relationships between lan-

guage attainment and aptitude in the NS control group on the other hand

could be due to the lack of inter-individual variability in NSsrsquo performance on

the language measures employed in combination with the smaller sample size

of the group This means that a relationship between NSsrsquo aptitude and their

language performance might be possible on language measures that allow for

greater variability or that have no ceiling (eg reaction time measures)

Language aptitude in the present study correlated with L2 attainment in an

untimed but not in a timed test This could be interpreted as suggesting that

aptitude is not related to linguistic competence understood as implicit lan-

guage knowledge that can be used automatically However another possibility

is that a different type of aptitude correlates with more spontaneous use of L2

knowledge For example Granena (2013c) found that a type of aptitude

hypothesized to be relevant for implicit learning and processing (Granena

2013a) was related to performance on a word monitoring task an online

meaning-focused task that requires automatic use of language knowledge

The question would be then what type of language and aptitude measures

can provide the most robust evidence for the role of aptitude in L2 acquisition

A tentative answer could be that robust evidence should come from (i) lan-

guage measures considered to be the best means of elicitation of automatic use

of L2 knowledge (eg spontaneous production tasks) and (ii) aptitude meas-

ures tapping into cognitive abilities that are very different from those that the

language measures are likely to engage participants in In other words the

language tests and aptitude tests used should not be measuring the same

abilities This would help prevent confounds arising from the measures them-

selves (ie test effects) and would increase the validity of the findings

Although language aptitude was found to play a role in early childhood

learnersrsquo ultimate attainment the results of the study showed that it was

not a necessary condition to score within the range of NSs a pattern that

was also observed in Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam (2008) The extent to

which aptitude is required to reach nativelikeness could have been a potential

difference between the role of aptitude in early and late acquisition in line

with DeKeyserrsquos (2000) prediction However aptitude does not seem to be

necessary for either early or late L2 learners to perform in a nativelike fashion

at least when a single language measure is considered For example in

Granena (2013b) the late learner with the highest score on an auditory GJT

(a score within the NS range) was in fact a low-aptitude individual These

results suggest that aptitude can moderate L2 attainment at a group level

but that it is not a necessary condition at an individual level in order to

reach nativelike levels on a given language measure Aptitude may be

G GRANENA 499

at Nipissing U

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ownloaded from

necessary however for nativelike performance across multiple measures even

among very early L2 learners As other studies have shown (eg Abrahamsson

and Hyltenstam 2009 Granena and Long 2013) the use of complex multiple-

task designs and stringent elicitation methods and techniques of analysis is

crucial to understand the scope of age effects and the role of aptitude In the

present study the only five L2 learners who were able to score within the NS

range in the two measures examined were all high-aptitude individuals

Increasing the number of language measures from two to four and operationa-

lizing aptitude as a combination of implicit and explicit cognitive abilities

(Granena 2013a) yielded the same results with no low-aptitude early L2 lear-

ner able to perform like a NS across the whole range of measures Further

research is clearly needed in this area in order to confirm that aptitude plays

more than a lsquocertainrsquo role for child learners thus modifying both DeKeyserrsquos

(2000) claim that aptitude lsquoonly plays [a] role for adult learnersrsquo (p 515) and

Abrahamsson and Hyltenstamrsquos (2008) claim that it lsquoplays not only a crucial

role for adult learners but also a certain role for child learnersrsquo (p 499)

CONCLUSIONS

The aim of the present study was to examine whether language aptitude

played a role in early childhood L2 acquisition and whether this role was

the same across different language measures and structures The findings

demonstrated the presence of an interaction between aptitude type of lan-

guage measure and target structure Aptitude was significantly related to early

learnersrsquo attainment on a non-speeded-response auditory GJT specifically to

target structures involving grammatical agreement These were the structures

for which age effects were the strongest and where variability was the greatest

These results give support to Abrahamsson and Hyltenstamrsquos (2008) claim that

language aptitude plays a role not only in adult SLA but also in child SLA The

fact that such a role was already present in early childhood L2 learners and

that these learners performed significantly lower than NSs as a group can be

interpreted as indicating the existence of very early maturational changes

taking place at least in certain areas of morphosyntax as claimed by Meisel

(2009) However aptitude was only significantly correlated with L2 attain-

ment as measured by a non-speeded-response GJT This was interpreted as

being the result of the type of aptitude investigated weighted in favour of

explicit cognitive processes and the untimed nature of the GJT which induced

learners to approach the task analytically

This study was only able to give a partial picture of early childhood acqui-

sition Other individual differences that are not cognitive and that were not

investigated may also be relevant to account for variability in early learnersrsquo

