Theories of learning and attention predict a positive relationship between reading times on unfamiliar words and their learning; however, empirical findings of contextual learning studies range from a strong positive relationship to no relationship. To test the conjecture that longer reading times may reflect different cognitive and metacognitive processes, the need to infer novel word meanings from context was deliberately manipulated. One hundred and two adult first– and second–language English language speakers read sixty passages containing pseudowords while their eye movements were recorded. The passages were either preceded or followed by pseudoword definitions. After reading, participants completed posttests of cued meaning recall and form recognition. Meaning recall was positively associated with (i) individual cumulative reading times and (ii) participants’ general vocabulary knowledge, but not when definitions were provided before reading. Form recognition was unaffected by cumulative reading times. Our findings call for a cautious approach in making causative links between eye–movement measures and vocabulary learning from reading.

The research field of online informal English learning has revealed associations of various informal digital English activities and second language vocabulary development. However, most of these studies have regarded digital resources as uniform entities when investigating their potential for vocabulary development and have failed to consider learners’ idiosyncratic interaction with the resources driven by self-defined purposes of use. Informed by the uses and gratifications theory, this study explored how three purposes of extramural digital experience (entertainment, socialization and information) relate to vocabulary knowledge, based on the survey responses from 322 undergraduate Chinese EFL learners and their receptive vocabulary knowledge. PLS-SEM analysis uncovered differential associations of the three media use purposes with receptive vocabulary knowledge. The study also revealed that the associations between the purposes of informal digital activities and vocabulary knowledge differed depending on whether the vocabulary was high frequency or low frequency. Additionally, it was found that the strategic use of digital resources, in terms of cognitive attention to and processing of lexical information that are facilitative of vocabulary learning during and/or after the interaction, played a significant moderating role in the relationship between digital activities for information purposes and receptive knowledge of high-frequency vocabulary. The findings highlight the importance of considering media use purposes in future research and pedagogical practices.

This study investigated whether non-native English speakers showed a processing advantage for high-frequency multiword units (multiword frequency effects), and whether the effects differed between native and non-native speakers. Such a difference has been identified in relation to single-word processing. Native English speakers and intermediate learners of English with languages of different scripts (native speakers of Japanese and German) judged whether English multiword units were grammatical. A significant processing advantage was identified for both native and non-native participants. More importantly, the multiword frequency effects were stronger among non-native than native speakers. The discrepancy persisted even after including individual vocabulary knowledge as a predictor in the mixed-effect models. Furthermore, there was no significant different impact of the effects between two non-native groups, even though German participants responded quicker than Japanese participants. This indicates that the varying influence between L1 and L2 could be explained by within-language, not between-language, variables.

The unprecedented growth of Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs) in new destination states (e.g., Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, Tennessee) calls for better understanding of the relation between their bilingual vocabulary skills and English reading achievement. The current study focused on school-age Spanish-English DLLs (N = 60) in Tennessee and explored how various vocabulary knowledge conceptualizations predict English reading comprehension achievement, controlling for English word reading skills and grade level. Vocabulary knowledge was assessed using monolingual (English-only and Spanish-only) and bilingual (conceptual and total) scoring methods. Results showed that, while DLLs performed below the national mean for English-only and Spanish-only vocabulary, they performed within the average to above-average range for bilingually scored conceptual vocabulary. More uniquely, the expressive vocabulary knowledge emerged as a robust predictor of English reading comprehension above and beyond the influence of English word reading skills. Findings suggest practical and theoretical value of bilingually driven vocabulary assessment approaches. As expected, bilingually scored vocabulary provided a more comprehensive understanding of DLLs’ vocabulary knowledge by accounting for vocabulary knowledge in both Spanish and English, compared to monolingually scored vocabulary. We discuss theoretical and instructional implications, with a focus on asset-driven and scientific assessment understandings for supporting DLLs’ vocabulary and reading achievement in new destination states.

The study investigated the strategies used by Chinese students in inferring meanings of unfamiliar words and the influential factors of successful use of different lexical inferencing strategies. A total of 104 fourth graders inferred 36 unfamiliar semitransparent compound words in three conditions: word in isolation, contextual information only, and both word and context. Results revealed that students were more likely to obtain the correct meaning of words when both morphological information and contextual information were available. The likelihood of using a morpheme-based or context-based lexical inferencing strategy was strongly influenced by the presentation condition of target words and precursors. Students with higher vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension ability were more sensitive to morphological and contextual information and were able to synthesize multiple sources of information, whereas children with lower vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension ability showed difficulties in integration and tended to overly rely on morphological information. The findings reveal the interactions between available source information and individual differences in vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in predicting lexical inferencing and have implications for vocabulary and reading instruction.

