To acquire a new word, learners need to create its representation in phonological short-term memory (STM) and then encode it in their long-term memory. Two strategies can enable word representation in STM: universal segmentation and phonological mapping. Universal segmentation is language universal and thus should predict word learning in any language, while phonological mapping is language specific. This study investigates the mechanisms of vocabulary learning through a comparison of vocabulary learning task results in multiple languages. We tested 44 Polish third graders learning English on phonological STM, phonological awareness in Polish and in English, and on three tasks, which involved learning novel word forms in Polish (first language), in English (second language), and in a language that did not resemble any language known to participants (an unknown language). Participants’ English proficiency was controlled through a vocabulary task. The results suggest that word learning engages different mechanisms for familiar and unfamiliar languages. Phonological awareness in English predicted learning second language and unknown language words, and phonological STM predicted learning words of the unknown language. We propose that universal segmentation facilitates word learning only in an unfamiliar language, while in familiar languages speakers use phonological mapping in order to learn new words.

Despite the growing interest in the phenomenon of learning without intention, the incidental learning of phonological features, especially prosodic features, has received relatively little attention. This paper reports an experiment on incidental learning of lexical stress rules, and investigates whether the resultant knowledge can be unconscious, abstract, and rule based. Participants were incidentally exposed to a lexical stress system where stress location of a word is mainly determined by the final phoneme, syllable type, and syllable weight. Learning was assessed by a pronunciation judgment task. Results indicate that participants were able to transfer their knowledge of stress patterns to novel words whose final phoneme was not previously encountered, suggesting that participants had acquired abstract and potentially rule-based knowledge. The combined use of subjective and objective measures of awareness in the present study provides a strong piece of evidence of the acquisition of implicit knowledge.

An established finding in research on infant-directed speech (IDS) is that vowels are hyperarticulated compared to adult-directed speech (ADS). Studies showing this investigate point vowels, leaving us with a rather weak foundation for concluding whether IDS vowels are hyperarticulated within a particular language. The aim of this study was to investigate a large sample of vowels in IDS and to elicit speech in a natural situation for mother and infant. Acoustical and statistical analyses for /æ:, æ, ø:, ɵ, o:, ɔ, y:, y, ʉ:, ʉ, e:, ɛ/ show a selective increase in formant frequencies for some vowel qualities. In addition, vowels had higher fundamental frequency and were generally longer in IDS, but the difference between long and short vowels were comparable between IDS and ADS. With an additional front articulation and less lip protrusion in IDS compared to ADS, it is argued that IDS is hypoarticulated.

Previous studies show that young, typically developing (TD) children (<age 5) and children with specific language impairment (SLI; >age 5) make errors in the choice between a definite and an indefinite article. Suggested explanations for overgeneration of the definite article include failure to distinguish speaker from hearer assumptions, and for overgeneration of the indefinite article failure to draw scalar implicatures, and weak working memory. However, no direct empirical evidence for these accounts is available. In this study, 27 Dutch-speaking children with high-functioning autism, 27 children with SLI, and 27 TD children aged 5–14 were administered a pragmatic article choice test, a nonverbal theory of mind test, and three types of memory tests (phonological memory, verbal, and nonverbal working memory). The results show that the children with high-functioning autism and SLI (a) make similar errors, that is, they overgenerate the indefinite article; (b) are TD-like at theory of mind, but (c) perform significantly more poorly than the TD children on phonological memory and verbal working memory. We propose that weak memory skills prevent the integration of the definiteness scale with the preceding discourse, resulting in the failure to consistently draw the relevant scalar implicature. This in turn yields the occasional erroneous choice of the indefinite article a in definite contexts.

The role of phonological and orthographic awareness on Chinese character reading from Grade 1 to 2 was investigated with 112 Taiwanese children. Phonological awareness (onset, rime, and tone), rudimentary orthographic awareness (character configuration and structure knowledge), and character reading were assessed in each grade. The strategy of learning to read novel characters using regular or sophisticated orthography-to-phonology correspondence rules or character mapping was tested in Grade 2. Our results suggested that (a) phonological and orthographic awarenesses are important in Grade 1, and tone awareness in Grade 1 uniquely predicts character reading in Grade 2; and (b) the use of sophisticated orthography-to-phonology correspondence rules and mapping strategy are crucial for character reading in Grades 1 and 2. In addition, phonological and rudimentary orthographic awarenesses are important for using sophisticated orthographic strategy when learning to read novel characters.

