The interaction between inhibitory control and corrective feedback timing

Abstract

This article reports a study investigating the role of inhibitory control in the acquisition of Spanish noun-adjective gender agreement under different feedback timing conditions. Forty-three Spanish learners completed a communicative task through synchronous computer-mediated communication. The immediate group received reformulations immediately after their errors, whereas the delayed group received reformulations at the end of the task. The control group did not receive any feedback. Learners’ knowledge of the target form was assessed using oral production and grammaticality judgment tests at three different times: once before the treatment, once immediately after the treatment, and once ten days after the treatment. Inhibitory control was measured with the Flanker test. Results did not show a statistically significant interaction between inhibitory control and feedback timing group on either outcome measure even though the correlations between learners’ gains and inhibitory control were different across groups.