Peter Skehan’s influence in research on task difficulty: A bibliometric analysis using CiteSpace

Abstract

This paper presents results of a bibliometric analysis of studies on task difficulty over a period of nearly 40 years from 1990 to 2018 using CiteSpace V. The research data, consisting of 164 research articles and their 1706 citing references, were retrieved from the core collection of the Web of Science-SSCI database. The top 20 most often cited references were visualized and highlighted through a 406-node network of cited references. The results demonstrate that Skehan’s (2009) article was ranked as the most influential reference in studies on task difficulty or task complexity, which is clear evidence of Skehan’s far-reaching impacts on key areas in TBLT and SLA research.