Focusing on mother–child verbal interactions in two different contexts, the present study examined whether differences in maternal conversational style could be explained by children's linguistic and conversational abilities and by the mothers' expressed attitudes to collectivism. To this end, 20 Estonian mothers were videotaped with their 6-year-old children during mealtime and puzzle solving, and they were asked to fill in a questionnaire on collectivistic attitudes. The results showed that the mothers' frequency of engaging children in conversation was not related to the children's linguistic and conversational abilities. The children talked more and spoke more complexly during puzzle solving. The context had a great influence on the maternal regulatory speech. Contrary to the expectations, mothers who scored higher in collectivism were not more directive; instead, they tended to be more talkative.

This article investigates whether human masculine plural noun phrases (NPs) in Spanish, which can be interpreted with an exclusively masculine or a mixed-gender meaning, are a case of balanced or unbalanced ambiguity. The results of an experiment using a sentence continuation task with oral stimuli are consistent with the claim that masculine grammatical gender biases listeners toward an exclusively masculine interpretation. The acceptance rate of continuations with the pronoun uno/una referring to a masculine plural antecedent showed that the exclusively masculine meaning of the NP is accessed more frequently and involves a lower cognitive cost than the mixed-gender interpretation. Further, this effect interacts with the stereotypicality of the noun: nouns independently established to carry a masculine stereotype are less likely to be associated with a mixed-gender interpretation. The study also found that the speakers’ attitudes toward nonsexist language predict their acceptance of the mixed-gender interpretation of masculine NPs.

The present study tested the hypothesis (Byrne, 1996) that young children who do not yet understand that the elements of alphabetic writing represent phonemes link writing to language at the level of morphemes. We asked US preschoolers to write words that varied in the number of morphemes and the number of syllables that they contained. We identified a group of 50 children who used letters that represented phonemes in the intended words no more often than expected by chance (mean age = 4 years, 9 months). These prephonological spellers did not produce longer spellings for two-morpheme words such as teacup than for one-morpheme words such as napkin, although the length of their spellings was affected by the number of letters that they used to spell the previously presented word and by the order of the word in the experiment. The results suggest that the length of prephonological spellers’ productions is not influenced by the linguistic length of a message in phonemes, syllables, or morphemes, and they do not support the idea that these children show a special sensitivity to morphemes.

Comprehension of predicates and reflexives was examined in children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS) who were between 9 years, 7 months and 10 years, 2 months. Demands on working memory and manual reaction time were also assessed in two experiments that employed a four-choice picture-selection sentence comprehension task. CWS were less accurate than CWNS on the attachment of predicates. For reflexives, there was no between-group difference in accuracy, but there was a difference in speed. The two constructions induced processing at different points on a speed–accuracy continuum with CWS sacrificing accuracy to respond fast with predicates, while they maintained accuracy of reflexives by responding slower relative to CWNS. Predicates made more demands on language than nonspeech motor reaction time, whereas the reverse was the case with reflexives for CWS compared to CWNS.

This study investigates the use of phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules assumed to underlie phonetic spelling errors. Fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds and adult literacy students did two spelling tasks employing real words and nonwords respectively. Good and poor readers were compared in their ability to produce graphemic representations for four specific phonemes. Two of these were relatively “ambiguous” and the real-word task investigated the effect of ambiguity as a function of reading skill. While good readers were significantly better than poor readers at representing the critical phonemes, ambiguity had a similar effect on good and poor readers. Nonword results indicate that poor readers can employ phoneme-grapheme correspondences more than is expected from their real-word spelling error patterns.

The present study investigated whether Short Message Service shortcuts are more difficult to process in sentence context than the spelled-out word equivalent and, if so, how any additional processing difficulty arises. Twenty-four student participants read 37 Short Message Service shortcuts and word equivalents embedded in semantically plausible and implausible contexts (e.g., He left/drank u/you a note) while their eye movements were recorded. There were effects of plausibility and spelling on early measures of processing difficulty (first fixation durations, gaze durations, skipping, and first-pass regression rates for the targets), but there were no interactions of plausibility and spelling. Late measures of processing difficulty (second run gaze duration and total fixation duration) were only affected by plausibility but not by spelling. These results suggest that shortcuts are harder to recognize, but that, once recognized, they are integrated into the sentence context as easily as ordinary words.

