This paper examines individual differences in the rate of early lexical development with a specific interest in gender differences. Twenty-six children were assessed monthly from either 8, 9, or 10 months of age through 14 months of age, using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures. Individual differences in developmental trajectories of vocabulary comprehension and production were explored using two analytic approaches. The first involved traditional parametric statistics, while the latter utilized classification procedures. Both techniques demonstrated that the lexical development of girls outpaced that of boys. The inductive approach also revealed the presence of distinctive “fast” and “slow” trajectories for both comprehension and production that were not exclusively segregated by gender. Cases exhibiting fast trajectories were predominantly girls, but several boys also followed this developmental pattern. The opposite pattern emerged for the slow trajectories. There was strong correspondence between production and comprehension, but a few cases clustered into the fast development group on one measure and the slow group on the other. The identification of these outliers may offer an important tool for exploring mechanisms of language development. Validation of the clustering results was based on the prospective prediction of an external criterion variable, namely, lexical development at 21 months, and by replication on an independent sample.

The relationship between bilingualism and metalinguistic awareness was explored in Puerto Rican Spanish- and English-speaking children. All subjects were from low-income backgrounds and were enrolled in a transitional bilingual education program in the United States. Two longitudinal studies were conducted. The first study examined the abilities to note and correct ungrammatical sentences in Spanish. Subjects were 104 children in first and second grade at the beginning of the study. They were followed over a period of 2 years. The second study looked at the ability to detect ambiguity in sentences, and to paraphrase the different meanings. There were 107 subjects who were in fourth and fifth grades, and were also followed over a 2-year period. The results from both studies indicated that native language proficiency as well as the degree of bilingualism affected metalinguistic awareness. The results also indicated that these effects interacted with the types of items in the metalinguistic tasks. This suggests that both subject-specific and task-specific factors are important in understanding the relationship between bilingualism and metalinguistic awareness.

This study investigated the development of automaticity in second language word recognition. In an earlier study (Segalowitz & Segalowitz, 1993) we demonstrated that a reduction in the coefficient of variation of lexical decision reaction time (CVRT) - the standard deviation of reaction time divided by mean reaction time (RT) - reflects a restructuring of underlying cognitive processing mechanisms in the direction of increased automaticity and not a simple speed-up of those mechanisms. In the current study, English speakers studying French performed multiple lexical decision tasks. Differences in CVRT were compared cross-sectionally and longitudinally. As in the earlier study, crosssectional analyses showed that CVRT correlated positively with RT for initially fast, but not initially slow, responders. CVRT also correlated positively with RT in longitudinal analyses. These results confirm that, with extended learning experience, the cognitive components underlying word recognition are restructured (automatized) and not simply speeded-up.

It is often assumed that young bilinguals are lexically delayed in comparison to monolinguals. A comprehensive comparison of comprehension and production vocabulary in 31 firstborn bilingual and 30 matched monolingual children fails to find empirical foundation for this assumption. Several raters completed Dutch and French adaptations of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories for children aged 13 and 20 months. At 13 months, bilinguals understood more words than did monolinguals; at 20 months, monolinguals knew more Dutch words than did bilinguals (combining comprehension and production). There were no group differences for word production or for Dutch word comprehension. Both groups understood and produced the same number of lexicalized meanings; ratios of word comprehension to word production did not differ; interindividual variation was similar. This study underscores the importance of conducting bilingual–monolingual comparisons with matched groups and suggests that if individual bilingual children appear to be slow in early vocabulary development, reasons other than their bilingualism should be investigated.

The present study compared lexical and visual–orthographic processing in the spelling performance of 30 Cantonese Chinese children who are English as a second language (ESL) learners to that of 33 native English-speaking (L1) children. Chinese ESL children showed poorer performance in spelling to dictation of pseudowords than L1 children. The difference between real word and pseudoword spelling performances for ESL children was significantly greater than that for L1 children. Moreover, Chinese ESL children outperformed their L1 counterparts in a confrontation spelling task of orthographically legitimate and illegitimate letter strings. In line with their advantage in spelling visually presented materials, the difference between spelling performance on legitimate and illegitimate letter strings for the Chinese children was significantly smaller than that for the L1 children. These findings are discussed in terms of early transfer of L1 literacy skills in second language literacy acquisition and support for a multiroute reading model.

