Second language (L2) listening requires efficient processing of continuing incoming information (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012). Even so, research into individual differences in L2 listening has mostly shed light on the role of linguistic knowledge measured without time pressure (e.g., Mecarty, 2000; Wang & Treffers-Daller, 2017; cf. Vafaee & Suzuki, 2020), leaving the role of processing speed and automaticity largely unexplored. To close this gap, we explored the determinants of successful listening using three processing tasks at lexical, syntactic, and propositional levels. Participants were 44 Chinese learners of English. Response accuracy afforded measures of vocabulary size, syntactic parsing skills, and formulation of propositional meaning. Reaction times and the coefficient of variation (Segalowitz & Segalowitz, 1993) afforded processing speed and automaticity measures at each level. We found a hierarchical relationship between different levels of processing, whereby lower-level, lexical effects cascade up and are mediated by propositional comprehension in accounting for listening comprehension. The results highlight the importance of considering processing accuracy and speed at different levels of the linguistic hierarchy to explain variability among L2 listeners. Different from most previous studies, we argue for a need to consider the temporal aspects of processing, along with linguistic knowledge, in modeling L2 listening.

Bilingual children typically perform more poorly than monolingual children on linguistic tasks but better than monolingual children on cognitive tasks requiring executive function. The present study examined performance on complex linguistic tasks that also required executive functioning for their solution. One hundred 4-year-olds from linguistically diverse backgrounds (36 monolinguals, 64 bilinguals) performed two linguistic tasks in which misleading information needed to be ignored to select the correct answer. Data were analyzed both categorically by comparing the performance of children assigned to monolingual and bilingual groups and continuously in terms of degree of bilingual experience across the entire sample. In the categorical analyses, bilingual children were more accurate than monolingual children in understanding the meaning of spoken sentences in the presence of distraction in both tasks, and continuous analyses showed that performance was calibrated to degree of bilingualism in one of the tasks, with higher levels of bilingualism being associated with better performance. The interpretation is that attentional control built up through bilingual experience compensates for lower levels of language proficiency in performing these complex linguistic tasks. The study also endorses the use of continuous assessments of bilingualism rather than categorical assignment to groups to obtain more nuanced results.

Prediction underlies many life’s situations including language. Monolinguals and advanced L2 learners use prosodic cues such as stress and tone in a word’s first syllable to predict the word’s suffix. To determine whether the same findings extend to words with non-morphological endings, we investigate whether Spanish monolinguals and advanced learners of Spanish with and without interpreting experience use stress (stressed, unstressed) and syllabic structure (CV, CVC) in a word’s initial syllable to predict its ending. This is crucial to understand whether associations underlying prediction are morphophonolexical associations or purely phonolexical. Interpreters were included due to their extensive experience predicting incoming speech. Participants completed an eye-tracking study where they listened to a sentence while seeing two words and selected the word they heard. Results revealed that monolinguals and interpreters predicted word endings under all conditions, but non-interpreters only predicted in the CVC oxytone condition. These findings are relevant for (1) prediction accounts, showing that phonolexical associations trigger prediction; (2) phonological models, revealing that stress and syllable information in the initial syllable are key for accessing and predicting meaning; and (3) L2 processing models, indicating that L2 learners with interpreting experience use suprasegmental information to access and predict lexical items similar to monolinguals.

Children who are refugees become bilingual in circumstances that are often challenging and that can vary across national contexts. We investigated the second language (L2) syntactic skills of Syrian children aged 6-12 living in Canada (n = 56) and the Netherlands (n = 47). Our goal was to establish the impact of the first language (L1 = Syrian Arabic) skills on L2 (English, Dutch) outcomes and whether L1–L2 interdependence is influenced by the length of L2 exposure. To measure L1 and L2 syntactic skills, cross-linguistic Litmus Sentence Repetition Tasks (Litmus-SRTs) were used. Results showed evidence of L1–L2 interdependence, but interdependence may only surface after sufficient L2 exposure. Maternal education level and refugee camp experiences differed between the two samples. Both variables impacted L2 outcomes in the Canadian but not in the Dutch sample, demonstrating the importance to examine refugee children’s bilingual language development in different national contexts.

The present study aimed to shed light on (i) the most accessible phonological unit and (ii) the nature of letter knowledge among native Arabic-speaking preschool children living in Israel. One hundred and sixty-seven children were assessed on phonological awareness with initial and final isolation tasks as well as knowledge of the standard names and sounds of Arabic letters. Children’s responses in these tasks were categorized in accordance with the phonological unit that the child supplied. Regarding phonological unit accessibility, the novel finding of this study was the prevalence of a tri-phonemic /ʔεC/ unit that begins with the prefix /ʔε-/ and ends with the target (consonantal) phoneme which we have termed the “demi-phoneme” (e.g., /ʔεs/ for the consonant /s/). Awareness of the consonant–vowel unit was the next most prevalent unit followed lastly by the “smallest unit” – the phoneme. It appears that the demi-phoneme functions as a psycholinguistic aid to facilitate phoneme perception and pronunciation (as proposed by the 8th-century scholar – Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi) and both phoneme and demi-phoneme responses are underpinned by the same knowledge. With regard to letter knowledge, the standard name for Arabic letters was the preferred response and letter sounds were retrieved as a demi-phoneme unit.

