This study compared the language skills in a group of very low-income toddlers with those of a middle-income sample matched on age and sex. The assessment instrument was the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) for toddlers, a parent report form. The scores for the low-income group were strikingly lower on the three key indices evaluated: size of expressive vocabulary, age of appearance of word combinations, and complexity of utterances. The entire lowincome distribution was shifted about 30% toward the lower end of the middle-income distribution for both productive vocabulary and grammatical development. The magnitude of these income/ social class effects was larger than reported in most prior reports for children in this age range. This finding underscores the cautionary note issued by the CDI developers, which states that the published CDI norms, based on a middle-class sample, may not be directly applicable to low-income samples.

Phonological awareness is thought to be related to children's success in learning to read because it indicates an awareness of the internal structure of words. Morphological awareness, which has been found to be related to reading achievement for older students, may offer a more comprehensive measure of linguistic sensitivity because it entails not only phonological awareness, but also other aspects of linguistic knowledge. The research study reported herein was designed to investigate the extent to which phonological awareness contributes to the morphological awareness of first graders and to determine the extent to which phonological and morphological awareness account for variance in word reading. Two tasks of morphological awareness were used, one assessing judgments of morphological relations and the other assessing the production of inflected and derived forms.

Performance of bilingual Russian–English speakers and monolingual English speakers during auditory processing of competing lexical items was examined using eye tracking. Results revealed that both bilinguals and monolinguals experienced competition from English lexical items overlapping phonetically with an English target item (e.g., spear and speaker). However, only bilingual speakers experienced competition from Russian competitor items overlapping crosslinguistically with an English target (e.g., spear and spichki, Russian for matches). English monolinguals treated the Russian competitors as they did any other filler items. This difference in performance between bilinguals and monolinguals tested with exactly the same sets of stimuli suggests that eye movements to a crosslinguistic competitor are due to activation of the other language and to between-language competition rather than being an artifact of stimulus selection or experimental design.

The English second language development of 19 children (mean age at outset = 5 years, 4 months) from various first language backgrounds was examined every 6 months for 2 years, using spontaneous language sampling, parental questionnaires, and a standardized receptive vocabulary test. Results showed that the children's mean mental age equivalency and standard scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Third Edition nearly met native-speaker expectations after an average of 34 months of exposure to English, a faster rate of development than has been reported in some other research. Children displayed the phenomenon of general all-purpose verbs through overextension of the semantically flexible verb do, an indicator of having to stretch their lexical resources for the communicative context. Regarding sources of individual differences, older age of second language onset and higher levels of mother's education were associated with faster growth in children's English lexical development, and nonverbal intelligence showed some limited influence on vocabulary outcomes; however, English use in the home had no consistent effects on vocabulary development.

Understanding how words are created is potentially a key component to being able to learn and understand new vocabulary words. However, research on morphological awareness is relatively rare. In this study, over 660 preschool-aged children from three language groups (Cantonese, Mandarin, and Korean speakers) in which compounding morphology is highly prevalent were tested on their abilities to manipulate familiar morphemes to create novel compound words as well as on a variety of early language and reasoning measures twice over the span of 9 months to 1 year. With Time 1 vocabulary knowledge, phonological processing, and reasoning skills controlled, morphological awareness predicted unique variance in Time 2 vocabulary knowledge across languages. Across languages, vocabulary knowledge also predicted unique variance in subsequent morphological awareness, with Time 1 morphological awareness controlled. Findings underscore the bidirectional bootstrapping of morphological awareness and vocabulary acquisition for languages in which lexical compounding is prominent, and suggest that morphological awareness may be practically important in predicting and fostering children's early vocabulary learning.

In an earlier study, Service (1992) found that phonological short-term memory, reflected in the ability to repeat English-sounding pseudowords, was a good predictor of learning English as a foreign language over a period of three school years. This study attempts to find out to what extent foreign vocabulary learning is the critical learning process related to pseudoword repetition accuracy. Regression analyses on repetition data and learning measures revealed significant correlations between pseudoword repetition and foreign language learning, even after a measure of general academic achievement had been partialed out. In a fixed-order multiple regression analysis – with predictors entered in the order of general academic achievement, foreign language vocabulary, and pseudoword repetition – no additional variance in any foreign language measure studied could be accounted for by pseudoword repetition in the third step. When vocabulary in the second step was replaced by performance in foreign language essay writing or the correct reproduction of dictated discourse – both highly related to overall foreign language performance – repetition significantly increased the proportion of accounted variance, especially for two foreign language vocabulary tasks and a listening comprehension task. Phonological memory may, therefore, be specifically related to foreign vocabulary learning.

