In 2 experiments, a novel experimental paradigm investigated how spatial attention is distributed across a talker's face during auditory-visual speech discourse processing. Dots were superimposed onto several talkers' faces for 17-msec durations on the talker's left side, mouth, right side, and eyebrow area. Participants reported the locations of…

The aim of this article is to provide a selective review of event-related potential (ERP) research on second language processing. As ERPs have been used in the investigation of a variety of linguistic domains, the reported studies cover different paradigms assessing processing mechanisms in the second language at various levels, ranging from…

Three experiments investigated the impact of syllabic boundary information and of morphological structure on performance in a sequence-monitoring task. In sequence monitoring, participants detect pre-specified sequences of phonemes in spoken carrier words. Sequences corresponded to the first syllable of the carrier word, to its first morpheme, or…

In the present study we use event related potentials (ERPs) to explore the time course of identification and resolution of verb gaps. ERPs were recorded while participants read sentences that contained a verb gap like "Ron took/sanded the planks, and Bill O the hammer"... Plausibility of the critical words ("hammer") that followed the verb gap was…

This study examines the potential encoding in long-term memory of subphonemic, within-category variation in voice onset time (VOT) and the degree to which this encoding of subtle variation is mediated by lexical competition. In 4 long-term repetition-priming experiments, magnitude of priming was examined as a function of variation in VOT in words…

It has been shown that harmonic structure may influence the processing of phonemes whatever the extent of participants' musical expertise [Bigand, E., Tillmann, B., Poulin, B., D'Adamo, D. A., & Madurell, F. (2001). The effect of harmonic context on phoneme monitoring in vocal music. "Cognition," 81, B11-B20]. The present study goes a step further…

The authors report a lexical decision experiment designed to determine whether activation is the locus of the word-frequency effect. K. R. Paap and L. S. Johansen (1994) reported that word frequency did not affect lexical decisions when exposure durations were brief; they accounted for this by proposing that data-limited conditions prevented…

Preschoolers' success on the appearance-reality task is a milestone in theory-of-mind development. On the standard task children see a deceptive object, such as a sponge that looks like a rock, and are asked, ''What is this really?'' and ''What does this look like?'' Children below 412 years of age fail saying that the object not only is a sponge…

Twelve experiments examined the effect of neighborhood density on repetition latency for nonwords. Previous reports have indicated that nonwords from high density neighborhoods are repeated with shorter latency than nonwords from low density neighborhoods (e.g., Vitevitch & Luce, 1998). Experiment 1 replicated these previously reported…

This work examines the relationship between implicit procedural and implicit verbal processes as they occur in natural adult conversation. Theoretical insights and empirical findings are rooted in a move towards integration of Bucci's "Referential Activity" (RA) and "Multiple Code" perspectives and Beebe and Jaffe's…

Williams syndrome is a rare neurodevelopmental disorder caused by deletion of approximately 25 genes on chromosome 7q11.23. Children with the syndrome evidence large individual differences in both broad language and reading abilities. Nevertheless, as a group, children with this syndrome show a consistent pattern characterized by relative…

English sentences containing the universal quantifiers "each", "every", and "all" are highly complex structures in view of the subtleties of their scope properties and resulting ambiguities. This study explored the acquisition of universal quantifier sentences as reflected in the performance of three diverse college-level student groups on a…

In six analyses using the Child Language Data Exchange System known as CHILDES, we explored whether and how parents and their 1.5- to 5-year-old children talk about writing. Parent speech might include information about the similarity between print and speech and about the difference between writing and drawing. Parents could convey similarity…

This article examines the question of whether university-based high-level foreign language and linguistic training can influence brain activation and whether different L2 proficiency groups have different brain activation in terms of lateralization and hemispheric involvement. The traditional and prevailing theory of hemispheric involvement in…

This construct validation study investigated the factor structure of the Test of English as a Foreign Language[TM] Internet-based test (TOEFL[R] iBT). An item-level confirmatory factor analysis was conducted for a test form completed by participants in a field study. A higher-order factor model was identified, with a higher-order general factor…