Spelling has been found to be influenced by the frequency with which certain orthographic patterns occur. We examined whether Grades 2–5 children were already sensitive to orthographic frequency in spelling present tense verb inflections that sound the same but are spelled differently. Children were asked to spell present tenses in two homophonous forms; both inflections are pronounced with final /t/ but are spelled with final -d (“ik vind,” I find) or -dt (“hij/zij vindt,” he/she finds). Previous research has shown that adolescents and adults make inflection errors based on the relative frequency within a pair; as “vind’ is more frequent than “vindt,” “vind” is often used incorrectly. The children showed low correct scores for third person singular spellings, and overall better performance for -d dominant verbs. Surprisingly, they did make errors related to homophone inflection but in the wrong place, marking the wrong time: homophone-based errors occurred in present tense non-homophone verbs and in past tenses. We take our findings to mean that the children were not sensitive to homophone dominance. Furthermore, the findings illustrate the importance of specific graphotactic patterns in literacy development and call for attention to these patterns in models and teaching of spelling.

This study investigated differences in the English referencing behaviors in the context of oral narrative retell between typically developing first- and second-grade Spanish–English emergent bilingual children in dual language immersion and English-only instructional contexts (N = 105). Children heard and retold Mercer Mayer wordless picture books, and analyses were conducted to examine how they used nominals and pronominals to maintain and switch reference to potential thematic protagonists in the story. Multivariate analysis of variance showed significant grade-level differences in the proportion of pronominals used to switch and maintain reference to BOY/S (boy and dog or frog), as well as to switch to BOY. In contrast, instructional context differences were significant only for reference to the DOG or FROG. The finding that second graders in both dual language immersion and English-only programs continued to demonstrate an overreliance on pronominal forms to switch reference in a second language suggests that differences in literacy and oral language development may extend beyond the grades that we investigated. It is therefore important to continue investigating the referencing behaviors of emergent bilingual children throughout the elementary years of schooling.

This study examined the transfer facilitation effects from English morphological awareness on Chinese multicharacter word reading in English-speaking adult learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). Fifty English-speaking American university CFL learners participated in our study who measured their English morphological awareness, Chinese morphological awareness, Chinese linguistic knowledge, Chinese word reading, and working memory. There were three major findings: (1) with approximately three years of formal Chinese instruction and limited Chinese print input, English-speaking adult learners of Chinese developed sensitivity to the internal morphological structure of multicharacter words in Chinese. (2) English morphological awareness did not directly contribute to Chinese bimorphemic three-character pseudoword reading yet contributed indirectly via the joint serial mediation by Chinese morphological awareness and Chinese monomorphemic two-character real word reading. (3) There was no additional influence from Chinese linguistic knowledge on Chinese word reading. And, English morphological awareness explained about 3.64% of the variance in second language Chinese bimorphemic three-character pseudoword reading. Discussion is provided regarding the transfer facilitation mechanism through which first language morphological awareness contributes to adult second language reading acquisition.

We examined the growth trajectories of reading in a consistent orthography (Greek) in two developmental periods (from Grade 1 to Grade 4 and from Grade 4 to Grade 10) and what cognitive skills predict the growth patterns. Seventy-five Greek-speaking children were assessed in Grades 1, 2, 4, 6, and 10 on word-, nonword-, and text-reading fluency. In Grades 1 and 4, they were also assessed on phonological awareness, rapid naming, phonological memory, orthographic knowledge, and articulation rate. Results of growth curve modeling showed that during the first developmental period, there was a rapid initial growth from Grade 1 to Grade 2 followed by a less rapid growth from Grade 2 to Grade 4. In the second developmental period, the slow growth continued. In both developmental periods, rapid naming and orthographic knowledge predicted the initial status of all reading outcomes and phonological memory predicted the initial status of nonword-reading fluency. Phonological awareness predicted the initial status of nonword-reading fluency in the first developmental period and the initial status of word- and text-reading fluency in the second developmental period. None of the cognitive skills predicted the growth rate in reading skills. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

This paper examined the relationship between working memory (WM) and L2 linguistic knowledge as well as L2 listening comprehension with 150 Japanese EFL learners. The study also investigated the extent to which these relationships vary across L2 proficiency levels. The results in the study were as follows: (a) WM capacity was more strongly associated with L2 listening comprehension, L2 perceptual processing, and L2 syntactic parsing processing in the lower-proficiency group than in the higher-proficiency group; (b) L1 WM capacity still accounted for the unique variance in L2 listening comprehension after adjusting for the L2 language-related variables in the lower-proficiency group. The results suggest that the relationship between WM capacity and L2 listening comprehension may be mediated by L2 proficiency and depend on the domain-general processing efficiency reflecting central executive attention when the listening comprehension task requires conscious attention for less proficient listeners. The findings provide suggestive evidence for variation in the role of WM in L2 listening comprehension across proficiency levels and the significant role of L1 WM capacity in L2 listening comprehension as the general cognitive factor independent of L2 linguistic knowledge for L2 learners with limited linguistic knowledge.

Linguistic deficits attested in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have been explained in terms of limitations in working memory (WM). The goal of this research is to assess whether a tailored WM program can improve the syntactic abilities of children with DLD and those with typical development (TD). We created a novel iPad application consisting of five activities specifically designed to train the components of WM that have been shown to be the most predictive of performance on tests assessing complex syntax. Thirty-two children with DLD (M = 9;0) and 18 with TD (M = 8;5) followed the WM training (lasting 12 hours). Results show significant improvement in verbal WM (direct effects) in both TD and DLD groups, and in sentence repetition (transfer effects) in the DLD group, with the most pronounced improvements observed for complex syntactic structures. This progression is not observed for 38 age-matched children of the same age who followed an alternative, global scholastic training (20 DLD, 18 TD), which proves the specific efficacy of our WM training. The logical next step will be to incorporate the training into the therapy of children with DLD in order to reinforce the potential benefit of their interventions.