Taking as a point of departure Locke's biological model for the origins of phonological development, this study encompasses analyses of phonetic tendencies, consonant use in babbling and early words, and phonological word-selection patterns. Data from 10 children aged 9 to 16 months are drawn from four lexically defined points covering the period from no word use to a cumulative vocabulary of 50 words. Individual differences are found to prevail from the start in all three domains analyzed, with some increase in uniformity across subjects with increasing knowledge of language. Furthermore, the phonological processes typical of development from age 1 to 3 or 4 years are found to be rooted in the phonetic tendencies of the prelinguistic period.

Foreign language anxiety is a complex phenomenon that has been found to be a predictor of foreign language achievement. This study of 210 university students examined factors that predict1 foreign language anxiety. A setwise multiple regression analysis revealed that seven variables (i.e., age, academic achievement, prior history of visiting foreign countries, prior high school experience with foreign languages, expected overall average for current language course, perceived scholastic competence, and perceived self-worth) contributed significantly to the prediction of foreign language anxiety. An analysis of variance, which included trend analysis, revealed that freshmen and sophomores reported the lowest levels of foreign language anxiety, and that anxiety levels increased linearly as a function of year of study. The educational implications of these findings for understanding foreign language anxiety and for increasing foreign language learning are discussed, as are suggestions for future research.

Few researchers would doubt that ultimate attainment in second language grammar is negatively correlated with age of acquisition, but considerable controversy remains about the nature of this relationship: the exact shape of the age-attainment function and its interpretation. This article presents two parallel studies with native speakers of Russian: one on the acquisition of English as a second language in North America (n = 76), and one on the acquisition of Hebrew as a second language in Israel (n = 64). Despite the very different nature of the languages being learned, the two studies show very similar results. When age at testing is partialed out, the data reveal a steep decline in the learning of grammar before age 18 in both groups, followed by an essentially horizontal slope until age 40. This is interpreted as evidence in favor of the critical period. Both groups show a significant correlation between ultimate attainment and verbal aptitude for the adult learners, but not for the early learners. This is interpreted as further evidence that the learning processes in childhood and adulthood not only yield different levels of proficiency but are also different in nature.

This study investigated the phonological awareness of low-income Spanish–English bilingual children, because phonological awareness has been found to be an important prerequisite for literacy acquisition and because such children have been identified as at risk for successful literacy acquisition. Our sample included 123 Spanish–English bilingual preschool children (M=49.1 months) attending Head Start programs. Children's receptive vocabulary was assessed using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—3rd Edition and the Test de Vocabulario en Imagines Peabody. We assessed phonological awareness using English and Spanish versions of the Early Phonological Awareness Profile, which includes deletion detection and rhyming tasks. Emergent literacy was assessed in the child's stronger language using the Emergent Literacy Profile, which includes tests of environmental print knowledge, printed word awareness, alphabet knowledge, and early writing. Spring levels of phonological awareness in each language were most strongly related to development of phonological awareness in the other language. Final models accounted for 68% of the variance in spring English and Spanish phonological awareness. Educational implications are discussed.

Practice on cognitive tasks, in general, and word recognition tasks, in particular, will usually lead to faster and more stable responding. We present an analysis of the relationship between observed reductions in performance latency and latency variability with respect to whether processing has merely become faster across the board or whether a qualitative change, such as automatization, has taken place. The coefficient of variability (CV) - the standard deviation of response time divided by the mean latency - is shown to be useful for this purpose. A cognitive interpretation of the CV is given that relates it to issues of skill development.Data from second language learners' word recognition performance and from a simple detection task are presented which confirm predictions drawn from this interpretation of the cognitive significance of the CV. Initial improvement in a second language word recognition task was interpreted as involving more efficient controlled processing, which later gave way to automatization. The implications of this index of skill are discussed in relation to second language development and the general issue of automaticity of processing components in cognitive skills.