The present study focuses on the effect of an important methodological choice in word association studies in children: the elicitation of single versus multiple responses. This choice has been shown to affect the numbers and types of associations adults produce, however, little is known about how it affects children’s word associations. A total of 11,725 associations to 80 nouns from 207 monolingual and bilingual minority children were classified according to a detailed coding system, and differences between the semantic characteristics of first, second, and third responses were examined. We show that in children as well, the multiple association task elicits more and qualitatively different responses, resulting in more diversified semantic networks surrounding the stimulus nouns. On the speaker level, reading comprehension scores were related differently to initial and later responses, suggesting a more complex measure of semantic knowledge emerges from the multiple word association task. No differences were found between monolingual and bilingual children’s associative preferences. We argue that the multiple association task produces more detailed data on language users’ semantic networks than the single association task, and suggest a number of ways in which this task could be employed in future research.

This study investigates the shared, independent, and interactive effects of metalinguistic skills (phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and orthographic knowledge) to word reading with a sample of struggling adult readers. Controlling for vocabulary knowledge, a second-order latent factor of metalinguistic awareness accounted for unique variance (62.5%) in adults’ word reading skills. Two-way latent interactions between the metalinguistic skills (phonological awareness × morphological awareness, morphological awareness × orthographic knowledge, and phonological awareness × orthographic knowledge) revealed unique interactive contributions (1%–5.2%) of these skills to word reading controlling for the metalinguistic skill main effects and vocabulary knowledge. In particular, high levels of morphological awareness are critical to word reading irrespective of high or low phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge. In addition, higher phonological awareness skills are critical to word reading irrespective of high or low orthographic knowledge. These results indicate the importance as well as the complexity of the nature of metalinguistic skills underlying word reading for struggling adult readers. The theoretical, empirical, and applied implications of these findings are discussed in the context of researchers and practitioners invested in improving outcomes in adult literacy programs.

This study evaluated the development of vocabulary knowledge over the course of two academic years, beginning in preschool, in a large sample (N = 944) of language-minority children using scores from single-language vocabulary assessments and conceptual scores. Results indicated that although children began the study with higher raw scores for Spanish vocabulary knowledge than for English vocabulary knowledge, this was reversed by the end of the first year of the study. Similarly, at the beginning of the study unique Spanish vocabulary scores were larger than unique English or shared Spanish–English vocabulary scores; however, by the end of the first year of the study children's shared Spanish–English vocabulary scores were larger than unique English vocabulary scores, which were larger than unique Spanish vocabulary scores. These trends continued through the second year of the study. These results suggest that conceptual scoring is a useful assessment technique for children with limited exposure to their second language. Implications for assessment and instruction are discussed.

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.

No previous research has investigated the neural correlates of vocabulary acquisition in second language learners of sign language. The present study investigated whether poor vocabulary knowledge engaged similar prefrontal lexico-semantic regions as seen in unimodal L2 learners. Behavioral improvements in vocabulary knowledge in a cohort of M2L2 learners were quantified. Results indicated that there is significant increase in vocabulary knowledge after one semester, but stabilized in the second semester. A longitudinal fMRI analysis was implemented for a subset of learners who were followed for the entire 10 months during initial sign language acquisition. The results indicated that learners who had poor sign vocabulary knowledge consistently showed greater activation in regions involved in motor simulation, salience, biological motion and spatial processing, and lexico-semantic retrieval. In conclusion, poor vocabulary knowledge requires greater engagement of modality-independent and modality-dependent regions, which could account for behavioral evidence of difficulty in visual phonology processing.

To assess if amnesics have intact remote memory for general semantic information, we examined memory for vocabulary words with known dates of entry into the language between 1955 and 1989. Amnesics of mixed etiology with acute onset performed normally on both a recall and a recognition task. Korsakoff patients, in contrast, were impaired on both tasks and demonstrated a gradient such that their knowledge of words acquired during more recent time periods was worse than that of words acquired during more remote time periods. The improvement in performance associated with recognition testing was larger for Korsakoff patients than for control subjects and correlated significantly with a composite measure of frontal dysfunction. These findings suggest a deficit in the controlled search and retrieval of semantic information in Korsakoff patients. The implications of the differential performance of Korsakoff and mixed etiology amnesics for explanations of temporally graded retrograde amnesia are discussed. (JINS, 1995, I, 443–453.)