This study extended an existing crosslinguistic model of verb-marking errors in children's early multiword speech (MOSAIC) by adding a novel mechanism that defaults to the most frequent form of the verb where this accounts for a high proportion of forms in the input. Our simulations showed that the resulting model not only provides a better…

Successful language use requires the ability to process nonadjacent dependencies (NADs) that occur in linguistic input. Learning such structural regularities seems therefore crucial for children, and researchers have indeed proposed that language problems in children with developmental language disorder (DLD), especially problems with grammar, are…

The Less-Is-More hypothesis was proposed to explain age-of-acquisition effects in first language (L1) and second language (L2) learning. We scrutinize different renditions of the hypothesis by examining how learning outcomes are affected by (a) limited cognitive capacity, (b) reduced interference resulting from less prior knowledge, and (c)…

Syntactic abilities vary across individuals. Weak syntax is typically ascribed to limited competence (knowledge) or poor performance (processing). However, with many questioning this dichotomy, alternative explanations should be considered. Arguments related to language exposure are insufficient because language-impaired children often have good…

This study investigated the link between low second language performance and difficulties with native language phonological processing. Participants were native Hebrew speakers, 19-31 years of age, who learned English as a second language in a school setting. Individuals with dyslexia performed below high-proficiency second language learners on…

In this article we report on early rhythmic discrimination performance of children who participated in a longitudinal study following children from birth to their 6th year of life. Thirty-four children including 8 children with a family risk for developmental language impairment were tested on the discrimination of trochaic and iambic disyllabic…

It has been demonstrated that children with specific language impairment (SLI) show difficulties not only with auditory but also with audiovisual speech perception. The goal of this study was to assess whether children with SLI might show reduced attention to the talker's mouth compared to their typically developing (TD) peers. An additional aim…

This article reports on a study on learning new and relearning forgotten words of French as a foreign language in young (mean age 22.4), middle-aged (mean age 50.3), and elderly speakers (mean age 76.0). The three age groups performed similarly on relearning old words, but the younger learners were significantly better at learning new words. Data…

In his article, Wearden briefly refers to language disorders as an aspect of language that could be related to time. In this commentary, the author further elaborates on this remark, and while doing so, makes a connection to still another aspect of language related to time: tense.

The article first discusses some recent work in time perception--in particular the distinction among prospective timing, retrospective timing, and passage of time judgments. The history and application of an "internal clock" model as an explanation of prospective timing performance is reviewed and contrasted with the different mechanisms needed…