While previous research has shown that processing instruction (PI) can more effectively facilitate the acquisition of target structures than traditional drill practice, the processing mechanism of PI has not been adequately examined because most assessment tasks have been offline. Using eye-tracking, this two-experiment study compared changes in…

This study investigates the perception and production of a specific type of metaphoric gesture that mimics melody in speech, also called "pitch gesture," in the learning of L2 suprasegmental features. In a between-subjects design, a total of 106 participants with no previous knowledge of Chinese were asked to observe (Experiment 1) and…

This study compared 112 younger and older adult monolingual English speakers and English/Spanish bilingual speakers on measures of auditory perception and memory span. The results revealed no age difference in auditory memory span in English but found that both older and younger bilinguals performed better than monolinguals on these tasks.…