Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 2019, page 1 of 25.
doi:10.1017/S0272263119000184
Research Article
THE CONTRIBUTION OF PSYCHOSOCIAL AND
BIOGRAPHICAL VARIABLES TO HERITAGE LANGUAGE
LEARNERS’ LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE OF SPANISH
Julio Torres*
University of California, Irvine
Ricardo Estremera
State University of New York, Albany
Sherez Mohamed
Florida State University
Abstract
Individual differences (IDs) largely contribute to success in adult second language attainment (e.g.,
D¨ ornyei, 2006). Heritage language (HL) studies have also explored the role of IDs, namely
psychosocial variables, and biographical factors with an adult HL learner population. However, the
specific contribution of these variables to HL learners’ performance on linguistic tests that differ in
degree of explicitness and modality remains unknown. Therefore, the current study tested 103 adult
HL learners of Spanish who completed a spoken elicited imitation task (EIT) and a written untimed
grammaticality judgment task (UGJT) that elicited their knowledge of vulnerable morphosyntactic
structures in HL bilingual acquisition. To investigate the contribution of individual learner factors
on their performance, participants completed a few questionnaires. Mixed-effects regression
models revealed that sequential bilingual status, willingness to communicate, generation and
motivation contributed significantly, but yet differentially to participants’ performance on
grammatical and ungrammatical items of the EIT and UGJT.
We would like to thank Nick Pandˇ za and Bianca Cung for their guidance with statistical analyses. We are also
grateful for the helpful comments from the SSLA editors and anonymous reviewers that improved upon the
earlier version of the manuscript. All remaining errors are our own.
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Julio Torres, University of California, Irvine,
Department of Spanish and Portuguese, 322 Humanities Hall, Irvine, CA 92697. E-mail: torresju@uci.edu
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019
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