SLA Invited Lecture: Phillip Hamrick
SLA Invited Lecture: Phillip Hamrick
Phillip Hamrick, Ph.D. (Georgetown University, 2013) is Associate Professor and Principal Investigator of the Language and Cognition Research Laboratory at Kent State University. His research focuses on the roles of general learning and memory processes in language, particularly second language acquisition.
This Thursday, he will give a talk titled "Episodic memory and the L2 mental lexicon."
Abstract:
Growing evidence from brain imaging suggests that the mental lexicon is tied to the declarative memory system; however, declarative memory is a complex system consisting of at least two subsystems, episodic memory and semantic memory. Although it has been widely assumed that the abstract nature of lexical-semantic representations make them unlikely to rely on episodic memory, in this talk, I present evidence from several studies that suggests (a) that the mental lexicon at least partially relies specifically on the episodic memory system, (b) that this is true of both native and nonnative speakers, and (c) that this can be seen beyond just brain imaging, including in individual differences, behavioral experiments, and in computational modeling.
Suggested readings:
Hamrick, P., Graff, C., & *Finch, B. (2019). Contributions of episodic memory to novel word learning. The Mental Lexicon, 14(3), 379-396.
Zhang, Y., Ridchenko, M., Hayashi, A., & Hamrick, P. (2021). Episodic memory also predicts higher proficiency second language lexical abilities. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 35, 1356-1361.