The development of native language phonetic representations in bilingual infants was compared to that of monolingual infants. Infants (ages 6–8, 10–12, and 14–20 months) from English–French or English-only environments were tested on their ability to discriminate a French and an English voice onset time distinction. Although 6- to 8-month-olds responded similarly irrespective of language environment, by 10–12 months both groups of infants displayed language-specific perceptual abilities: the monolinguals demonstrated realignment to the native English boundary whereas the bilinguals began discriminating both native boundaries. This suggests that infants exposed to two languages from birth are equipped to phonetically process each as a native language and the development of phonetic representation is neither delayed nor compromised by additional languages.

This study examined the effects of differing degrees of bilingualism on the nonverbal problemsolving abilities of children in grade 3. Three linguistic groups were compared on problem-solving tasks designed to measure control of attention or analysis of knowledge, processes previously shown to develop differently in monolingual and bilingual children solving linguistic problems (Bialystok, 1988). In this study, an English-speaking monolingual group was compared with a French–English bilingual group and a Bengali-English bilingual group. All of the children in the study were similar except for their language background. Tests of language proficiency confirmed that the French-English subjects were balanced bilinguals and that the Bengali-English subjects were partial bilinguals. The balanced French–English bilinguals showed better performance on the non-linguistic tasks requiring control of attention than both the partial bilingual group and the monolingual group. There were no differences found between the groups on the non-linguistic task requiring analysis of representational structures. These results indicate that balanced bilinguals carry over their linguistic advantage in control of attention into the non-linguistic domain.

Normal aging is an inevitable race between increasing knowledge and decreasing cognitive capacity. Crucial to understanding and promoting successful aging is determining which of these factors dominates for particular neurocognitive functions. Here, we focus on the human capacity for language, for which healthy older adults are simultaneously advantaged and disadvantaged. In recent years, a more hopeful view of cognitive aging has emerged from work suggesting that age-related declines in executive control functions are buffered by life-long bilingualism. In this paper, we selectively review what is currently known and unknown about bilingualism, executive control, and aging. Our ultimate goal is to advance the views that these issues should be reframed as a specific instance of neuroplasticity more generally and, in particular, that researchers should embrace the individual variability among bilinguals by adopting experimental and statistical approaches that respect the complexity of the questions addressed. In what follows, we set out the theoretical assumptions and empirical support of the bilingual advantages perspective, review what we know about language, cognitive control, and aging generally, and then highlight several of the relatively few studies that have investigated bilingual language processing in older adults, either on their own or in comparison with monolingual older adults. We conclude with several recommendations for how the field ought to proceed to achieve a more multifactorial view of bilingualism that emphasizes the notion of neuroplasticity over that of simple bilingual versus monolingual group comparisons.

Language deficits occur in a variety of developmental disorders including autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome, fragile X syndrome, specific language impairment, and Williams syndrome. This paper describes the specific pattern of linguistic deficits in each of these disorders in terms of speech production, semantic, and syntactic abilities as well as the relationship between cognitive and linguistic skills and the presence of a deviant or delayed pattern of development. In the spirit of synthesis across diverse literatures, preliminary comparisons among the language profiles of these disorders are made. The full picture, however, is incomplete given the current state of the literature, which tends to focus on the analysis of a narrow range of linguistic phenomena within a single disorder. The field is in need of research that systematically compares these disorders and leads to detailed descriptions of linguistic phenotypes of each disorder.

Studies on the acquisition of a third language (L3) in a bilingual context have shown that literacy in two languages facilitates the acquisition of a third (Cenoz & Valencia, 1994; Swain, Lapkin, Rowen, & Hart, 1990). The present study seeks to contribute to this line of research by comparing the acquisition of English as an L3 by Catalan/Spanish bilingual high school students in an immersion program with the acquisition of English by Spanish monolinguals. Data from 201 participants were submitted to a hierarchical multiple regression analysis, rendering results that show that bilingualism indeed has a positive effect on the acquisition of an L3. The evidence is discussed from a cognitive perspective.