Deaf students' recognition of indefinite pronouns and quantifiers was tested using written materials in the form of comic strips that provided pragmatically appropriate context. One hundred and eighty-seven profoundly hearing-impaired students, aged 7–23 years, served as subjects. There were significant developmental trends for both the indefinite pronouns and the quantifiers, with the quantifiers significantly more difficult than the indefinite pronouns. A comparison of the results with predictions drawn from theoretical linguistics and with predictions drawn from Developmental Sentence Scoring (Lee, 1974) data for hearing children indicates that theoretical predictions are more accurate for hearing-impaired students. This may be due to differences in methodology (DSS reports spontaneous spoken language; the present study reports comprehension of written English) and to educational practices with hearing-impaired students.

Based on Bates and MacWhinney's competition model, the present study aims to examine the effects of discourse context on sentence interpretation. In my previous study it was found that both Chinese and English monolinguals paid less attention to context than to intrasentential cues that have been identified as the determinants for Chinese and English sentence processing. The conclusions obtained in that study have to be considered tentative because the contextual sentences were short and might not have been sufficiently biasing toward the intended interpretation. Hence, the present study was undertaken to further examine the context effects by elaborating the contents of the contextual sentences. The results show that English native speakers rely on discourse context in interpreting their native language to a greater extent than the previous research has suggested and that Chinese native speakers make use of context information to a greater degree than do their English counterparts.

In her very interesting Keynote Article, Johanne Paradis gives a clear overview of recent research at the interface of bilingual development and child language disorders, and highlights its theoretical and clinical implications. She raises the challenging question of “whether bilingualism can be viewed as a kind of ‘therapy’ for SLI.” At first sight, this is perhaps a surprising question, because one of the predominant views in the literature is that bilingual children with specific language impairment (SLI) will exhibit difficulties and perhaps a “double delay.” It is this challenging question that we consider in more detail here.

In her Keynote Article, Paradis discusses the role of the interface between bilingual development and specific language impairment (SLI) on two different levels. On the level of theoretical explanations of SLI, Paradis asks how domain general versus domain-specific perspectives on SLI can account for bilingual SLI, as well as what bilingual SLI may contribute to the discussion of these theories. Paradis argues in favor of domain-specific deficits (in addition to well-documented processing deficits in SLI), and especially for the maturational model (Rice, 2004). She argues against a mere processing deficit of input information and against deficits in working memory and processing speed as sole sources of SLI. On the practical level, Paradis focuses on the question of whether and how language tests that have been standardized for monolingual children are valid for the assessment of SLI in bilingual children. Both discussions, on theory and on practice, are based on empirical data from Canadian studies on bilingual children with and without SLI carried out by Johanne Paradis, Martha Crago, and Fred Genesee (e.g., Crago & Paradis, 2003; Paradis, 2007; Paradis, Crago, & Genesee, & Rice, 2003).

The impacts of bilingualism upon the human brain, specifically in terms of the neuroplastic and neurofunctional changes upon general cognitive functions and on cognitive decline, are currently attracting much attention not only from the neuroscience and psycholinguistic communities but also from the general public. Researchers are especially focused on the putative protective effects of bilingualism upon cognitive decline.

An important proposal in the insightful Keynote Article by Baum and Titone is that the field of bilingualism research needs to attend more closely to intersubject variability in order to understand the nature of neuroplastic changes in the brains of bilingual speakers as they age. I agree. Understanding such variability and its drivers (such as the contexts of language use that Baum and Titone nicely comment on in the Montreal milieu) will help us develop theoretical accounts of the cognitive control processes recruited in bilingual speakers and establish how adaptive changes to these processes mediate the effects of normal aging; yield protective effects against neurodegenerative disease, such as Alzheimer disease; and modulate language recovery poststroke in bilingual speakers. In this commentary I explore some aspects of this variability and commend, in line with the views expressed in the Keynote Article, the value of relating behavioral indices to whole brain structural magnetic resonance imaging for enriching our understanding of experience-dependent changes. Allied to tractography studies, such research can help us develop a rich picture of the major drivers of neuroplastic changes.

Since 2015, more than 58,000 Syrian refugees have settled in Canada and, at the time of the 2016 national census, more than a fifth had settled in the province of Quebec. The rising numbers of refugees and the risks associated with families’ forced displacement have underscored the need to better understand and support the language of refugee children. The article reports on the oral language of three Syrian children ages five and six years, drawing on data from parent interviews, teacher reports, measures of the children’s language, and observations of their language use in a dual-language stimulation group, StimuLER. By triangulating this data, we were able to develop a rich and realistic portrait of each child’s language abilities. For these three boys, we observed that the home language was vulnerable to delays and weaknesses, and that learning the language of school was a drawn-out process. We also documented that parents and teachers had difficulties communicating with one another, and thus had difficulty meeting the educational needs of these children. We conclude that to foster resiliency in these children who are refugees, schools must find a way to build bridges with the parents to support the children’s language learning in both the language of school and at home.

