Early learning of a second language at home has been found to be beneficial for children’s cognitive development, including their ability to ascribe mental states to others. We investigated whether second language learning in an educational setting can accelerate children’s sensitivity to a communication partner’s perspective and whether the amount of exposure to second language education makes a difference. We tested three groups of English monolingual four-five year old children with varying language exposure at the beginning of their first year at primary school and 24 weeks later. Children attending bilingual schools and children with weekly second language lessons exhibited similar accelerated development of communicative perspective-taking skills compared to children without second language provision. Such advances were not related to other cognitive advances. Thus, limited foreign language teaching might boost young children’s development in communicative perspective-taking skills, providing an enhanced basis for their social competence development.

The highly digitalised nature of contemporary society has made digital literacy important for newly arrived migrants. However, for teachers, the use of information and communication technologies can be challenging. The aim of the present study is to gain a deeper understanding of how teachers perceive digital resources as useful for teaching migrants language and subject skills. The research question is, In what way do teachers at the language introduction programme for newly arrived migrants in Sweden articulate the use of digital resources in relation to language teaching and in relation to subject teaching? This qualitative study is based on observations of 28 lessons in different subjects in the language introduction programme, as well as interviews with the observed teachers. In analysing the material, we first used the TPACK in situ model (Pareto & Willermark, 2019) to organise the data on the use of digital resources, and thereafter discourse theory (Howarth, 2005) was used to analyse the data. The results show that the teachers limited their students’ use of digital resources during the lessons, which is apparent in two discourses: distrust and dichotomy. In the discourse on distrust, digital technology is seen as an obstacle to teaching, and the discourse dichotomy is about the opposition between the digital and the physical. Moreover, articulations were often expressed in terms of identity; the teachers talked about themselves in relation to digital resources, rather than talking about how they use digital resources in their teaching.

This study conceptually replicates Cepeda, Coburn, Rohrer, Wixted, Mozer, & Pashler’s (2009, Experiment 1) study on the effects of distributed practice on second language (L2) vocabulary learning to examine its generalizability to a new context and population sample. The secondary focus of the paper is to examine the challenges and affordances of online data collection and participant recruitment sites. Both the original and our study examined the effects of distributed practice on two study sessions to learn L2 vocabulary assessed on a 10-day delayed posttest. Our results showed that the spaced conditions significantly outperformed the massed condition, mirroring the original study’s findings. However, Cepeda et al.’s (2009) participants outscored our participants by 10–20% (in each experimental group) on the posttest. While these findings highlight the benefits of spacing towards learning and memory, they also underscore the challenges researchers may face when conducting experimental research in online environments.

This systematic review and meta-analysis explore the correlation between foreign language instruction and mathematical skills in young adolescents, highlighting the significance of high school mathematical education and the adaptability of the adolescent brain. Focused on students starting second language programs between ages 8 and 13, following PRISMA guidelines, this review included 25 studies (1978–2020) with 785,552 participants. Using a random-effects model, the overall effect size revealed a statistically significant relationship between our variables, indicating a threefold higher likelihood of passing or achieving higher grades in mathematical tests for language-learning students. Moderating variables analyses identified socioeconomic status (SES) and intervention length as influencers of observed heterogeneity, with SES being the primary factor. Sensitivity analyses, including adding potentially missing studies and removing outliers, confirmed the robustness of the overall effect. Nonetheless, additional research is needed to enhance global diversity and comprehensively understand the interplay between language learning and cognitive function.

Can exposure to a foreign language in the first year of school enhance divergent thinking skills? Ninety-nine monolingual children from predominantly White neighbourhoods (MAge = 57.7 months, SD 1.2; 47 girls) attending bilingual schools, schools with weekly foreign language lessons, or schools without a foreign language provision (= controls) completed divergent thinking and executive function tasks at the beginning of the school year and 24 weeks later. The groups did not differ on creativity measures at the beginning of the school year. Only bilingual school children and weekly language learners improved divergent thinking at the second testing point, with the former significantly outperforming controls on creative fluency and flexibility. Improvements could not be explained by executive function development. Therefore, a considerable amount of exposure to a foreign language in early formal education appears to boost creative thinking.

Little is known about the neural changes that accompany sign language learning by hearing adults. We used ERPs and a word-sign matching task to assess how learning impacted the N400 priming effect (reduced negativity for translations compared to unrelated trials). English monolinguals (N = 32) learned 100 ASL signs – half highly iconic (meaning was guessable), half non-iconic. In contrast to non-iconic signs, little learning was needed for the highly iconic signs as translation accuracy was similar pre- and post-learning. Prior to learning, an N400 priming effect was observed only for iconic signs. After learning, the size of the priming effect increased for non-iconic signs (replicating word learning studies) but decreased for iconic signs. For deaf ASL signers (N = 20), iconicity did not modulate the size of the N400 priming effect. We conclude that the impact of iconicity on lexico-semantic processing is reduced following learning, as signs are integrated into an emerging visual-manual lexicon.

