Neural activity related to productive vocabulary knowledge effects during second language comprehension

Abstract

Second language learners and educators often believe that improving one’s listening ability hinges on acquiring an extensive vocabulary and engaging in thorough listening practice. Our previous study suggested that listening comprehension is also impacted by the ability to produce vocabulary. Nevertheless, it remained uncertain whether quick comprehension could be attributed to a simple acceleration of processing or to changes in neural activity. To identify neural activity changes during sentence listening comprehension according to different levels of lexical knowledge (productive, only comprehensive, uncomprehensive), we measured participants’ electrical activity in the brain via electroencephalography (EEG) and conducted a time-frequency-based EEG power analysis. Additionally, we employed a decoding model to verify the predictability of vocabulary knowledge levels based on neural activity. The decoding results showed that EEG activity could discriminate between listening to sentences containing phrases that include productive knowledge and ones without. The positive impact of productive vocabulary knowledge on sentence comprehension, driven by distinctive neural processing during sentence comprehension, was unequivocally evident. Our study emphasizes the importance of productive vocabulary knowledge acquisition to enhance the process of second language listening comprehension.