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A growing body of work on individual differences in second language (L2) learning has emphasized the importance of examining domain-general cognitive abilities (i.e., those that subserve multiple cognitive domains, not just language), especially those abilities that have demonstrable links to the neurocognitive systems that support learning and memory. Much of this work has focused on the roles of individual differences in declarative and procedural memory abilities (for overviews, see Hamrick et al., 2018; Morgan-Short et al., 2022). The present study focuses on the former, as several theories predict important roles for declarative memory in L2 learning and processing, as a system that plays a critical role (i) in the L2 lexicon (e.g., Paradis, 2009; Ullman, 2004, 2016, 2020; Witzel & Forster, 2012), (ii) in early stages of L2 learning across multiple linguistic domains (DeKeyser, 2020; Ullman, 2016, 2020), and (iii) in developing the kinds of metalinguistic knowledge that are a common part of classroom L2 learning (Paradis, 2009; Ullman, 2016).
Because of the wide range of roles attributed to declarative memory in L2, numerous studies have examined to what degree individual differences in declarative memory abilities are associated with L2 abilities. Across those studies, a diverse array of declarative memory tasks has been used. Some studies have employed tasks that operationalize declarative memory as recognition memory (e.g., Hamrick et al., 2019; Murphy et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2021), while others have used tasks that operationalize declarative memory as associative learning (e.g., Artieda & Muñoz, 2016; Bowles et al., 2016; Buffington & Morgan-Short, 2018; Ettlinger et al., 2014; Granena, 2019; Hamrick, 2015; Li, 2017; Linck et al., 2013; Saito, 2017, 2019). Moreover, some studies have incorporated both as either individual predictors (Ruiz et al., 2018; Ruiz et al., 2021; Walker et al., 2020) or as composite scores (Faretta-Stutenberg & Morgan-Short, 2018; Morgan-Short et al., 2014; Pili-Moss et al., 2020). Across these studies, it has commonly been found that declarative memory abilities are predictive of several aspects of L2 learning, including vocabulary, grammatical, and phonological development (see Morgan-Short et al., 2022 for an overview).
In addition to varying in their task demands (recognition memory vs associative learning), the stimuli employed within these tasks vary in their modality (auditory/visual) and stimulus domain (verbal/nonverbal). Such unsystematic variability...