This study examined metalinguistic awareness in children who were becoming bilingual in an immersion education program. The purpose was to determine at what point in emerging bilingualism the previously reported metalinguistic advantages appear and what types of metalinguistic tasks reveal these developmental differences. Participants were 124 children in second and fifth grades who were enrolled in either a French immersion or a regular English program. All children were from monolingual English-speaking homes and attended local public schools in middle socioeconomic neighborhoods. Measures included morphological awareness, syntactic awareness, and verbal fluency, with all testing in English. These tasks differed in their need for executive control, a cognitive ability that is enhanced in bilingual children. Overall, the metalinguistic advantages reported in earlier research emerged gradually, with advantages for tasks requiring more executive control (grammaticality judgment) appearing later and some tasks improving but not exceeding performance of monolinguals (verbal fluency) even by fifth grade. These findings demonstrate the gradual emergence of changes in metalinguistic concepts associated with bilingualism over a period of about 5 years. Performance on English-language proficiency tasks was maintained by French immersion children throughout in spite of schooling being conducted in French.

This study modeled vocabulary trajectories in 91 English language learners (ELLs) with Punjabi, Tamil, or Portuguese home languages, and 50 English monolinguals (EL1) from Grades 1 to 6. The concurrent and longitudinal relationships between phonological awareness and phonological short-term memory and vocabulary were examined. ELLs underperformed EL1s on vocabulary across all grades. Although vocabulary grew faster in ELLs than in EL1s in the primary grades, they did not close the gap after 6 years of English schooling. Mutual facilitation was found between phonological awareness, English-like nonwords, and vocabulary. A unidirectional relationship was found between Hebrew-like nonwords and vocabulary suggesting that the relationship between phonological short-term memory and vocabulary can be more accurately captured when using nonwords based on a remote, unfamiliar language.

This study reports on a comparison of the use and knowledge of tense-marking morphemes in English by first language (L1), second language (L2), and specific language impairment (SLI) children. The objective of our research was to ascertain whether the L2 children's tense acquisition patterns were similar or dissimilar to those of the L1 and SLI groups, and whether they would fit an (extended) optional infinitive profile, or an L2-based profile, for example, the missing surface inflection hypothesis. Results showed that the L2 children had a unique profile compared with their monolingual peers, which was better characterized by the missing surface inflection hypothesis. At the same time, results reinforce the assumption underlying the (extended) optional infinitive profile that internal constraints on the acquisition of tense could be a component of L1 development, with and without SLI.

This study was designed to test the prediction that, whereas sensitivity to subsyllabic phonological units might emerge prior to alphabetic reading instruction, phonemic analysis skills develop as a consequence of reading instruction. A series of phonological oddity tasks was devised, assessing children's sensitivity to subsyllabic onset and rime units, and to phonemes. These tasks were administered to three groups of children. The first group comprised the oldest children of a sample of kindergarten children. The second and third groups comprised the youngest and oldest children from a first-grade sample. The kindergarten group was equivalent to the younger first-grade group in terms of general verbal maturity, but had not been exposed to reading instruction. The younger first-grade sample was verbally less mature than the older first-grade sample, but had equivalent exposure to reading instruction. On all tasks, both first-grade groups performed at equivalent levels, and both groups did better than the kindergarten group. In all groups, onset and rime unity oddity tasks were of equal difficulty, but phoneme oddity tasks were more difficult than rime oddity tasks. Although some of the kindergarten children could reliably focus on onset and rime units, none performed above chance on the phoneme oddity tasks. Further analyses indicated that rime/onset oddity performance explained variation in very early reading achievement more reliably than phoneme oddity performance.

Past research demonstrates that first language (L1)-like competence in each language can be attained in simultaneous acquisition of bilingualism by mere exposure to the target languages. The question is whether this is also true for the “weaker” language (WL). The WL hypothesis claims that the WL differs fundamentally from monolingual L1 and balanced bilingual L1 and resembles second language (L2) acquisition. In this article, these claims are put to a test by analyzing “unusual” constructions in WLs, possibly indicating acquisition failure, and by reporting on analyses of the use of French by bilinguals whose dominant language is German. The available evidence does not justify the claim that WLs resemble L2. Instead, it shows that WL development can be delayed, but does not suggest acquisition failure. Finally, reduced input is unlikely to cause acquisition failure. The fundamental issue at stake is to explore the limits of the human language making capacity.

