Stress Processing in Familiar Words in Adults: Influence of First-Language Stress Patterns on German as a Variable-Stress Second Language

This preregistration outlines the research questions, hypotheses, methodology, and planned statistical analyses for a study investigating lexical stress processing in adults who acquired German as a second language (L2). The study examines whether the stress system of the first language (L1) influences the processing of correctly and incorrectly stressed German words. Adults with L1s featuring contrastive lexical stress (Greek and Spanish) will be compared with adults whose L1s do not feature contrastive lexical stress (Czech and Zurich German). Eye-tracking data will be analyzed using fixation proportions, mixed-effects models, and growth-curve analyses. Additional Bayesian analyses are planned to evaluate evidence for negligible stress effects in the non-contrastive-stress group.