Two current issues in research on first language (L1) attrition among adoptees are explored: whether adoptees have lost their L1 completely and whether relearning can help them recover their L1 if it is not completely lost. These issues are investigated by examining whether Swedish monolingual Korean adoptees’ preexisting knowledge of L1 Korean has an impact on their relearning of Korean as adults. The results suggest that Korean adoptees’ early L1 experience has left traces of the language and that these traces can have an effect on their phonetic perception when relearning the language. The finding that reexposed adoptees performed better than native Swedish learners indicates that the greatest impact on retrieving L1 knowledge comes from relearning. Given the lack of the statistically significant findings, the results demonstrate possibilities but remain open to discussion.

To test the effects of reading speed on second-language (L2) sentence processing and the potential influence of conflicting native language word order, we compared advanced L2 learners of English with native English speakers on a self-paced reading task. L2 learners read faster overall than native English speakers. When differences in reading speed were controlled for, L2 learners were as sensitive to grammaticality manipulations as native English speakers. On-line reading times did not reflect any effect of cross-language conflict in the learners. Results from an end-of-sentence verification task showed a stronger bias toward a subject–object order in the cross-language conflict conditions in speed-matched L2 learners but not in L2 learners reading faster than native speakers. Results are compatible with hypothesized differences in resource allocation between L2 and native language processing.

This study addressed visual word recognition in deaf bilinguals who are proficient in German Sign Language (DGS) and German. The study specifically investigated whether DGS signs are activated during a monolingual German word recognition task despite the lack of similarity in German orthographic representations and DGS phonological representations. Deaf DGS–German bilinguals saw pairs of German words and decided whether the words were semantically related. Half of the experimental items had phonologically related translation equivalents in DGS. Participants were slower to reject semantically unrelated word pairs when the translation equivalents were phonologically related in DGS than when the DGS translations were phonologically unrelated. However, this was not the case in Turkish–German hearing bilinguals who do not have sign language knowledge. The results indicate that lexical representations are associated cross-linguistically in the bilingual lexicon irrespective of their orthographic or phonological form. Implications of these results for reading development in deaf German bilinguals are discussed.

Visual attention is a necessary prerequisite to successful communication in sign language. The current study investigated the development of attention-getting skills in deaf native-signing children during interactions with peers and teachers. Seven deaf children (aged 21–39 months) and five adults were videotaped during classroom activities for approximately 30 hr. Interactions were analyzed in depth to determine how children obtained and maintained attention. Contrary to previous reports, children were found to possess a high level of communicative competence from an early age. Analysis of peer interactions revealed that children used a range of behaviors to obtain attention with peers, including taps, waves, objects, and signs. Initiations were successful approximately 65% of the time. Children followed up failed initiation attempts by repeating the initiation, using a new initiation, or terminating the interaction. Older children engaged in longer and more complex interactions than younger children. Children's early exposure to and proficiency in American Sign Language is proposed as a likely mechanism that facilitated their communicative competence.

Most immigrant parents face the challenge of passing on their heritage language to their children. Family predictors of Turkish heritage language vocabulary are examined for 119 preschoolers and 121 fourth graders in Germany. Path analyses link children's Turkish vocabulary to the family background (parents’ education and generational status), the home literacy environment (HLE), and mothers’ language use. The main findings are (a) the HLE predicts children's Turkish vocabulary, (b) mothers’ use of Turkish with their children predicts children's Turkish vocabulary, and (c) family background is mainly connected to Turkish vocabulary by way of mothers’ use of Turkish. The HLE and being exposed to Turkish are both important for children's heritage vocabulary. Thus, parents can use everyday resources to actively promote their children's Turkish language skills.

