Retention of grammatical information by L1 and L2 readers: The role of form and meaning

In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigated how aspects of form and meaning influence the retention of grammatical information. Native (N = 64) and non-native (N = 63) German speakers read sentence pairs. The second sentence was presented after 12–16 intervening sentences and was either identical to the first sentence or changed in one grammatical feature (tense, number). For both types of grammatical alternations, we controlled for formal and meaning aspects involved in their processing. Longer reading times in the changed condition compared to the identical condition indicated retention of the grammatical information conveyed in the first sentence. Non-native participants showed stronger retention effects when salient formal changes were involved, whereas native speakers were more sensitive to changes based on conceptual/meaning differences. Our study provides novel insights into which components of grammatical features drive their retention in the memory of non-native and native readers.