The influence of a talker's face (e.g., articulatory gestures) and voice, vocalic context, and word position were investigated in the training of Japanese and Korean English as a second language learners to identify American English /[invertedr]/ and /l/. In the pretest–posttest design, an identification paradigm assessed the effects of 3 weeks of training using multiple natural exemplars on videotape. Word position, adjacent vowel, and training type (auditory–visual [AV] vs. auditory only; multiple vs. single talker for Koreans) were independent variables. Findings revealed significant effects of training type (greater improvement with AV), talker, word position, and vowel. Identification accuracy generalized successfully to novel stimuli and a new talker. Transfer to significant production improvement was also noted. These findings are compatible with episodic models for the encoding of speech in memory.

The present study compared lexical and visual–orthographic processing in the spelling performance of 30 Cantonese Chinese children who are English as a second language (ESL) learners to that of 33 native English-speaking (L1) children. Chinese ESL children showed poorer performance in spelling to dictation of pseudowords than L1 children. The difference between real word and pseudoword spelling performances for ESL children was significantly greater than that for L1 children. Moreover, Chinese ESL children outperformed their L1 counterparts in a confrontation spelling task of orthographically legitimate and illegitimate letter strings. In line with their advantage in spelling visually presented materials, the difference between spelling performance on legitimate and illegitimate letter strings for the Chinese children was significantly smaller than that for the L1 children. These findings are discussed in terms of early transfer of L1 literacy skills in second language literacy acquisition and support for a multiroute reading model.

Fourteen mother–child dyads were videotaped four times over 16 days as they repeatedly read an initially unfamiliar storybook. Videotapes were transcribed and a variety of discourse measures were coded for both mother and child. Principal components analysis was used to combine three maternal and three child variables into a single composite variable, engagement, which described levels and quality of maternal and child participation in extratextual interactions during the first reading session. Dyads with the highest levels of engagement during the first session showed the greatest rates of change for a number of discourse measures. Results are discussed in terms of maternal scaffolding approaches, child participation, the importance of context and the nature of the task, and implications for intervention.

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 present study focuses on the production of predicates by Korean agrammatic aphasic patients with respect to the argument structure distribution of the predicates. We analyzed narrative production data and picture/scene description data elicited from three Broca's aphasic patients in comparison with matched controls. In particular, we examined whether our subjects have the same kind of difficulties that Kegl's English agrammatic patient exhibited in the production of noncopular unaccusative constructions. The results show that our Korean aphasics do not exhibit any dramatic discrepancy from the control group in the pattern of argument structure distribution of the predicates produced. Regarding methodology, our studies reveal that the picture/scene description measures the subjects' competence more effectively than the narrative production task. We propose that the difference found between our agrammatic patients and Kegl's agrammatic subject may be due to the differences in the syntactic processes for deriving unaccusative constructions in the two languages.

The validity of phoneme recognition as an indicator of phonemic awareness at kindergarten age is investigated. Six paper and pencil phonemic awareness (PA) tests, phoneme recognition among them, are administered groupwise to Dutch children a few months before the beginning of formal literacy education. Additional phonological tests and an early reading test are administered individually. Ten months later, children are tested again with PA and literacy tests. Structural equation modeling shows the relations among tests to correspond broadly with findings reported in the literature. The PA test scores are determined by one common factor, and the early PA factor influences later literacy through its influence on later PA skill. Phoneme segmentation has the highest loading on the PA factor, but phoneme recognition is its best paper and pencil representative. Unlike phoneme segmentation, phoneme recognition competence can develop in the absence of literacy skills. Phoneme recognition equals phoneme segmentation in sensitivity and specificity when predicting later literacy failure.

Three studies are reported that examine the development of phonological awareness in monolingual and bilingual children between kindergarten and Grade 2. In the first study, monolingual and bilingual children performed equally well on a complex task requiring phoneme substitution. The second study replicated these results and demonstrated a significant role for the language of literacy instruction. The third study extended the research by including two groups of bilingual children and a range of phonological awareness and reading tasks. Spanish–English bilinguals performed better than English-speaking monolinguals on a phoneme segmentation task, but Chinese–English bilinguals performed worse. Other measures of phonological awareness did not differ among the three groups. The results are discussed in terms of a limit on the effect that bilingualism exerts on metalinguistic development.

In an orally presented vowel length categorization task with both word and nonword stimuli, a group of 10-year-old German-speaking poor spellers performed less accurately and consistently slower than a group of normal spellers of the same age. The poor spellers' level of performance was comparable to that of a group of 8-year-old inexperienced spellers. In an experimental design, the influence of the phonological characteristics of the preceding and succeeding consonant on children's decisions about vowel length was examined. The type of onset had hardly any effect whereas the offset consonant had a marked influence. It is concluded that vowel length categorization is associated with the ability to mark vowel length in spelling. Vowel length predicts but is not sufficient to explain difficulties in orthographically correct spelling of vowel length.

