Some second language (L2) learners return from study-abroad experiences (SAEs) with seemingly no change in their L2 ability. In this study we investigate whether a certain level of internal cognitive resources is necessary in order for individuals to take full advantage of the SAE. Specifically, we examine the role of working memory resources in lexical comprehension and production for learners who had or had not studied abroad. Participants included native English learners of Spanish. Participants completed a translation recognition task and a picture-naming task. The results suggest that individuals who lack a certain threshold of working memory resources are unable to benefit from the study-abroad context in terms of being able to produce accurately in the L2.

Speakers monitor their speech output by listening to their own voice. However, signers do not look directly at their hands and cannot see their own face. We investigated the importance of a visual perceptual loop for sign language monitoring by examining whether changes in visual input alter sign production. Deaf signers produced American Sign Language (ASL) signs within a carrier phrase under five conditions: blindfolded, wearing tunnel-vision goggles, normal (citation) signing, shouting, and informal signing. Three-dimensional movement trajectories were obtained using an Optotrak Certus system. Informally produced signs were shorter with less vertical movement. Shouted signs were displaced forward and to the right and were produced within a larger volume of signing space, with greater velocity, greater distance traveled, and a longer duration. Tunnel vision caused signers to produce less movement within the vertical dimension of signing space, but blind and citation signing did not differ significantly on any measure, except duration. Thus, signers do not “sign louder” when they cannot see themselves, but they do alter their sign production when vision is restricted. We hypothesize that visual feedback serves primarily to fine-tune the size of signing space rather than as input to a comprehension-based monitor.

The goal of this study was to examine the extent to which bilingual speakers maintain language-specific phonological contrasts for homorganic stops when a cue is shared across both languages. To this end, voice onset time (VOT) was investigated in three groups of participants: early bilinguals speakers of Canadian French and Canadian English (n = 8), monolingual speakers of Canadian English (n = 8), and monolingual speakers of Canadian French (n = 7). Three questions were targeted: What are the general patterns of VOT production in bilingual and monolinguals? Do bilingual speakers produce different mean VOT than monolinguals? Do bilingual speakers produce different variability in VOT than monolinguals? Acoustic measurements of VOT were made from monosyllabic English and French words with word-initial bilabial or coronal stop consonants. The results indicate that the early bilingual speakers maintain monolingual-like phonemic contrasts, but that they exhibit more variation within categories than monolingual speakers.

This study provides new evidence concerning the pattern of acquisition of free and bound morphemes in Italian, based on the speech of 59 children recorded through a cross-sectional method. We found that inflectional morphology is mastered before free-standing morphology. Despite the great variety of verb inflections, the analyses showed that children partially master present indicative from early productions. Although free-standing morphemes are used correctly, they are optionally omitted. Here we have explored the use and omission of articles, clitics, the copula, and auxiliaries and have shown that omission is subject to certain constraints. Articles are mainly omitted from the root of the clause, much as null subjects, because from this position the requirement of clausal identification is voided. A higher omission of accusative clitics than dative clitics was observed that has also been explained in terms of the uniqueness checking constraint: accusative, but not dative clitics need to check the D feature twice, because the former, but not the latter, trigger past particle agreement. The uniqueness checking constraint has been adopted to explain the higher omission of auxiliaries with respect to the copula: the former, but not the latter, have to check the T feature twice. Together, these findings suggest that children omit, but in principled ways.

This paper investigates the relationship between the ability to detect changes in prosody and reading performance in Spanish. Participants were children aged 6–8 years who completed tasks involving reading words, reading pseudowords, stressing pseudowords, and reproducing pseudoword stress patterns. Results showed that the capacity to reproduce pseudoword stress patterns accounted for a unique portion of the variance in text reading, after controlling for phonological awareness, phoneme sensitivity, and working memory. In addition, stress sensitivity predicted children's performance in stressing pseudowords. These results suggest that stress sensitivity may affect fluency in reading as well as word stress learning.

Do older English as a second language (ESL) children have the same knowledge of word meanings as English as a first language (EL1) children? How important is vocabulary's role in predicting word recognition in these groups? This study sought to answer these questions by examining the profiles of ESL and EL1 upper elementary aged children, for a 2-year period starting in Grade 5. Multivariate analyses revealed that (a) EL1 and ESL groups did not differ on underlying processing components (e.g., phonological awareness [PA], rapid automatized naming [RAN], and working memory [WM]) or on word recognition, but ESL children continued to lag behind their EL1 peers on knowledge of word meanings that correspond approximately to their grade level; and (b) vocabulary knowledge (root words and receptive vocabulary), explained a small proportion of additional variance on word recognition concurrently and longitudinally after accounting for the contributions of PA, RAN, and WM.

This study examined effects of lexical factors on children's spoken word recognition across a 1-year time span, and contributions to phonological awareness and nonword repetition. Across the year, children identified words based on less input on a speech-gating task. For word repetition, older children improved for the most familiar words. There was a competition effect for the word repetition task, but this effect was present only for the most familiar words on the gating task. Recognition for words from sparse neighborhoods predicted phonological awareness 1 year later, and children poorer at recognizing these words in Year 1 scored lower on word reading in Year 2. Spoken word recognition also accounted for unique variance in nonword repetition across the 1-year time span. Findings are discussed in terms of understanding the effects of vocabulary growth on spoken word recognition, phonological awareness, and nonword repetition.

We investigated the relation of two dimensions of attentional functioning (sustained auditory attention and resource capacity/allocation) and complex sentence comprehension of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and a group of typically developing (TD) children matched for age. Twenty-six school-age children with SLI and 26 TD peers completed an auditory continuous performance task (ACPT, measure of sustained attention), a concurrent verbal processing-storage task (measure of resource capacity/allocation), and a picture pointing comprehension task. Correlation analyses were run to determine the association between the measures of attention and sentence comprehension. The SLI group performed more poorly than the TD group across all tasks. For the SLI group, even after removing the effects of age, ACPT score and performance on the concurrent processing-storage task still significantly correlated with complex sentence comprehension. Sustained attention also correlated with simple sentence comprehension. Neither attention variable correlated with sentence comprehension in the TD children. For children with SLI, the comprehension of complex grammar appears to involve significant use of sustained attention and resource capacity/allocation. Even simple sentence comprehension requires significant auditory vigilance. In the case of TD children, neither complex nor simple sentence comprehension appears to invoke significant attentional involvement.