This article examines the characteristics of surface dyslexia in a language (Italian) with high grapheme–phoneme correspondence. The reading performances of four boys are reported. The most pervasive reading symptom was severe slowness, which was associated in some, but not all, cases with reduced text comprehension. All four dyslexics performed at chance level on a task requiring comprehension of homophonous words (Study I). Vocal reaction times to single words were delayed with respect to the controls and showed a clear word length effect (Study II). However, vocal reaction times to pictorial stimuli were normal (Study III). Eye movement recordings taken during reading indicated an increased number and a reduced amplitude of rightward saccades and longer fixation durations (Study IV). A test of letter recognition in central and peripheral vision indicated that the reading deficit could not be explained in terms of an abnormal attentional “window,” as found in other cases of dyslexia (Study V). An analysis of the boys' cognitive skills (Study VI) indicated spared phonological awareness in three of four subjects; a severe deficit in rapid scanning of nonlinguistic stimuli was present in all of the subjects. Overall, these results indicate that parallel visual processing of words was impaired, and that the boys analyzed words sequentially, presumably through an orthographic–phonological conversion. This condition may be interpreted as surface dyslexia, even though the prominent characteristics of this syndrome are somewhat different in Italian than in other languages. In languages with “loose” relationships between graphemes and phonemes (e.g., English), when the phonological analysis of words is insufficient, a variety of errors is produced. In languages with considerably more regular grapheme–phoneme correspondence (e.g., Italian), the number of errors may be small since phonological reading is generally correct, and the most conspicuous symptom is slowness in reading.

This is an investigation of the relationships among selected aspects of normal language development, emerging metalinguistic skills, and concepts about print in 3-year-old children. Forty–three normally developing children were given four tests of language development; twelve metalinguistic tasks measuring phonological awareness, word awareness, and structural awareness; and two measures of literacy knowledge. The results clearly demonstrated that most 3-year-olds can make metalinguistic judgments and productions in structured tasks, with overall metalinguistic performance improving with age in months. Specific metalinguistic tasks varied in difficulty and probably in developmental order. The major domains of metalinguistic awareness (phonological, word, and structural) were significantly intercorrelated and also correlated with overall linguistic skill. Literacy knowledge was positively correlated with overall metalinguistic skill and, specifically, with phonological awareness. It is concluded that, as young as age 3, children are already rapidly developing a mental framework for analyzing language structure separately from language meaning

This longitudinal study examined the relationship between kindergarten word writing and grade 1 literacy in a large sample of Israeli children. In kindergarten, a majority of children produced writing which displayed most of the graphospatial characteristics of conventional word writing, although only one-third of the children demonstrated a working knowledge of the alphabetic principle. Kindergarten writing significantly predicted variance in all three measures of grade 1 literacy (decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension), even after controlling for general intelligence. We also investigated the role of alphabetic skills and socioliteracy variables in accounting for the predictive power of kindergarten writing. Kindergarten alphabetic skills (phonemic awareness and knowledge of letter names), but not socioliteracy factors (parental print exposure, parents' reading to child, and Clay's Concepts about Print), explained all the variance contributed by kindergarten writing to grade 1 decoding and spelling. In the case of reading comprehension, both alphabetic and socioliteracy variables were able to account for the predictive power of kindergarten writing. As a precursor of reading comprehension, kindergarten writing appears to reflect both domain-specific alphabetic skills and broader socioliteracy factors underlying the higher order cognitive competencies essential for comprehending text.

A widely held assumption about dyslexia is that difficulties in accessing the constituent phonemes of the speech stream are responsible for specific reading and spelling difficulties. In consistent orthographies, however, the acquisition of accurate phonological recoding and phonemic awareness was found to pose much less difficulty than in English, and even dyslexic children were found to exhibit high levels of performance in phonemic segmentation (Wimmer, 1993). Nevertheless, using a rather complex phonological awareness and manipulation task (spoonerisms: MAN–HAT → HAN–MAT), Landerl, Wimmer, and Frith (1997) found support for the original position on phonological awareness deficit, as both German and English dyslexic children showed poor performance. In the present studies, the spoonerism responses of Landerl et al. were reanalyzed such that children were given credit for partially correct responses (e.g., a response of HAN for MAN–HAT). Such partially correct responses were taken to indicate full segmentation of both stimulus words at the onset–rime level. The effect of this rescoring was that the error rate dropped from 76% to 26% for the English dyslexic children and from 63% to 15% for the German dyslexic children. Even higher performance levels, although not perfect as for the age-matched control children, were found on a nonword spelling task in both groups. A second study examined the segmentation of consonant clusters in younger German dyslexic children and found performance levels of about 90% correct when memory problems were ruled out. We argue that, at least in the context of a consistent orthography (and a phonics-based teaching approach), deficits in phoneme awareness are only evident in the early stages of reading acquisition, whereas rapid naming and phonological memory deficits are more persistent in dyslexic children.