This study investigated the effects of L1 processing experience on L2 morphological awareness. Preliminary cross-linguistic comparisons indicated that morphological awareness in two typologically distinct languages, Chinese and English, differs in several major ways. Based on the comparisons, three specific hypotheses were formulated: compared with learners with a typologically similar L1 background, Chinese learners of English as an L2 would be less sensitive to intraword structural salience, less efficient in structural analysis, and more adept at integrating word-internal (morphological) and word-external (context) information. These hypotheses were tested empirically with two groups of adult L2 learners of English with contrasting L1 backgrounds (Chinese and Korean). The data demonstrated that virtually no difference existed between the two ESL groups in their intraword structural sensitivity, and that, although Chinese learners were notably slower than Korean learners in performing intraword structural analysis, they were far more efficient in integrating morphological and contextual information during sentence processing. Viewed collectively, these findings seem to suggest that L1 processing experience influences the development of L2 morphological awareness in specific and predictable ways.

Children with histories of early corrective heart surgery (ECHS) are at risk for language, cognitive, and motor delays. This study examined parent–child play in 30 4-year-old children with ECHS and 30 typically developing children. Children were compared on basic language measures and on proportions of symbolic and nonsymbolic talk. Children with ECHS focused on concrete “here-and-now” talk and produced less symbolic talk than normative children. Only a third of the children with ECHS were able to produce story episodes. These findings reflect the ECHS children's relatively immature participation in joint pretense and their overreliance on earlier acquired strategies for pretend play. This style of participation may result from difficulty coordinating more complex social intentions with appropriate language forms.

Studies of early-developing consonants (stops, nasals, and glides) in babbling have shown that most of the variance in consonants and their associated vowels, both within and between syllables, is due to a “frame” produced by mandibular oscillation, with very little active contribution from intrasyllabic or intersyllabic tongue movements. In a study of four babbling infants, the prediction that this apparently basic “frame dominance” would also apply to late-developing consonants (fricatives, affricates, and liquids) was tested. With minor exceptions, confirming evidence for both the predicted intrasyllabic and intersyllabic patterns was obtained. Results provide further evidence for the frame dominance conception, but suggest that the early rarity of late-developing consonants may be primarily a result of intrasegmental production difficulty.

This case study examines the shifting bilingual preference of three French/English bilingual children over a three-year period. It also clarifies the distinction between the many often misleading terms used to refer to bilingual preference (i.e., a bilingual's language choice). The children's fluctuating bilingual preference is accounted for in terms of three contextual domains: home, school, and community. The home domain was predominantly French-speaking, while the community domain shifted between predominantly English-speaking Louisiana and French-speaking Québec. The 10-year-old identical twin girls were in a French immersion program in Louisiana during the entire three-year period; their 12-year-old brother was not. A new, domain-sensitive longitudinal measure – the bilingual preference ratio (BPR) – was created and applied for each child using 36 months of weekly tape recordings of mealtime conversations. BPR fluctuations indicate that the greatest effect on the children's language preference was community immersion in the target language. However, the twins' markedly greater preference for speaking French at home in Louisiana is attributed to the influence of French immersion at school.

When discriminating between unknown foreign languages, infants, young children, and adult listeners are able to make same-language/different-language discrimination judgments at better than chance levels. In these studies (Lorch & Meara, 1989; Mehler et al., 1988; Stockmal, 1995), foreign language samples have often been provided by different talkers, confounding voice characteristics and language characteristics. In Experiments 1 and 2, using the same talkers for different pairs of languages, we found that listeners were able to discriminate between languages they did not know, even when spoken by the same talker. That is, listeners were able to separate talker from language characteristics. Experiment 3 used multidimensional scaling to explore the bases of listener judgments. Listeners were attentive to prosodic properties and influenced by their familiarity with the test languages.

Native Spanish early and late acquirers of English as well as native Vietnamese early and child acquirers of English made grammaticality judgments of sentences in their second language. Native Spanish early acquirers were not distinguishable from native English speakers, whereas native Spanish late acquirers had difficulty with all aspects of the grammar tested except word order. Native Vietnamese early acquirers had difficulty with those aspects of English that differ markedly from Vietnamese. Native Vietnamese child acquirers had more generalized problems, similar to those of native Spanish late acquirers. Thus, native language appeared to make a difference for early acquirers, whereas a later age of acquisition caused a more general problem. A processing-based model focusing on the difficulty non-native language learners have in rapidly decoding surface form is offered as a possible explanation for both effects.

Vygotsky's social psycholinguist approach is not incompatible with computational approaches to the study of mind. In this way William Frawley sets the stage for a Vygoskyan cognitive science. Socioculturalists' theorizing on the work of the human mind has long maintained boundaries against cognitive science's information processing approaches and language, and vice versa. Frawley argues that no such division is entirely necessary and offers powerful ways of linking the two ways of thinking. Frawley's background in both Vygotskyan and other sociocultural theories, as well as in cognitive science and computational theories, places him in an important position to make these links.

Given the small number of introductory psycholinguistics books currently available, it is not only refreshing to find a new one but also delightful to find one as accessible to general audiences as Altmann's The Ascent of Babel. Altmann, a professor at the University of York and an established psycholinguistics researcher, aimed to write a book that anyone could understand and enjoy. Indeed, he has succeeded. The result is not just another run-of-the-mill textbook. The prose reads like the transcription from a semester of lectures or from a very long conversation carried out between mentor and student. The prose reads as smoothly as it does, in part, because there are no references cited within the text. They have been included at the end of the book in a chapter-by-chapter format. In addition, very few researchers are mentioned by name, which serves to speed readers along, allowing them to focus on findings rather than individuals. The names that are mentioned are of those at the top of the field who should become known to every student of psycholinguistics.