This prospective longitudinal study examined the relationship between caregiver input to 9-month-old infants and their subsequent language. Mother–infant dyads were videotaped at ages 9, 12, and 30 months. Language comprehension (at 12 and 18 months) was measured by parent report and correlated with an independent language measure. Three maternal style variables were reduced from the 9-month data. Only caregivers' contingent comments (CCC) related to infants' later language. These findings held after infants' skill with coordinated joint attention (CJA) was taken into account. The total number of words the mothers used when their infants were 9 months predicted vocabulary; however, the predictive power was encapsulated in the words the mother used during CCC. Because studies have typically examined maternal input once infants' CJA has emerged, this work contributes to current efforts to understand variations in early language development.

The present study addresses a long-standing assumption in the field of applied linguistics: that presenting new second language (L2) vocabulary in semantically grouped sets is an effective method of teaching. Participants learned 32 new L2 labels for concepts from four different semantic categories in either a related or unrelated condition. At test, participants translated words in both translation directions. We found a semantic interference effect both during the encoding of information into memory and during the retrieval of information in translation. We discuss these findings in terms of theoretical models of L2 lexical representation and development, as well as in more practical terms of L2 curriculum design and vocabulary instruction.

We examined mothers' speech to 2-year-old children in both quiet and moderately noisy conditions. Mothers were recorded while teaching their children two words, one of which occurred in the context of other people speaking. Parents used characteristics of infant-directed speech (IDS) to these older children. Even more interesting was that many of the prosodic changes typical in IDS were accentuated in noise. In a context in which multiple people were speaking simultaneously, mothers spoke to their children with both increased pitch and increased word duration relative to when they spoke in a quiet condition. However, these changes were quite small, lending only mixed support to proposals that one of the advantages of IDS is that it is easier to separate from background noise.

The abilities of second language speakers to discriminate the prosodic contrasts between idiomatic and literal meanings of ambiguous sentences were investigated using utterances previously shown to be reliably identified by acoustic cues. Four listener groups of varying proficiency, native speakers of American English, native speakers of non-American English, fluent nonnative speakers of English, and advanced students of English as a second language (ESL), judged whether single and paired, tape-recorded, literal and idiomatic utterances were spoken with intended idiomatic or literal meanings. Both native speaker groups performed significantly better than fluent nonnatives, while ESL students performed at chance. These results lend support to the hypothesis that abilities to discriminate subtle prosodic contrasts are learned later than other components of speech and language.

The literature to date suggests that the best predictor of early reading ability, phonological awareness, appears to be associated with the acquisition of letter-sound and vocabulary knowledge and with the development of well-defined phonological representations. It further suggests that at least some aspects of phonological awareness critically depend upon literacy exposure. In this study of 4- to 6-year-olds, we examine whether aspects of the home literacy environment are differentially associated with phonological awareness. Parental responses to a questionnaire about the home literacy environment are compared to children's awareness of rhyme and phonemes, as well as to their vocabulary, letter knowledge, and performance on measures of phonological strength (nonword repetition, rapid naming skill, phonological distinctness, and auditory discrimination). The results showed that a teaching focus in the home literacy environment and exposure to reading-related media are directly associated with phoneme awareness and indirectly associated via letter knowledge and vocabulary. Exposure to reading-related media and parents' active involvement in children's literature were also directly and indirectly linked with rhyme awareness skills via their association with letter and vocabulary knowledge.

This article examines the reliability and validity of the construct, mode of acquisition (MOA). The MOA of a word denotes the way in which the word's meaning is learned. A word's meaning can be acquired perceptually, linguistically, or by some combination of both. In Experiment 1, 26 student volunteers from third year special education courses rated 566 words, taken from reading texts in elementary school, on MOA. Our findings show that MOA ratings gradually change over grades, shifting from mainly perceptually acquired word meanings in Grade 1 texts to mainly linguistically acquired concepts in Grade 6 texts. In Experiment 2, 34 educational professionals completed a list on MOA, concreteness, or imageability. Judgments on the MOA proved to be different from judgments of concreteness and imageability. We suggest that the increasingly linguistic character of word meanings contribute to explaining some of the reading difficulties of deaf children.

