Kaylee Fernandez, Rutgers University

Effective language processing relies on pattern detection. Spanish monolinguals predict verb tense through stress-suffix associations: a stressed first syllable signals present tense, while an unstressed first syllable signals past tense. Beginning English learners of Spanish struggle to detect these associations, and we investigate whether they benefit from game-based training. English-Spanish beginning learners played a digital game aimed at making stress-suffix associations in oxytone/paroxytone verbs with CV/CVC syllables for 10 days, 10-15 minutes daily. After training, participants completed a WM task. Results showed higher accuracy in oxytone CV than paroxytone CVC verbs, and faster RTs in the first 1,000 trials, with paroxytone and CVC verbs showing the greatest improvements. Lower phonotactic probability verbs showed relatively higher accuracy improvement compared to higher probability verbs until 1,000 trials. Participants with higher WM scores showed greater RT reductions in the first 1000 trials. The findings suggest that game-based training facilitates the acquisition of stress-suffix patterns and the anticipatory function of word stress. The data support L2 phonological acquisition models, indicating that learners can acquire suprasegmentals different from their first language, and lexical access models proposing that prosody influences word activation and storage. These results highlight the potential of gaming as an effective tool for learning stress-suffix associations.