The role of working memory and attention control in incidental L2 vocabulary learning fromreading-while-listening

Abstract This study investigated the role of working memory and attention control in incidental L2 vocabulary learning from engaging in reading-while-listening. Fifty-nine Cantonese ESL learners engaged in reading-while-listening to two English stories in which twelve adjective-pseudonoun collocations appeared three times in meaningful contexts. Immediately after the reading-while-listening task and again one week later, participants completed unannounced posttests that measured their receptive and productive knowledge about the pseudonouns and their collocations. Their working memory was assessed with an automated operation span task, and attention control ability was measured with three squared tasks that consisted of Stroop, Flanker, and Simon squared tasks. The results indicated that attention control played a significant role in remembering the target pseudonoun forms and their collocational features for both recall and recognition. The working memory, by contrast, did not emerge as a determinant factor. The implications of the findings were discussed in the context of L2 vocabulary learning.