This thesis argues that rhythmic well-formedness preferences contribute to conditioning morphosyntactic choices, providing evidence from patterns in language use that constraints on phonological constructs are at work in the assessment of competing morphosyntactic variants. The results of the thesis call into question a fundamental empirical…

What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) reviews in this topic area focus on early childhood education (ECE) interventions designed for use in school- or center-based settings with 3- to 6-year-old children who are not yet in kindergarten and are attending a center-based program. The primary focus for early childhood education interventions is on cognitive,…

This study addressed the potential methodological issues effect of attentional condition on subsequent vocabulary development from a different perspective, which addressed several potential methodological issues of previous research that have been based on psycholinguistic notion of second language learner as a limited capacity processor. The…

The way in which an event is packaged linguistically can be informative about the number of participants in the event and the nature of their participation. At times, however, a sentence is ambiguous, and pragmatic information weighs in to favor one interpretation over another. Whereas adults may readily know how to pick up on such cues to…

Cognates have served as a useful tool for investigating the bilingual lexicon in many studies, but very little research has been carried out on different types of cognates, specifically, partial cognates and their role in cross-linguistic effect. The present study examines cognate effect in the speech production and acceptability judgment of two…

Mobile technologies are increasingly finding their way into classroom practice. While these technologies can create opportunities that may facilitate learning, including the learning of a second or foreign language (L2), the full potential of these new media often remains underexploited. A case in point concerns tablet applications for language…

First language (L1) attrition in adulthood offers new insight on neuroplasticity and the role of language experience in shaping neurocognitive responses to language. Attriters are multilinguals for whom advancing L2 proficiency comes at the cost of the L1, as they experience a shift in exposure and dominance (e.g., due to immigration). To date,…

This article reports on a study that investigated whether processing instruction(PI) or production-based instruction (PBI) is more effective for the teaching of regular past simple verb forms in English. In addition, this study examined whether explicit grammatical information (EI) mediates the effectiveness of PI or PBI. A total of 194 Turkish…

The facilitation of word processing by sentence context reflects the interaction between the build-up of message-level semantics and lexical processing. Yet, little is known about how this effect varies through adulthood as a function of reading skill. In this study, Participants 18-64 years old with a range of literacy competence read simple…

The ability to use cognitive-control functions to regulate speech perception is thought to be crucial in mastering developmental challenges, such as language acquisition during childhood or compensation for sensory decline in older age, enabling interpersonal communication and meaningful social interactions throughout the entire life span.…

There is growing interest in learners' cognitive capacities to process a second language (L2) at first exposure to the target language. Evidence suggests that L2 learners are capable of processing novel words by exploiting phonological information from their first language (L1). Hearing adult learners of a sign language, however, cannot fall back…

When bilinguals process written language, they show delays in accessing lexical items relative to monolinguals. The present study investigated whether this effect extended to spoken language comprehension, examining the processing of sentences with either low or high semantic constraint in both first and second languages. English-German…

Formulaic sequences are found to be processed faster than their matched novel phrases in previous studies. Given the variety of formulaic types, few studies have compared processing on different types of formulaic sequences. The present study explored the processing among idioms, speech formulae and written formulae. It has been found that in…

Processing morphemic elements is one of the most difficult parts of second language acquisition (DeKeyser, 2005; Larsen-Freeman, 2010). This difficulty gains prominence when second language (L2) learners must perform under time pressure, and difficulties arise in using grammatical knowledge. To solve the problem, the current study used the tenets…

Social identity threat refers to the process through which an individual underperforms in some domain due to their concern with confirming a negative stereotype held about their group. Psychological research has identified this as one contributor to the underperformance and underrepresentation of women, Blacks, and Latinos in STEM fields. Over the…