Welcome! Hi! Hallo! Guten Tag! GrĂ¼ss Gott! Servus! Dag! Hoi!

Welcome to the website for the Second Language Acquisition Lab at Penn State University. Under the direction of Dr. Carrie Jackson, we use both behavioral (e.g., reaction times, eye-tracking, comprehension and production tasks) and neurophysiological (EEG/ERP) research methods to investigate how second language speakers process words and sentences in both their first and second language. We are interested in the cognitive mechanisms that underlie second language acquisition and second language processing, with an eye towards how such research can inform foreign language instruction. And don’t let the greetings banner above fool you– while much of our research involves Germanic languages, like German and Dutch, we also conduct studies with other languages.