Thirty- and 36-month-old English speakers' (N = 106) ability to produce jokes, distinguish between humorous and sincere intentions, and distinguish between English- and foreign-language speakers, was examined in two tasks. In the Giving task, an experimenter requested one of two familiar objects, and a confederate always gave her the wrong object.…

This study was designed to examine whether infants acquiring languages that place a differential emphasis on nouns and verbs, focus their attention on motions or objects in the presence of a novel word. An infant-controlled habituation paradigm was used to teach 18- to 20-month-old English-, French-, and Japanese-speaking infants' novel words for…

A persistent mystery in language acquisition is how speakers are able to learn seemingly arbitrary distributional restrictions. This article investigates one such case: the fact that speakers resist using certain adjectives prenominally (e.g. ??"the asleep man"). Experiment 1 indicates that speakers tentatively generalize or "categorize" the…

This article develops a constructivist perspective on listening skill. Listening is conceptualized as "a process that involves the interpretation of messages that others have intentionally transmitted in the effort to understand those messages and respond to them appropriately." This definition allows listening to be understood both as a mindful…

We report two visual-world eye-tracking experiments that investigated the effects of subjecthood, pronominalisation, and contrastive focus on the interpretation of pronouns in subsequent discourse. By probing the effects of these factors on real-time pronoun interpretation, we aim to contribute to our understanding of how topicality-related…

Is language processing universal? How do the specific properties of each language influence the way it is processed? In this study, we compare the neural correlates of morphological processing in Hebrew--a Semitic language with a rich and systematic morphology, to those revealed in English--an Indo-European language with a linear morphology. Using…

Carers recognize that the linguistic problems associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) can be detrimental to effective communication, but they are often not sure what they can do to help. This article examines the use of formulaic language in AD, including routines, repetitions, and fillers, through the lens of a model of how cognitive and social…

This Special Issue on Morphological Processing is based on the sixth MOrphological PROcessing Conference (MOPROC), which was kept in June 2009 in Turku, Finland. The issue contains 13 articles by leading scholars in the field of morphological processing. These articles investigate the role morphemes play in language comprehension, production and…

Healthy adults can identify spoken words at a remarkable speed, by incrementally analyzing word-onset information. It is currently unknown how this adult-level speed of spoken-word processing emerges during children's native-language acquisition. In a picture-word mismatch paradigm, we manipulated the semantic congruency between picture contexts…

It is generally held that noun processing is specifically sub-served by temporal areas, while the neural underpinnings of verb processing are located in the frontal lobe. However, this view is now challenged by a significant body of evidence accumulated over the years. Moreover, the results obtained so far on the neural implementation of noun and…

Idiomatic expressions pose substantial learning difficulties for learners across languages and tend to be acquired later in the course of language development both in L1 and L2. A number of factors have been identified as contributing to this difficulty. However, cross-linguistic studies on figurative language acquisition are still rare. The…

Many young children of Mexican heritage enter U.S. schools with knowledge of two language systems and emergent biliterate abilities. Bilingualism in young children may go unnoticed when instructional practices favor English. This case study describes how Lucía's bilingualism and emergent biliteracy parallel competencies essential to literacy…

It is well established that speech, language and phonological skills are closely associated with literacy, and that children with a family risk of dyslexia (FRD) tend to show deficits in each of these areas in the preschool years. This paper examines what the relationships are between FRD and these skills, and whether deficits in speech, language…

A considerable amount of research has been undertaken to provide insights into the valid assessment of team performance. However, in many settings, manual and therefore labor-intensive assessment instruments for team performance have limitations. Therefore, automated assessment instruments enable more flexible and detailed insights into the…

This article presents the results of a study testing the efficacy of an instructional model that attends to the science, literacy, and language learning needs of English Learners (ELs) through a curriculum development project. The model is based on the premise that reading, writing, and discourse are better served when these important language…