Computational models of child language development can help us understand the cognitive underpinnings of the language learning process, which occurs along several linguistic levels at once (e.g., prosodic and phonological). However, in light of the replication crisis, modelers face the challenge of selecting representative and consolidated infant…

Hudson Kam (2018) examined whether learning of a particular aspect of language that adults are known to have difficulty with (grammatical gender) could be improved by manipulating the learning experience of adults so that it was more like that of infants. Specifically, based on likely differences between adult and child learners' experiences as…

This commentary discusses the recent keynote article by Westergaard (2021), which is an interesting contribution to the field of language acquisition and multilingualism, especially because it attempts to provide a wider perspective by embracing first, second and third language acquisition. I address major claims put forward by Westergaard, to…

Over the past several decades, researchers have discovered a great deal of information about the processes underlying language acquisition. From as early as they can be studied, infants are sensitive to the nuances of native-language sound structure. Similarly, infants are attuned to the visual and conceptual structure of their environments…

This study investigates the acquisition of word-initial Korean obstruents (i.e. stops, affricates and fricatives). Korean obstruents are characterized by a three-way contrast among stops and affricates (i.e. fortis, aspirated and lenis) and a two-way fricative contrast (i.e. fortis and lenis). All these obstruents are voiceless word-initially.…

Perceptual learning is sometimes characterized by rapid improvements in performance within the first hour of training (fast perceptual learning), which may be accompanied by changes in sensory and/or response pathways. Here, we report rapid physiological changes in the human auditory system that coincide with learning during a 1-hour test session…

Abstract representations such as subsegmental phonological features play such a vital role in explanations of phonological processes that many assume that these representations play an equally prominent role in the learning process. This assumption is tested in three artificial grammar experiments involving a mini language with morpho-phonological…

Because the spelling of many words in the English language (and in many other languages as well) depends on their morphemic structure, children have to have some knowledge about morphemes in order to learn to read and write. This raises the possibility that children gain much of their explicit knowledge about morphemes as a direct result of…

Experiment 1 examined the time course of orthographic learning among Grade 3 children. A single encounter with a novel orthographic string was sufficient to produce reliable recall of orthographic detail. Moreover, newly acquired orthographic information was retained 1 month later. These data support the logistic learning functions featured in…

Sequences of notes contain several different types of pitch cues, including both absolute and relative pitch information. What factors determine which of these cues are used when learning about tone sequences? Previous research suggests that infants tend to preferentially process absolute pitch patterns in continuous tone sequences, while other…

In noun compounds in English, the modifying noun may be singular ("mouse-eater") or an irregularly inflected plural ("mice-eater"), but regularly inflected plurals are dispreferred (*"rats-eater"). This phenomenon has been taken as strong evidence for dual-mechanism theories of lexical representations, which hold that regular (rule-governed) and…

Because an instructor's attitude toward students' language is a crucial factor in determining whether students will be active participants in the educational process, it is important for teachers to be aware of dialect differences. Labelled by many as "nonstandard," Black English is a dialect derived from Gullah, a creole based on…