Electronic picture storybooks often include motion pictures, sounds, and background music instead of static pictures, and hotspots that label/define words when clicked on. The current study was designed to examine whether these additional elements aid word learning and story comprehension and whether effects accumulate making the animated e-book that also includes hotspots the most promising device. A sample group of 136 4- and 5-year-old kindergarten children were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: static e-books, animated e-books, interactive animated e-books, and a control group. In experimental conditions, four on-screen stories were each presented four times during a 4-week intervention period. Children in the control condition played nonliteracy related computer games during the same time. In all conditions, children worked independently with the computer programs. Strong treatment effects were found on target vocabulary originating from the story. Pupils gained most in vocabulary after reading interactive animated e-books, followed by (noninteractive) animated e-books and then static e-books. E-books including animations and interactivity were neither beneficial nor detrimental for story comprehension. Findings suggest that electronic storybooks are valuable additions in support of the classroom curriculum with interactive animated e-books being the best alternative.

Year 2 findings are reported from a longitudinal, experimental-control study involving 31 Spanish-speaking preschoolers (aged 38–48 months) randomly assigned to two Head Start classrooms. In Year 1, classrooms differed only in the language of instruction, with teachers using only Spanish in one classroom and only English in the other. In Year 2, an experimental transitional bilingual education (TBE) model was implemented, with English being gradually introduced in the TBE classroom until a ratio of 30:70 English-to-Spanish was achieved and Spanish being gradually introduced in the predominantly English (PE) classroom until a ratio of 70:30 English-to-Spanish was achieved. Year 2 results were consistent with Year 1, with the TBE classroom exceeding the PE classroom on all Spanish measures of language and literacy development and no significant differences favoring the PE classroom. Results also indicated that Year 2 trajectories were conditional on first-year effects, suggesting that sustained growth in dual language learner's early literacy may depend on early intervention among 3-year-old preschoolers.

The goal of this study was to investigate whether individual difference factors influence the second language (L2) learning of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with typical development (TD) differently. The study focuses on tense inflection development in English L2 children. The roles of age of L2 acquisition, length of L2 exposure, and first language (L1) were examined. Twenty-four pairs of 4- and 5-year-old English L2 children with SLI and English L2 children with TD participated in the study. Children's responses on the third person singular and regular past tense probes of the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (Rice & Wexler, 2001) were analyzed using logistic mixed regression modeling and classification procedures. For all children, those who started learning English later performed better than children who started learning English earlier, but the advantage of an older age of acquisition was particularly present in the L2 with SLI group. For children in the L2 group with TD, their accuracy with tense inflection clearly increased with longer L2 exposure, but this was not found for the L2 children with SLI. Finally, L2 children with TD were better able to transfer L1 knowledge than L2 children with SLI.

The present study investigates the effects of stereotypical gender during anaphor resolution in German. The study aims at isolating the effects of gender-stereotypical cues from the effects of grammatical gender. Experiment 1 employs descriptions of typically male, female, and neutral occupations that contain no grammatical cue to the referent gender, followed by a masculine or feminine role noun, in a reaction time priming paradigm. Experiment 2 uses eye-tracking methodology to examine how the gender typicality of these descriptions affects the resolution of a matching or mismatching anaphoric pronoun. Results show a mismatch effect manifest at very early stages of processing. Both experiments also reveal asymmetries in the processing of the two genders suggesting that the representation of female rather than male referents is more flexible in counterstereotypical contexts. No systematic relation is found between eye movements and individual gender attitude measures, whereas a reliable correlation is found with gender typicality ratings.

The study explored the contribution of two aspects of inflectional morphological awareness, verb inflection and noun–adjective inflection, to word reading and reading comprehension in the Greek language, which is an orthographically transparent language. Participants (120 first graders, 123 second graders, 126 third graders) were given two oral language experimental tasks of inflectional morphological awareness. Furthermore, phonological awareness, receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, decoding, and reading comprehension were evaluated. It was revealed that noun–adjective inflectional morphology contributed significantly to decoding only in first grade, while verb inflectional morphology had a significant contribution to reading comprehension in third grade. It is interesting that inflectional morphological awareness did not predict reading skills for second graders. Phonological awareness was a firm predictor of word reading in all grades and made a unique contribution in Grades 2 and 3. Finally, in all grades, receptive vocabulary was a steady predictor of reading comprehension, whereas expressive vocabulary predicted only first-grade reading comprehension. It is suggested that inflectional morphological awareness may be an important predictor of early reading in a language with a shallow orthography and a rich morphology.