Memory, Motor Skills, and the Acquisition of L2 Syntax: A Mirror-Tracing Study

This thesis explores the role of procedural memory as the cognitive mechanism underlying motor skills and syntax with an experimental study employing the mirror-tracing task. The experiment is based on a rationale in three parts. First, the mirror-tracing task has been previously used in neuropsychological studies to understand implicit cognitive and motor skill learning as relying on procedural memory. Second, researchers have posited that motor skills and syntax rely on the same neurocognitive processes and substrates in the brain. Third, evidence for the Declarative-Procedural model in first and second language acquisition correlates procedural memory with the processing of L1 and L2 morphosyntax. In order to add to this research, the aim of the experiment outlined in this paper was to investigate a possible correlation between procedural memory learning ability as tested by the mirror-tracing task and the processing of syntax in L2 English. Participants completed a questionnaire, a test of declarative memory, the mirror-tracing tracing task, and a syntax test, which tested passive, cleft, and quantifier scope constructions. While no statistically significant correlation was found, descriptive analyses demonstrated a weak positive correlation between both memory systems and syntactic performance, indicating a reliance on both memory systems during processing. Additionally, both declarative and procedural memory correlated the most strongly with cleft constructions, followed by passives, then quantifier scope. The varying relationships between the memory systems and different syntactic types may indicate that individual differences in declarative and procedural memory emerge selectively based on the specific operations required to process each construction.