The Interaction of Cognitive Task Complexity and Motivational Orientation in L2 Writing

Within the active area of task complexity research, a key objective has been to investigate the effects of inherent cognitive demands of tasks on L2 performance and development. The present study investigated the extent to which cognitive writing task complexity influences linguistic performance of writing, and examined how motivational orientation defined by regulatory focus would mediate the effects of task complexity. Sixty-two Korean EFL learners were asked to perform two writing tasks with different levels of complexity. Learners’ regulatory foci were measured, and linguistic performances were assessed in terms of syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, and accuracy. ANOVA results revealed significant main effects of task complexity on all indices of lexical complexity and the two measures of syntactic complexity (T-units per sentence and verb phrases per T-unit). Importantly, there were significant interaction effects between writing task complexity and regulatory focus on syntactic complexity and accuracy. The promotion-focused learners performed better regarding both syntactic and lexical complexity in the complex task than the simple task, while the prevention-focused learners showed decreased accuracy and syntactic complexity with increasing lexical complexity. The findings provide important insights into factors mediating the effect of task complexity on linguistic performance, suggesting that the consideration of regulatory focus is crucial to ensure the effectiveness of L2 writing tasks.