long-term L2 achievement As in all ex-post-facto designs where pre-existing

groups of individuals are compared there may also be other overlapping vari-

ables that could have influenced the results but that could not be controlled

For example the quality of the input that participants were exposed to in the

500 LANGUAGE APTITUDE AND EARLY L2 ACQUISITION

at Nipissing U

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ownloaded from

initial stages of the acquisition process was likely to be more homogenous than

in the case of late childhood or late L2 learners However there could have

been differences in terms of use andor type of interlocutor that could have

also explained variability in learning outcomes Overall this study suggests a

more complex picture for L2 acquisition in early childhood than generally

considered in the literature Therefore further research should investigate

other individual differences that may play a role in very early L2 learners as

well as early learners with ages of onset between 7 and 11 in order to compare

the effects of aptitude in early childhood and late childhood acquisition

SUPPLEMENTARY DATA

Supplementary material is available at Applied Linguistics online

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No

1124126

NOTES

1 Nowadays Madrid Barcelona and the

Canary Islands are home to the largest

Chinese communities of Spain Over 80

per cent of the Chinese in Spain come

from the Zhejiang province with smal-

ler numbers from Guangdong and

Fujian

2 A previous study by Granena and Long

(2013) did find significant differences in

language aptitude between early child-

hood L2 learners with ages of onset be-

tween 3 and 6 years late childhood L2

learners adult L2 learners and NSs

Early childhood L2 learners had signifi-

cantly higher aptitude than all the

other groups

3 For partial eta squared (Z2p) a small

effect size is 01 Z2p lt 06 medium is

06 Z2p lt 14 and large is Z2

p 14

4 These percentages correspond to the

early L2 learners who scored within

the NS range in the speeded-response

GJT after removing the NS who scored

3 standard deviations below the mean

of the group The score of this NS (608)

can be seen on the graph

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Abrahamsson N and K Hyltenstam 2008

lsquoThe robustness of aptitude effects in near-

native second language acquisitionrsquo Studies in

Second Language Acquisition 30 481ndash509

Abrahamsson N and K Hyltenstam 2009

lsquoAge of onset and nativelikeness in a se-

cond language Listener perception versus lin-

guistic scrutinyrsquo Language Learning 59

249ndash306

Bley-Vroman R 1988 lsquoThe fundamental char-

acter of foreign language learningrsquo

in W Rutherford and M Sharwood Smith

(eds) Grammar and Second Language Teaching

A Book of Readings Newbury House

pp 133ndash59

Bley-Vroman R 1990 lsquoThe logical problem of

foreign language learningrsquo Linguistic Analysis

20 3ndash49

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Bowles M 2011 lsquoMeasuring implicit and expli-

