Our study investigated the differences in speech performance and neurophysiological response in groups of school-age children with unilateral hearing loss (UHL) who were otherwise typically developing (TD). We recruited a total of 16 primary school-age children for our study (UHL = 9/TD = 7), who were screened by doctors at Shin Kong Wu-Ho-Su…

Second language implicit learning research has shown that a variety of linguistic features can be acquired without awareness. However, this research overwhelmingly uses comprehension tests to measure implicit learning. It remains unclear whether newly acquired implicit knowledge can also be recruited for production. To address this question, we…

Retrieval practice has generally been shown to be an effective study strategy. The benefits of retrieval practice, however, have largely been compared to restudying, a passive and ineffective study strategy. Here, I investigated the memory and metamemory effects of practicing retrieval versus generating mnemonics, an active and effective study…

Recent studies highlight the important contribution of phonological working memory (PM) in the early stages of both native and foreign language development. However, research on the effects of PM training on language development is very limited. This study aimed at assessing the effectiveness of a PM training educational intervention as a means of…

The main purpose of the current study was to examine the relative significance of vocabulary knowledge (VK) and syntactic knowledge (SK) in second language (L2) listening ability, while accounting for the effect of several cognitive and affective factors. A total of 263 English-as-a-foreign-language learners took a standardized listening test…

The present study presents an experiment in which online acronyms, formed from common fixed phrases or formulaic expressions, and in common usage in English medium computer-based communication, were presented to Korean university-level learners placed into either a control group or treatment group which was given instruction into the expansions…

In recent years, there has been considerable interest in how to maximize learners' retention of multiword expressions. One technique that has been shown to be highly effective is the use of exercises such as those found in mainstream English as a second language textbooks. In the present study, we investigated how the execution of a gap-fill…

Although metaphors are essential tools in everyday communication and educational settings, the literature lacks evidence of effective training tools to promote metaphor comprehension in typical development. Grounding in theoretical pragmatics, we developed a novel metaphor comprehension training (MetaCom) for school-age children that focuses on…

Language assessment is increasingly computermediated. This development presents opportunities with new task formats and equally a need for renewed scrutiny of established conventions. Recent recommendations to increase integrated skills assessment in lecture comprehension tests is premised on empirical research that demonstrates enhanced construct…

Previous research identified that studying texts in a second language (L2) as opposed to the first (L1) results in substantially weaker recall. We hypothesized that use of advance organizers (AOs) might attenuate this L2 recall cost by supporting L2 users in the construction of more solid memory representations. One hundred Dutch-English…

This study investigated the influence of cognitive ability on bilingual children's vocabulary development in both their languages. Sixty-nine bilingual immigrant children participated, with data collected at three annual intervals. At Time 1, the participants were 5 or 6 years old. Receptive vocabulary was tested in the minority (Turkish, Tarifit)…

The Production Effect (PE) is a memory phenomenon, referring to memory advantage for produced items (read aloud) over non-produced items (read silently). Since vocalizing shows consistent memory benefits, it has been suggested as a mnemonic that can be used to assist vocabulary learning. The present study investigated the PE in L2 vocabulary…

The linguistic relativity hypothesis has focused on the influence of grammar in language on speakers' cognition. Previous studies show that speakers of languages with grammatical number (e.g., English) are more aware of the number of objects. Additionally, recent studies reveal that bilinguals who speak languages with different grammatical…

In this study, neural representation of adult second language (L2) speakers' implicit grammatical knowledge was investigated. Advanced L2 speakers of Japanese living in Japan, as well as L1 Japanese speakers, performed a word-monitoring task (proposed as an implicit knowledge test) in the MRI scanner. Behavioral measures were obtained from…

A large body of evidence shows an animacy effect on memory in that animate entities are better remembered than inanimate ones. Yet, the reason for this mnemonic prioritization remains unclear. In the survival processing literature, the assumption that richness of encoding is responsible for adaptive memory benefits has received substantial…