Semantically ambiguous and emotional words occur frequently in language, and the different meanings of ambiguous words can sometimes have different emotional loads. For example, the Spanish word heroína (heroin/heroine) can refer to a drug or to a woman who performs a heroic act. Because both ambiguity and emotionality affect word processing, there is a need for normative databases that include data on the emotionality of the different meanings of such words. Thus far, no bases of this type are available in Spanish. With this in mind, the current study will present meaning-dependent affective (valence) ratings for 252 Spanish ambiguous words. The analyses performed show that (a) among ambiguous words, those words with meanings that have distinct affective valence are quite frequent, (b) ambiguous words rated as neutral in isolation can have meanings of opposite valence (i.e., negative-positive or positive-negative), and (c) the valence estimated for ambiguous words in isolation is better explained by the weighted average of the valence of their meanings by dominance. A database of this kind can be useful both for basic research (e.g., relationship between emotion and language and ambiguity processing) and for applied research (e.g., cognitive and emotional biases in emotional disorders and second language learning).

It has been suggested that human communities that share their basic cultural foundations evince no remarkable differences concerning the characterization of core concepts. However, the small but existing differences among them reflect their sociocultural diversity. This study compares 219 concrete concepts common to both Spanish and English semantic feature norms in order to assess whether core features of concepts follow a universal or cultural language-specific pattern. Concepts were compared through a geometric technique of vector comparison in the Euclidean n-dimensional space alongside the calculation of the network’s degree of centrality. The role of cognate status was also explored by repeating the former analysis separating cognate from noncognate words. Taken together, our data show that languages are structurally similar independent of the cognate status of words, further suggesting that there are some sort of core features common to both languages.

Music and language engage similar processing mechanisms, including auditory processing and higher cognitive functions, recruiting partially overlapping brain structures. It has been argued that both are related in child development and that linguistic functions can be positively influenced by music training above 4-years-old. In this randomized control study, with a test–training–retest methodology, 44 children (3–4 years old) were assessed with a phonological awareness test, prior and after an intervention period of a school year with weekly music classes (experimental group, n = 23) or visual arts classes (control group, n = 21) in kindergarten. In the preassessment there were no significant differences between groups. When comparing pre- and postassessment, results showed significant differences in both groups, but music classes’ students outperformed the control group, showing larger differences between the beginning and the end of the intervention. Improvement in both groups is expected due to general developmental reasons. However, the fact that children receiving music classes show greater improvement indicates that music lessons have influenced phonological awareness. Our results support the hypothesis that music training may promote language abilities, specifically phonological awareness, prior to the ages previously studied.

This study investigated whether individual differences in receptive vocabulary, speech perception and production, and nonword repetition at age 2 years, 4 months to 3 years, 4 months predicted phonological awareness 2 years later. One hundred twenty-one children were tested twice. During the first testing period (Time 1), children’s receptive vocabulary, speech perception and production, and nonword repetition were measured. Nonword repetition accuracy in the present study was distinct from other widely used measures of nonword repetition in that it focused on narrow transcription of diphone sequences in each nonword that differed systematically in phonotactic probability. At the second testing period (Time 2), children’s phonological awareness was measured. The best predictors of phonological awareness were a measure of speech production and a measure of phonological processing derived from performance on the nonword repetition task. The results of this study suggest that nonword repetition accuracy provides an implicit measure of phonological skills that are indicative of later phonological awareness at an age when children are too young to perform explicit phonological awareness tasks reliably.

The acquisition of a heritage language, normally the weaker language of early bilinguals, has been oftentimes defined as incomplete, especially for morphosyntax. As a result, these early bilinguals resemble late bilinguals more than native language speakers, calling into question the role of age of exposure. The effects of syntactic complexity on knowledge of morphosyntactic structures, however, have not been sufficiently considered hitherto. This study investigates age of exposure and syntactic complexity by comparing heritage, second language, and native language speakers on knowledge of Italian accusative clitics in three structures. An oral structural priming task and a speeded grammaticality judgment task find a discrepancy in the level of ultimate attainment heritage speakers reach for syntax and morphology. While their abstract representation of clitic structures approximates that of native language speakers more closely, their morphological knowledge of clitics aligns with second language speakers, suggesting early exposure has tangible effects only on syntactic knowledge. In turn, syntactic complexity affects the representation of clitic structures in a predictable manner, but is inconsequential to explicit knowledge of morphological forms in monolingual and bilingual speakers. Lack of age of exposure effects in the morphological domain are attributed to interface vulnerability.