It was predicted that children learning to read inconsistent orthographies (e.g., English) should show considerable flexibility in making use of spelling–sound correspondences at different unit sizes whereas children learning to read consistent orthographies (e.g., German) should mainly employ small-size grapheme–phoneme strategies. This hypothesis was tested in a cross-language blocking experiment using nonwords that could only be read using small-size grapheme–phoneme correspondences (small-unit nonwords) and phonologically identical nonwords that could be decoded using larger correspondences (large-unit nonwords). These small-unit and large-unit nonwords were either presented mixed together in the same lists or blocked by unit size. It was found that English children, but not German children, showed blocking effects (better performance when items were blocked by nonword type than in mixed lists). This suggests that in mixed lists, English readers have to switch back and forth between small-unit and large-unit processing, resulting in switching costs. These results are interpreted in terms of differences concerning the grain size of the phonological recoding mechanisms developed by English and German children.

Second language speakers commonly acknowledge that taboo terms can be uttered with greater ease in their second language (L2) than in their first language (L1). To investigate this phenomenon psychophysiologically, 32 Turkish–English bilinguals rated a variety of stimuli for pleasantness in Turkish (L1) and English (L2) while skin conductance was monitored via fingertip electrodes. Participants demonstrated greater autonomic arousal to taboo words and childhood reprimands (“Shame on you!”) in their L1 compared to their L2. This finding provides quantifiable support for the subjective experiences of L2 speakers.

The aim of this study was to compare some verbal characteristics of family interaction in the stereotypically tongue-tied Nordic region of the Western world. To this end we compared mothers' and early adolescents' talkativeness and monologuing and mothers' conversational dominance emerging in real-life video recordings in Estonian, Finnish, and Swedish mono- and bilingual families. All these nations have been characterized by previous research as “silent” and less talkative than other nations. The present study found that the Swedish mothers living in Sweden were talkative, as were the adolescents from Swedish monolingual and Swedish–Estonian bilingual families. In all measures of the amount of speech the mothers and adolescents from monolingual Estonian and Finnish families did not differ. According to our results, little talk seems to be characteristic of Finno–Ugric people, and the rate may be decreasing over time under the influence of a more talk-oriented cultural context.

A rather robust literature exists that views children's language development in the context of interactions with adults. This literature generally focuses on typically developing children and suggests that joint attention facilitates communication development whereas directives do not. In order to understand the crucial features of input supporting language acquisition, research must examine children in less than optimal conditions, including children with chronic otitis media (OM). Controversy exists regarding the outcomes of children with OM, and we argue that parental input is an important factor often neglected in research that may mediate language outcomes. The current study investigates whether parents interact differently with their 12-month-old children based upon children's OM status. The results indicate that parents of chronically affected children direct attention more often and engage in fewer joint attentional episodes than parents of nonchronically affected children. Findings suggest that chronic OM has a localized affect on attentional interactions, the forms of input consistently implicated in language acquisition. Thus, children with OM may receive less than optimal input than peers.

The goals of this study are to investigate, at three elementary school grade levels, how word reading speed is related to rapidly naming series of numbers, letters, colors, and pictures, and to general processing speed (measured by nonnaming or visual matching tasks), and also to determine how these relationships vary with the reading task employed. The results indicate that, compared to color- and picture-naming speeds and nonnaming or visual matching speed, letter- and number-naming speeds are superior predictors of word reading speed. Furthermore, throughout the grade levels, associations between alphanumeric naming and monosyllabic word reading speeds are considerably stronger than for a widely used Dutch single-word reading test combining monosyllabic and multisyllabic words. It is suggested that, unlike multisyllabic words but similar to letters and numbers, monosyllabic words act as relatively holistic stimuli, which are recognized as sight words.

How similar are the cognitive and linguistic profiles of those children who easily learn to read? How similar are the profiles of those children who have difficulty learning to read? Do the profiles of successful and less successful readers vary among children 5–10 years of age? These were the questions that guided this study. Six core profiles were identified on four fluid reasoning to comprehension knowledge constructs previously found to be both theoretically and empirically linked to children's reading acquisition: auditory processing, crystallized ability, processing speed, and short-term memory. Cluster analysis was used to develop this taxonomy and the six-cluster solution was supported through cross-validation. The internal and external validity of the resulting profiles was favorable, suggesting homogeneous within-cluster membership and clear separation among the six core profiles. A summary of the defining characteristics for each profile is provided. The performance of children comprising different profiles was investigated on four external reading outcomes. These comparisons were conducted for each of the six age groups comprising the sample (i.e., 5–10 years) to assess whether the importance of certain score configurations varied as a function of the reading tasks required of children learning to read and those who are already readers. Results indicated that certain profiles were associated with greater success on external measures of reading achievement than other profiles. Trends across ages and differences among age groups are described.