Purpose: Children with language impairment (LI) often perform below the level of typically developing peers on measures of both processing speed and working memory. This study examined the relationship between these 2 types of measures and attempted to determine whether such measures can account for the LI itself. Method: Fourteen-year-old…

The neurophysiological and neuroanatomical foundations of developmental language disorder (DLD) are still a matter of dispute. A main argument is that children with DLD show atypical anatomical asymmetries of speech-relevant brain areas, which possibly affect efficient language processing. In contrast to previous anatomical studies in DLD…

This article reports on a crosslinguistic comparative study of the processing of Japanese relative clauses (RCs) by Chinese-, Sinhalese-, Vietnamese-, Thai-, and Indonesian-speaking second language (L2) learners. A robust finding in studies on the acquisition of RCs in L2 English and other European languages is that subject-gap RCs are easier than…

Age-related changes in the use of verbal processes for the efficient switching between tasks were investigated in 5-year-old children (N = 32, M age = 5.9 years) and 9-year-old children (N = 32, M age = 9.4 years). Task switching was assessed by means of a cued switching paradigm to examine two switching components: (a) to maintain and select and…

Learner corpora, electronic collections of spoken or written data from foreign language learners, offer unparalleled access to many hitherto uncovered aspects of learner language, particularly in their error-tagged format. This article aims to demonstrate the role that the learner corpus can play in CALL, particularly when used in conjunction with…

How do people spell the thousands of words at the tips of their tongues? Are words with "regular" sound-to-letter correspondences (e.g., "blink") spelled using the same neural systems as those with "irregular" correspondences (e.g., "yacht")? By offering novel neuroimaging evidence, we aim to advance contemporary debate about whether people use a…

This article begins by identifying that children have a spontaneous predilection for playing with language, engaging in poetic discourse even before their first poetry lesson. Although children's language play is relatively unresearched in the classroom, in a case study of two groups of pupils aged between 10 and 11, it was observed that children…

The aim of this study is to discuss the interaction of linguistic complexity and morpho-syntactic development in foreign language learners. The analysis of morpho-syntactic structures was carried out within the framework of Processability Theory (Pienemann 1998). To capture the level of complexity we investigate the following: sentence length,…

This study examines sentence-level language abilities of amnesic H.M. to test competing theoretical conceptions of relations between language and memory. We present 11 new sources of experimental evidence indicating deficits in H.M's comprehension and production of non-cliche sentences. Contrary to recent claims that H.M.'s comprehension is…

Four doctoral students and their professor contemplate the value of play in their high school and college classrooms. They discuss their experiences teaching children's books, student illustrations, and excerpts from magazines and newspapers that convey the intricacies of the English language through homonyms, homophones, homographs, and polysemy.…

Dyslexia is a disorder of the language-processing systems in the brain. It is a specific learning disability in reading that often affects spelling as well. This article describes: (1) Common characteristics experienced by people with dyslexia or reading disabilities; (2) Common misconceptions about dyslexia; (3) What brain research tell us about…

This study focused on the relationship between school performance and performance on a dichotic listening (DL) task in dyslexic children. Dyslexia is associated with impaired phonological processing, related to functions in the left temporal lobe. DL is a frequently used task to assess functions of the left temporal lobe. Due to the predominance…

In this article we examine language processing and development in Catalan or Spanish-speaking children with SLI, focusing on the study of the verb. We analyse the key initial phase of its process of acquisition and aim to define common features of the SLI group that distinguish them from children with normal language development. We intend to…

In this paper we discuss how the Brigham Young University Technology Assisted Language Learning Group (BYU TALL Group) develops video-based dramatic narratives to increase the amount of context we provide to English as a second language (ESL) learners. First, we discuss the problem of decontextualization in education, the contextualism…

The present study examined the relationship between word concreteness and word frequency using event-related potential (ERP) measurements during a lexical decision task. Potential effects of concreteness in the processing of verbs were also examined. ERPs were recorded from 119 scalp electrodes in 23 right-handed participants. The results showed…