Central questions in psycholinguistic studies on bilingualism are how bilinguals access words in their two languages, and how they control their language systems and solve the problem of cross-language competition. In their excellent paper "The architecture of the bilingual word recognition system: From identification to decision", Dijkstra and…

In five experiments highly-proficient bilinguals were asked to name two sets of pictures in their L2: a) pictures whose names in the L2 and their corresponding L1 translations have the same grammatical gender value, and b) pictures whose names in the L2 and their corresponding L1 translations have different gender values. In Experiments 1, 2, and…

Two experiments investigated the acquisition of English comparative adjective forms, "Adj+er" and "more Adj." In Experiment 1, 72 children, four- and seven-years-old, indicated their preferences for the synthetic or periphrastic comparative form for 16 adjectives in a forced-choice judgement task; their responses were compared to those of a group…

The paper offers a model of language development, first and second, within a processing perspective. We first sketch a modular view of language, in which competence is embodied in the processing mechanisms. We then propose a novel approach to language acquisition (Acquisition by Processing Theory, or APT), in which development of the module occurs…

Acquisition by Processing Theory (APT) is a unified account of language processing and learning that encompasses both L1 and L2 acquisition. Bold in aim and broad in scope, the proposal offers parsimony and comprehensiveness, both highly desirable in a theory of language acquisition. However, the sweep of the proposal is accompanied by an economy…

The origin and functions of the hand and arm gestures that accompany speech production are poorly understood. It has been proposed that gestures facilitate lexical retrieval, but little is known about when retrieval is accompanied by gestural activity and how this activity is related to the semantics of the word to be retrieved. Electromyographic…

A self-paced reading experiment investigated processing of sentences containing a noun-phrase that could temporarily be mistaken as the direct-object argument of a verb in a subordinate clause but actually constituted the syntactic subject of the main clause (often referred to as an "early" vs. "late closure" ambiguity). Subcategorization…

The present study investigated scrambling effects on the processing of Japanese sentences and priority information used among thematic roles, case particles and grammatical functions. Reaction times for correct sentence decisions were significantly prolonged for scrambled active sentences with transitive verbs in the first experiment and with…

This study explores the connection between writing and working memory, specifically the role of the subvocal articulatory rehearsal process (or inner voice). The authors asked the 18 participants to type sentences describing 24 multipanel cartoons. In some conditions, the participants were required to repeat a syllable continuously while writing.…

Background: The remediation of pragmatic problems forms a significant part of the caseload for professionals working with children with communication problems. There is little systematic evidence that demonstrates the benefits of speech and language therapy for children whose difficulties lie primarily within the pragmatic domain or which…

The relationships between phoneme categorisation, phonological processing, and reading performance were examined in Chinese-English speaking children in an English-speaking environment. Second language (L2, i.e., English) phonological processing but not phoneme categorisation was related to L2 reading. First language (L1) oral language skills were…

French and Dutch differ regarding the manifestations and lexical functions of the stress pattern of words. The present study examined group differences in stress processing abilities between French-native and Dutch-native listeners, thus extending previous cross-linguistic comparisons involving Spanish-native and French-native adults. The results…

In this study, we investigated patients with focal neurodegenerative diseases to examine a formal linguistic distinction between classes of generalized quantifiers, like "some X" and "less than half of X." Our model of quantifier comprehension proposes that number knowledge is required to understand both first-order and higher-order quantifiers.…

We report 3 studies investigating children's and adults' interpretation of ambiguous focus in sentences containing the focus-sensitive quantifier only. In each experiment, child and adult participants compared sentences with only in a preverbal position and counterpart sentences without only against a series of pictures depicting events that…

Situated in the context of learning second language (L2) pronunciation, this article discusses from information-processing and pedagogical perspectives the role of repetitive practice with L2 input and of explicit focus on its form-related (phonological) properties. First, we report the results of an auditory word-priming experiment with 60 L2…