cit linguistic knowledgersquo Studies in Second

Language Acquisition 33 247ndash71

Bylund E N Abrahamsson and

K Hyltenstam 2012 lsquoDoes first language

maintenance hamper nativelikeness in a

second language A study of ultimate attain-

ment in early bilingualsrsquo Studies in Second

Language Acquisition 34 215ndash41

Carroll J B 1981 lsquoTwenty-five years of re-

search in foreign language aptitudersquo

in K Diller (ed) Individual Differences and

Universals in Language Learning Aptitude

Newbury House pp 83ndash118

Carroll J B and S Sapon 1959 Modern

Language Aptitude Test Form A Psychological

Corporation

Cedrus (2003) SuperLab 307 Cedrus

Corporation

DeKeyser R M 2000 lsquoThe robustness of crit-

ical period effects in second language acquisi-

tionrsquo Studies in Second Language Acquisition 22

499ndash533

DeKeyser R M I Alfi-Shabtay and

D Ravid 2010 lsquoCross-linguistic evidence for

the nature of age-effects in second language

acquisitionrsquo Applied Psycholinguistics 31

413ndash38

Doughty C M Bunting S Campbell

A Bowles and H Haarmann 2007

Development of the High-level Language Aptitude

Battery Technical Report Center for

Advanced Study of Language University of

Maryland College Park

Doughty C S Campbell M Mislevy

M Bunting A Bowles and J Koeth 2010

lsquoPredicting near-native ability The factor struc-

ture and reliability of Hi-LABrsquo in M Prior

Y Watanabe and S Lee (eds) Selected

Proceedings of the 2008 Second Language Research

Forum Cascadilla Proceedings Project pp 10ndash31

Ellis R 2005 lsquoMeasuring implicit and explicit

knowledge of a second language A psycho-

metric studyrsquo Studies in Second Language

Acquisition 27 141ndash72

Granena G 2013a lsquoCognitive aptitudes for

second language learning and the LLAMA

Language Aptitude Testrsquo in G Granena and

M H Long (eds) Sensitive Periods Language

Aptitude and Ultimate L2 Attainment John

Benjamins pp 105ndash29

Granena G 2013b lsquoReexamining the robust-

ness of aptitude in second language acquisi-

tionrsquo in G Granena and M H Long (eds)

Sensitive Periods Language Aptitude and

Ultimate L2 Attainment John Benjamins

pp 179ndash204

Granena G 2013c lsquoIndividual differences in

sequence learning ability and SLA in early

childhood and adulthoodrsquo Language Learning

63 665ndash703

Granena G and M H Long 2013 lsquoAge of

onset length of residence aptitude and ulti-

mate L2 attainment in three linguistic

domainsrsquo Second Language Research 29 311ndash43

Harley B and D Hart 1997 lsquoLanguage apti-

tude and second language proficiency in class-

room learners of different starting agesrsquo Studies

in Second Language Acquisition 19 379ndash400

Hoyer W J and A E Lincourt 1998 lsquoAgeing

and the development of learningrsquo in M

A Stadler and P A Frensch (eds) Handbook

of Implicit Learning Sage pp 445ndash70

Johnson J S and E L Newport 1989

lsquoCritical period effects in second language

learning The influence of maturational state

on the acquisition of English as a second lan-

guagersquo Cognitive Psychology 21 60ndash99

Lenneberg E 1967 Biological Foundations of

Language Wiley

Long M H 1990 lsquoMaturational constraints on

language developmentrsquo Studies in Second

Language Acquisition 12 251ndash85

Long M H 2007 Problems in SLA Erlbaum

Lopez Ornat S 1994 La adquisicion de la lengua

espanola Siglo XXI

Meara P 2005 LLAMA Language Aptitude Tests

Lognostics

Meara P J Milton and N Lorenzo-Dus

2003 Swansea Language Aptitude Tests (LAT)

v20 Lognostics

Meisel J 2001 lsquoThe simultaneous acquisition of

two first languages Early differentiation and

subsequent development of grammarsrsquo

in J Cenoz and F Genesee (eds) Trends in

Bilingual Acquisition John Benjamins pp 11ndash41

Meisel J 2008 lsquoChild second language acquisi-

tion or successive first language acquisitionrsquo

in B Haznedar and E Gavruseva (eds)

Current Trends in Child Second Language

Acquisition A Generative Perspective John

Benjamins pp 55ndash80

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Meisel J M 2009 lsquoSecond language acquisition

in early childhoodrsquo Zeitschrift fur

Sprachwissenschaft 28 5ndash34

Montrul S 2004 The Acquisition of Spanish

Morphosyntactic Development in Monolingual and

Bilingual L1 Acquisition and Adult L2

Acquisition John Benjamins

Montrul S 2008 Incomplete Acquisition in

Bilingualism Re-examining the Age Factor John

Benjamins

Nunnally J C and I H Bernstein 1994

Psychometric Theory 3rd edn McGraw-Hill Inc

Paradis M 2009 Declarative and Procedural

Determinants of Second Languages John

Benjamins

Skehan P 1989 Individual Differences in Second

Language Learning Arnold

Smith N and I M Tsimpli 1995 The Mind of

a Savant Language Learning and Modularity

Blackwell

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