The present study investigated the effects of word-recognition training on the word-recognition processing of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Providing 7-week word-recognition training, the study examined whether such training improves EFL learners' word-recognition performance. The main aspects of this study concerned word frequency and working-memory capacity in automatization of word recognition. Analysis of variance and correlational analyses revealed qualitative differences in the improvement of EFL word-recognition performance with respect to word frequency. The improvement in the processing of high-frequency words was associated with simple speedup; conversely, the processing of low-frequency words was associated with automatization. Results also showed that working-memory capacity might not play a noticeable role in improving word-recognition speed or efficiency.

Two studies examined children's use of letter–name spelling strategies when target phoneme sequences match letter names with different degrees of precision. We examined Portuguese-speaking preschoolers' use of h (which is named /a′ga/ but which never represents those sounds) when spelling words beginning with /ga/ or variants of /ga/. We also looked at use of q (named /ke/) when spelling /ke/ and /ge/. Children sometimes used h for stimuli beginning with /ga/ and /ka/, and q when spelling words and nonwords beginning with /ke/ and /ge/ they did not use these letters when stimuli began with other sequences. Thus, their spellings evinced use of letter-name matches primarily when consonant-vowel sequences matched, such that vowels must be exact but consonants could differ in voicing from the target phoneme.

This study examined the effects of lexical frequency on children's production of accurate primary stress in words derived with nonneutral English suffixes. Forty-four third-grade children participated in an elicited derived word task in which they produced high-frequency, low-frequency, and nonsense-derived words with stress-changing suffixes (i.e., -tion, -ic, -ity). Derived word frequency affected stress production accuracy; however, the individual suffix also played an important role in stress placement, with -tion productions more accurate than either -ic or -ity productions. For the real words, derived word frequency relative to stem frequency was related to performance. Stress was less accurate on derived words that were much lower in frequency than their stems (e.g., tranquil/tranquility) and more accurate on derived words that approximated or exceeded their stem frequency (e.g., motivate/motivation). In addition to derived word and stem frequency, results are discussed with reference to several phonological characteristics that may also influence stress production accuracy.

The performance of 8- to 13-year-old monolingual English-speaking children with language impairment (LI) on seven nonlinguistic tasks was compared with two groups of typically developing children, monolingual English-speaking children, and proficient Spanish–English sequential bilingual children. Group differences were apparent, with a key finding that the LI group was observably slower than both typical groups in mental rotation and arithmetic, and also slower than the typical monolingual group in odd man out, pattern matching, and form completion. Overall, the response time (RT) increased equivalently across groups as task difficulty increased. Chronological age and perceptual–motor speed contributed to task performance, especially for the shorter tasks. RT trajectories across the 6-year age span showed that task RT decreased with age, but with greater variability for longer tasks that may also be more vulnerable to the effect of experience.

The study explores the relationship between phonological awareness and early reading for bilingual children learning to read in two languages that use different writing systems. Participants were 57 Cantonese–English bilingual 6-year-olds who were learning to read in both languages. The children completed cognitive measures, phonological awareness tasks, and word identification tests in both languages. Once cognitive abilities had been controlled, there was no correlation in word identification ability performance across languages, but the correspondence in phonological awareness measures remained strong. This pattern was confirmed by a principal components analysis and hierarchical regression that demonstrated a different role for each phonological awareness factor in reading performance in each language. The results indicate that phonological awareness depends on a set of cognitive abilities that is applied generally across languages and that early reading depends on a common set of cognitive abilities in conjunction with skills specific to different writing systems.

We reported three experiments investigating subsyllabic unit preference in young Chinese children. In Experiment 1, a Chinese sound similarity judgment task was designed in which 48 pair of stimuli varied in terms of shared subsyllabic units (i.e., vowel, body, rime, onset-coda). Grade 1 Chinese-speaking monolingual children judged pairs with shared body units most similar. In Experiment 2, the sound similarity judgment tasks in Chinese and English were tested on a group of Chinese–English bilingual children. Grade 1 children judged shared-body pairs most similar in Chinese and shared-rime pairs most similar in English. In both experiments, preschool children showed a similar pattern of performance to the Grade 1 children in the Chinese task. In Experiment 3, sound matching tasks in Chinese and English were designed. Grade 1 bilingual children again showed a preference for matching body over rime in Chinese, and for matching rime over body in English. Taken together, these results support the hypotheses that the subsyllabic unit preference in Chinese is driven by the spoken language properties, and that there exist cross-language differences in processing spoken syllables.

This paper explores tense and agreement marking in the spontaneous production of verbs in Arabic-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and two groups of typically developing children: one group matched for mean length of utterance, and the other group matched for age. The special characteristics of Arabic such as its rich bound morphology, intricate verb system, null subject properties, and lack of an infinitival form make it particularly valuable for determining universal versus language-specific aspects of SLI. The results indicate that the Arabic-speaking participants with SLI had obvious problems with verb morphology. They were significantly different from the two comparison groups of children on the percentage of correct use of tense and subject–verb agreement forms. Furthermore, when an error in verbal infection occurred, the substitute form was often an imperative form. The findings are examined in light of cross-linguistic research pertaining to the nature of the SLI deficit and its relationship with typical language learning.