Infants build knowledge by acting on the world. We conducted an ecologically grounded test of an embodied learning hypothesis: that infants' active engagement with objects in the home environment elicits caregiver naming and cascades to learning object names. Our home-based study extends laboratory-based theories to identify real-world processes…

This study examined interactions of word and learner characteristics during foreign vocabulary learning, focusing on translation ambiguity and individual differences in cognitive resources and linguistic background (language proficiency, multilingual experience). Fifty-three native Hebrew speakers and Russian-Hebrew multilinguals learned the…

Over the past several decades, researchers have discovered a great deal of information about the processes underlying language acquisition. From as early as they can be studied, infants are sensitive to the nuances of native-language sound structure. Similarly, infants are attuned to the visual and conceptual structure of their environments…

This study explores different aspects of the mapping between phonological form and meaning of signs in British Sign Language (BSL) by means of four tasks to measure meaning recognition, form recognition, form recall, and meaning recall. The aim was to investigate whether there is a hierarchy of difficulty for these tasks and, therefore, whether…

The study reported in this article describes second language (L2) vocabulary learning outcomes associated with adult L2 reading comprehension processes, thus connecting L2 learning with the complex cognitive and linguistic processing involved in reading. The study aimed to determine whether background knowledge moderated the relationship between…