During the last 17 years, research on Processing Instruction (PI) has shown that PI is an effective focus on form technique for a variety of linguistic structures and for a variety of target languages. This presentation seeks to extend the PI research agenda by investigating the secondary effects of PI. That is, if learners receive PI on one processing strategy (First Noun) for one form (Accusative or Dative Pronouns), will they appropriately transfer the use of that same strategy to another form (Dative or Accusative Pronouns, respectively)? This dissertation examines whether the effectiveness of Processing Instruction (PI) is limited to forms targeted in the instructional treatment (primary effects) or whether it also extends to other forms (secondary transfer-of-training effects). L2 Spanish learners (N = 304) received either Processing Instruction (PI) or Traditional Instruction (TI) targeting either thirdperson
accusative pronouns or third person dative pronouns, and a fifth group received no
instruction. A pretest, immediate posttest, and delayed posttest design was used to examine the impact of instruction type on learners’ interpretation and production of accusative (or dative) pronouns (primary effects), as well as on their interpretation and production on a second form, dative (or accusative) pronouns, for which learners did not receive instruction (transfer-of-training or secondary effects). Although the results revealed that both PI and TI improved on their interpretation of pronouns in sentences with Object-Verb-Subject word order for the primary and secondary forms, TI showed a decrease in accuracy with sentences with Subject-Verb-Object word order. We propose that of the two treatments, only PI is effective in pushing learners to alter the way they process primary linguistic data in the input. We discuss our findings in light of the Input Processing theory and its implications for PI and processing oriented instructed SLA.