This corpus study compares the use of Danish prepositions in the writing of L1 users of Danish to that of L2 users of Danish (with English as their L1). It examines to what extent non-standard usage is a specific L2 phenomenon and to what degree the challenges with prepositions are shared between the L1 and L2 group. We analyze the distribution and characteristics of non-standard usage involving four frequent Danish prepositions: til ‘to’, i ‘in’, på ‘on’, and for ‘for’. The results show that L2 texts are characterized by a larger share of non-standard tokens and by confusion of prepositions and non-prepositions. Yet, both L1 texts and L2 texts have non-standard usage and both have possible English calques. Based on the similarities between the two groups, we recommend that future studies include naturally occurring L1 production as a baseline for describing characteristics of L2 production.

Emergent bilinguals (EBs) who are exposed to societal language at school but use another language at home may experience difficulties in mastering the societal language, especially those at risk for language and reading disabilities. Learning phonologically specific new words that discriminate between phonemes may foster phonological awareness and word reading. This study examined the effectiveness of a lexical specificity intervention program that targeted phoneme discrimination in EBs at risk for reading disabilities. EBs who scored below the 25th percentile on the screening measures were selected and randomly assigned to one of two conditions: at-risk intervention or at-risk control. Of the 76 EBs in the at-risk group, 40 were randomly assigned to receive the intervention. A group of 51 typically developing EBs who did not meet the risk criteria were selected as typical controls. The pre- and post-tests include phoneme discrimination, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, fluency, and decoding. The at-risk intervention group showed improvement on the phoneme discrimination task after the intervention and outperformed the at-risk control group but not the typical control group. In addition, growth was observed during both the training and testing sessions of the intervention. The lexical specificity intervention could be a good resource to enhance a key precursor to literacy development for at-risk EBs.

Learning a new language is an important goal that many individuals find difficult to achieve, particularly during adulthood. Several factors have related this variability to different extrinsic (learning condition, difficulty of the materials) and intrinsic (cognitive abilities) factors, but the interaction between them is barely known. In two experiments, participants learned English grammar rules in intentional (Experiment 1) or explicit (Experiment 2), and incidental learning-contexts. Overall, results of this study indicated that intentional-explicit conditions benefitted rule-learning, as compared to incidental conditions. This benefit was mainly present when participants were learning an easy-rule; explicit and incidental learning did not differ in the case of participants learning a difficult rule (Experiment 2). Moreover, individual differences in executive functioning predicted successful learning in interaction with difficulty. When learning an easy-rule, proactive control facilitated intentional learning. In contrast, when participants were learning a complex-rule, incidental learning was enhanced by lower involvement of proactive control.

To become fluent in a second language, learners need to acquire a large vocabulary. However, the cognitive and affective mechanisms that support word learning, particularly among second language learners, are only beginning to be understood. Prior research has focused on intentional learning and small artificial lexicons. In the current study investigating the sources of individual variability in word learning and their underlying mechanisms, participants intentionally and incidentally learned a large vocabulary of Welsh words (i.e., emulating word learning in the wild) and completed a large battery of cognitive and affective measures. The results showed that, for both learning conditions, native language knowledge, auditory/phonological abilities and orthographic sensitivity all made unique contributions to word learning. Importantly, short-term/working memory played a significantly larger role in intentional learning. We discuss these results in the context of the mechanisms that support both native and non-native language learning.

Pierce et al. (2017) have proposed that variations in the timing, quality and quantity of language input during the earliest stages of development are related to variations in the development of phonological working memory and, in turn, to later language learning outcomes. To examine this hypothesis, three groups of children who are at-risk for language learning were examined: children with cochlear implants (CI), children with developmental language disorder (DLD), and internationally-adopted (IA) children, Comparison groups of typically-developing monolingual (MON) children and second language (L2) learners were also included. All groups were acquiring French as a first or second language and were matched on age, gender, and socioeconomic status, as well as other group-specific factors; they were between 5;0–7;3 years of age at time of testing. The CI and DLD groups scored significantly more poorly on the memory measures than the other groups; while the IA and L2 groups did not differ from one another. While the IA group performed more poorly than the MON group, there was no difference between the L2 and MON groups. We also found differential developmental relationships between phonological memory and language among the groups of interest in comparison to the typically-developing MON and L2 groups supporting the hypothesis that language experiences early in life are consequential for language development because of their effects on the development of phonological memory.