The temporal focus hypothesis (TFH) entails that individuals who value the past tend to conceptualize it in front, whereas individuals who value the future tend to map the future in front instead (de la Fuente et al., 2014). This varies as a function of culture, individual differences, and context. Here, we extend this line of inquiry by testing a…

Conjunctions facilitate text cohesion and comprehension by making explicit the logical relationships between ideas in written language. Conjunctions may be challenging for English language learners (ELLs) because of their novel, abstract, and text-connecting role. In this longitudinal study we aimed to clarify the connections among comprehension…

Many connectives, such as "therefore" and "however," are used very frequently in the written modality. Their acquisition thus represents an important milestone in developing written language competences. In this article, we assess the development of competence with such connectives by native French speakers in a sentence-level…

This study compares the performance of native speakers and adult second language (L2) learners on tasks tapping proficiency in grammar, vocabulary, and collocations. In addition, data were collected on several predictors of individual differences in linguistic attainment, including some related to language experience (print exposure, education,…

The goal of this study was to explain individual differences in both native and non-native listening comprehension; 121 native and 113 non-native speakers of Dutch were tested on various linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive skills thought to underlie listening comprehension. Structural equation modeling was used to identify the predictors of…

Although statistical learning and language have been assumed to be intertwined, this theoretical presupposition has rarely been tested empirically. The present study investigates the relationship between statistical learning and language using a within-subject design embedded in an individual-differences framework. Participants were administered…