Using speakers of either African American English or Southern White English, we asked whether a working memory measure was linguistically unbiased, that is, equally able to distinguish between children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) across dialects, with similar error profiles and similar correlations to standardized test scores. We also examined whether the measure was affected by a child's nonmainstream dialect density. Fifty-three kindergarteners with SLI and 53 typically developing controls (70 African American English, 36 Southern White English) were given a size judgment working memory task, which involved reordering items by physical size before recall, as well as tests of syntax, vocabulary, intelligence, and nonmainstream density. Across dialects, children with SLI earned significantly poorer span scores than controls, and made more nonlist errors. Span and standardized language test performance were correlated; however, they were also both correlated with nonmainstream density. After partialing out density, span continued to differentiate the groups and correlate with syntax measures in both dialects. Thus, working memory performance can distinguish between children with and without SLI and is equally related to syntactic abilities across dialects. However, the correlation between span and nonmainstream dialect density indicates that processing-based verbal working memory tasks may not be as free from linguistic bias as often thought. Additional studies are needed to further explore this relationship.

Is the specific consonant–vowel (CV) letter combination of a word a basic source of information for lexical access in the early stages of processing? We designed two masked priming lexical decision experiments to respond to this question by directly examining the role of CV skeletal structure in written-word recognition. To that aim, each target word was preceded by a one-letter different nonword prime that kept the same CV skeletal structure or not. We also included an identity prime as a control. Results showed faster word identification times in the CV congruent condition than in the CV incongruent condition when a consonant was replaced from the target (paesaje–PAISAJE < parsaje–PAISAJE), but not when it was a vowel (alusno–ALUMNO = alueno–ALUMNO). This dissociation poses problems for those accounts based on an early activation of the CV skeletal structure during lexical processing. Instead, this pattern of data favors the view that it is the word's consonant skeleton rather than the CV skeletal structure that is the key element in the early phases of word processing. We discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of these findings.

Cognitive scientists across disciplines have shown a vested interest in examining if and how the speech perception and production modalities are connected. The field of second language (L2) acquisition contributes to this discussion by investigating the effects of auditory training of L2 sounds on pronunciation. This meta-analysis offers a comprehensive view of the last 25 years of L2 perception training studies that test for effects in production. The results indicate that the two modalities are connected, insomuch as training the perception of L2 sounds can induce positive change in the productive mode as well. The data indicate that strictly controlled perception training led to medium-sized improvements in perception (d = 0.92, SD = 0.96) and small improvements in production (d = 0.54, SD = 0.45). A correlation analysis suggests a small- to medium-sized relationship between perception and production gains, although this relationship was not significant. The production of obstruents improved to a larger degree than sonorants or vowels, and an additional six moderating variables influenced the magnitude of the production effect sizes. We caution researchers to not equate the connection of the two modalities in long-term linguistic development to real-time neurological processing, and we end with five recommendations for the domain of L2 phonetic training research.

Using a semantic priming experiment, the influence of lexical access and knowledge of semantic relations on reading comprehension was studied in Dutch monolingual and bilingual minority children. Both context-independent semantic relations in the form of category coordinates and context-dependent semantic relations involving concepts that co-occur in certain contexts were tested in an auditory animacy decision task, along with lexical access. Reading comprehension and the control variables vocabulary size, decoding skill, and mental processing speed were tested by means of standardized tasks. Mixed-effects modeling was used to obtain individual priming scores and to study the effect of individual differences in the various predictor variables on the reading scores. Semantic priming was observed for the coordinate pairs but not the context-dependently related pairs, and neither context-independent priming nor lexical access predicted reading comprehension. Only vocabulary size significantly contributed to the reading scores, emphasizing the importance of the number of words known for reading comprehension. Finally, the results show that the monolingual and bilingual children perform similarly on all measures, suggesting that in the current Dutch context, language status may not be highly predictive of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension skill.

The first and second authors contributed equally to this article and should be considered co–first authors. We regret this omission and any problems it may have caused.