Memory for speech benefits from linguistic structure. Recall is better for sentences than for random strings of words (the “sentence superiority effect”; SSE), and evidence suggests that ongoing speech may be organized advantageously as clauses in memory (recall by word position shows within-clause U shape). In this study, we examined the SSE and clause-based organization for closed-set speech materials with low semantic predictability and without typical prosody. An overall SSE was observed and accuracy by word position was enhanced at the clause boundaries for these materials. Next, we tested the effects of mental manipulation on the SSE and clause-based organization. Listeners heard word strings that were syntactic, were arranged syntactically then presented backwards, or were random draws. Participants responded to materials as presented or in reversed order, requiring mental manipulation. Clause-level organization was apparent only for materials presented in syntactic order regardless of response order. After accounting for benefits due to reductions in uncertainty for these close-set materials, an SSE was present for syntactic materials regardless of response order, and for the syntactic backwards condition with reverse-order response (yielding a syntactically correct sentence in the response). Thus, the SSE was both resistant to and could be obtained following mental manipulation.

Recent research has begun to investigate implicit learning at the level of meaning. The general consensus is that implicitly linking a word with a meaning is constrained by existing linguistic knowledge. However, another factor to consider is the extent to which attention is drawn to the relevant meanings in implicit learning paradigms. We manipulated the presence of cue saliency during implicit rule learning for a grammatical form (i.e., articles) linked to meaning (i.e., animacy vs. varying notions of size). In a series of experiments, participants learned four novel words but did not know that article usage also depended on a hidden rule, creating an opportunity for implicit rule learning. We found implicit learning through the use of a highly salient meaning (Experiment 1) or if image size was made salient by being explicitly cued (Experiment 3), but not in a low salient paradigm for intrinsic object size (Experiment 2). The findings suggest that implicit learning of semantic information might not be as constrained as previously argued. Instead, implicit learning might be additionally influenced by feature-focusing cues that make the meaning contrasts more salient and thereby more readily available to learning.

Teachers’ language practice during shared book reading may significantly affect the rate and outcome of early language proficiency. The current study has focused on 37 kindergarten teachers and 440 4- to 5-year-old kindergartners during their shared book reading sessions in Singapore, exploring teachers’ variation in instructional strategies and linguistic features, and its relations with children’s language development and teacher’s background. Results demonstrated that teacher’s language strategies and linguistic features varied considerably. Instructional strategies with a medium level of cognitive load were found to be positively related to children’s growth in receptive vocabulary and word reading skills. Teacher’s lexical sophistication was found to be positively associated with children’s vocabulary size. Years of teaching experience was revealed to predict teacher’s variation in medium-level instructions.

Given that utterance fluency in a second language (L2) is associated with not only L2 cognitive fluency but also utterance fluency in the first language (L1), the study examined to what extent different measures of L2 utterance fluency can be explained by L2-specific cognitive fluency and/or the corresponding L1 utterance fluency measures. Utterance fluency measures on speed, breakdown, and repair phenomena and cognitive fluency measures including speed of lexical retrieval, syntactic encoding, and articulation were collected in the L1 and the L2 from 44 Chinese learners of English. The results show that most L2 utterance fluency measures are accounted for by the combination of L2-specific cognitive fluency measures and the equivalent L1 utterance fluency measure, whereas the number of mid-clause silent pauses and corrections, and mean syllable duration are largely explained by L2-specific cognitive measures, suggesting that they reflect L2-specific knowledge and cognitive skills. In contrast, mean silent pause duration and the number of filled pauses are mainly explained by the corresponding L1 utterance fluency measures.