ABSTRACT
Depth of processing (DoP), gleaned from think-aloud protocols (TAs), has offered a possible explanation for differential effects of different experimental conditions on L2 development (cf. Leow, 2015). In addition, such data have revealed that tasks provoking higher DoP yield superior retention (e.g., Hsieh, Moreno, & Leow, 2016). This chapter revisits Moreno (2007) to investigate the role of DoP in the effects of different types of feedback on the development of a syntactic structure among beginning learners of Spanish as they engaged in an interactive, computerized task that delivered metalinguistic [+EF] or implicit [-EF] feedback. Results showed that the [-EF] group outperformed its explicit counterpart at the post- and delayed posttests in all modalities (recognition, oral, and written production). The [-EF] group also exhibited a non-significant drop from post- to delayed posttest in the written modality. The TAs showed the [-EF] condition yielded more instances of higher DoP than [+EF], indicating more cognitive effort being expended in the implicit learning condition.