This study examined the ability of young (mean CA = 29 years; SD = 3.67 years) and older adults (CA = 63 years; SD = 5.54 years) with mild to moderate mental retardation to produce complex sentences in naturalistic conversation. All of the complex sentences produced were coded into subcategories of complementation, relativization, or coordination. First, the overall proportion of complex utterances produced by each subject (based on the total number of utterances) was examined. Following this analysis, the well-formed production and productivity of the three general categories of complex sentences were considered. Individual complex sentences were then categorized by developmental level using Rosenberg and Abbeduto's (1987) acquisition scale. No significant differences were observed between the young and older groups.

In the preface to this passionately argued text, the author makes the political aspects of the work quite clear. She states that she hopes readers will “become angry, desperate, frustrated, as well as reflective, optimistic and eager to join me and others in demanding, suggesting, creating, and implementing change” (p. xv). This statement sets the tone for the entire book: a mixture of self-professed utopian thinking (p. 600) and clear-sighted accounts of actually existing conditions. Recognizing that a simple call for justice is not enough in a world dominated by transnational capitalism and marked by institutionalized inequities in power, the author admits that a human rights approach to linguistic issues will only work if there is also a redistribution of the world's resources. The book is thus a call to action on a variety of fronts.

Using nonword repetition tasks as an experimental approach with both adults and children has become quite common in the past 10 to 15 years for studying lexical learning and phonological processing (e.g., Bailey & Hahn, 2001; Gathercole, Frankish, Pickering & Peaker, 1998; Munson, Edwards, & Beckman, 2005; Storkel, 2001; Vitevich & Luce, 2005). In her Keynote, Gathercole (2006) indicates that “The ability to repeat multisyllabic nonwords…probably represents the most effective predictor of language learning ability that is currently known” and that “nonword repetition…may also hold the key to understanding developmental disorders of language learning.” Her Keynote reviews many of the findings from a variety of nonword repetition studies with typically developing children and children with specific language impairment (SLI) or other language-related disorders. Despite the substantial benefits and interesting findings that nonword test paradigms have provided in addressing different issues, a number of questions and precautions should be kept in mind regarding such approaches. Researchers who routinely employ these procedures are likely to be well aware of these issues, and in fact, Gathercole points out some of the limitations. For those less familiar with nonword repetition tasks, it seems advisable to reinforce the need for a certain amount of caution in evaluating the results of such approaches.

When people engage in joint activities together, they use dialogue, and more specifically project markers such as yeah, okay, or uh-huh, to coordinate entrances and exits of projects and subprojects. The purpose of the current study was to examine how two features of the dialogue situation, namely, mental load and face visibility, affect project marker production. Pairs of participants performed a collaborative puzzle game together. Mental load was manipulated through time pressure; visibility was manipulated by allowing the participants to see each other’s face during the task, or not. Dialogues were transcribed and coded for project marker production. Project marker production was found to increase under mental load; this also depended on the role of the speaker in the dyad (Director or Matcher) and on face visibility. This sheds light on the idea that dialogue partners may behave more collaboratively when experiencing high levels of mental load, contributing to a better understanding of mental resource allocation in dialogue-based joint activities.

Neurocognitive studies can approach gene-based developmental language impairments from two angles, which are complementary and ideally combined in a research program. One approach aims at an optimal phenotypic description of a disorder and from there proceeds to a biological and developmental understanding. Complementary to such a top-down approach, a bottom-up perspective will primarily focus on potential etiological pathways and attempt to explain complex outcome phenotypes in terms of elementary developmental disturbances. My paper is dedicated to this latter approach. I argue that in behaviorally defined disorders (such as specific language impairment or autism) shared genetic risk and common etiology can at best be expected for specific aspects of language deficit and that such shared etiology will only apply to subtypes of these disorders. One reason for this skepticism is that the emerging language system in children can be affected in many different ways via more elementary sensory, perceptual, cognitive, and motor impairments. Neurocognitive research on developmental language disorders relies on an understanding of such potential elementary disturbances before it can confidently proceed to the study of complex linguistic impairments.