A strong predictor of children's language is performance on non-word repetition (NWR) tasks. However, the basis of this relationship remains unknown. Some suggest that NWR tasks measure phonological working memory, which then affects language growth. Others argue that children's knowledge of language/language experience affects NWR performance. A…

Word segmentation is a crucial step in children's vocabulary learning. While computational models of word segmentation can capture infants' performance in small-scale artificial tasks, the examination of early word segmentation in naturalistic settings has been limited by the lack of measures that can relate models' performance to developmental…

Learning new vocabulary from context typically requires multiple encounters during which word meaning can be retrieved from memory or inferred from context. We compared the effect of memory retrieval and context inferences on short- and long-term retention in three experiments. Participants studied novel words and then practiced the words either…

We investigated the potential influence of implicit learning mechanisms on L2 morphosyntactic attainment by examining the relationship between age of onset (AoO), two cognitive abilities hypothesized to underlie implicit learning (phonological short-term memory and implicit statistical learning), and performance on an auditory grammaticality…

To date, linguistic alignment studies in second language acquisition have mainly been conducted during face-to-face (FTF) interactions. In the current study, we examined and compared the effect of structural alignment on the development of English direct and indirect questions in FTF and synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) contexts.…

Humans are remarkably sensitive to the statistical structure of language. However, different mechanisms have been proposed to account for such statistical sensitivities. The present study compared adult learning of syntax and the ability of two models of statistical learning to simulate human performance: Simple Recurrent Networks, which learn by…

This article examines the extent to which lexical bundles (LBs; i.e., frequently recurring strings of words that often span traditional syntactic boundaries) are stored and processed holistically. Three self-paced reading experiments compared sentences containing LBs (e.g., "in the middle of the") and matched control sentence fragments (e.g., "in…

Structural priming (or syntactic priming) is a speaker's tendency to reuse the same structural pattern as one that was previously encountered (Bock, 1986). This study investigated (a) whether the implicit learning processes involved in long-lag structural priming lead to differential second language (L2) improvement in producing two structural…

Two studies compared the effects of imagery-based instruction and rote learning on the long-term recall of English translations of Chinese ideographs. In no instance was there any indication that imagery-based mnemonics conferred an advantage beyond the immediate test of recall. (27 references) (Author/LB)

Native and experienced nonnatives listened to a text while performing a concurrent task. Half of each group was given the topic of the passage. Scores on the concurrent task were compared with baseline to index working memory (WM) consumption. Results showed greater WM consumption for nonnatives than natives when the topic was unavailable,…

Investigated how English-as-a-Second-Language (L2) readers used structural properties of a text to "fill in the gaps" in their mental representations and compared these with native English readers' recall protocols. L2 readers' structure-preserving recalls were higher than their meaning-preserving protocols. Results suggest that L2 readers used…

Explores the "translation-recognition" task, using two experiments, one for adult Dutch learners of English and the second for people from the same population. Results suggest that translation recognition and translation production respond to the same manipulations, except when cognates and noncognates are focused on separately. (23…