This prospective longitudinal study examined the relationship between caregiver input to 9-month-old infants and their subsequent language. Mother–infant dyads were videotaped at ages 9, 12, and 30 months. Language comprehension (at 12 and 18 months) was measured by parent report and correlated with an independent language measure. Three maternal style variables were reduced from the 9-month data. Only caregivers' contingent comments (CCC) related to infants' later language. These findings held after infants' skill with coordinated joint attention (CJA) was taken into account. The total number of words the mothers used when their infants were 9 months predicted vocabulary; however, the predictive power was encapsulated in the words the mother used during CCC. Because studies have typically examined maternal input once infants' CJA has emerged, this work contributes to current efforts to understand variations in early language development.

The aim of this study was to examine, with a longitudinal study design, the effects of phonological memory and native language (NL) literacy acquisition on learning English as a foreign language (FL). The subjects were 160 Finnish school children, who were 7-year-old first graders at the beginning of the study. Measures in the first grade were NL word recognition and listening comprehension; in the second grade, word recognition, reading comprehension, and phonological memory; and in the third grade, FL skills. The main result from the structural equation modeling was that both NL literacy and phonological memory have positive effects on FL learning. These skills explained 58% of the variance in English proficiency. Therefore, proficiency in NL literacy skills is highly significant for FL learning, although the orthographic regularity varied a lot (Finnish vs. English). On the basis of the results, it can be concluded that one way to promote FL learning is by diagnosing NL literacy skills early on and by providing training in NL literacy for at-risk children. In addition, the significant role of phonological memory in FL learning suggests that training in the FL phonology may enhance competence in the foreign language.

In this study, the influence of plausibility information on the real-time processing of locally ambiguous (“garden path”) sentences in a nonnative language is investigated. Using self-paced reading, we examined how advanced Greek-speaking learners of English and native speaker controls read sentences containing temporary subject–object ambiguities, with the ambiguous noun phrase being either semantically plausible or implausible as the direct object of the immediately preceding verb. Besides providing evidence for incremental interpretation in second language processing, our results indicate that the learners were more strongly influenced by plausibility information than the native speaker controls in their on-line processing of the experimental items. For the second language learners an initially plausible direct object interpretation lead to increased reanalysis difficulty in “weak” garden-path sentences where the required reanalysis did not interrupt the current thematic processing domain. No such evidence of on-line recovery was observed, in contrast, for “strong” garden-path sentences that required more substantial revisions of the representation built thus far, suggesting that comprehension breakdown was more likely here.

This is an investigation of the relationships among selected aspects of normal language development, emerging metalinguistic skills, concepts about print, and family literacy experiences in 3-year-old children who vary in their socioeconomic backgrounds. Forty-three normally developing children, whose family incomes ranged from under $10,000 to over $100,000, were given 4 tests of language development; 12 metalinguistic tasks measuring phonological awareness, word awareness, and structural awareness; and 2 measures of literacy knowledge. The children's family literacy experiences were described following a parent interview. The data analysis had two main purposes. The first was to examine the family literacy experiences of the children using a qualitative analysis. The second was to describe, in a quantitative way, the relationships among family literacy experiences, socioeconomic factors, language development, metalinguistic performance, and concepts about print. The interview data revealed that, while parents varied in the emphasis they placed on literacy activities, all of the children were at least somewhat involved in literacy activities at home; family report of literacy activities was associated with family income. Quantitative analyses revealed that amount of family literacy involvement and the children's race were related to oral language development, and language development was the most powerful predictor of metalinguistic awareness. When language development was controlled statistically, family literacy and socioeconomic factors had negligible effects on metalinguistic skills; however, knowledge of print concepts was related to metalinguistic performance, especially in the phonological domain, and was associated with the children's family literacy experiences, maternal education, and race.

We tested the hypothesis that syntactic and narrative comprehension of a natural sign language can serve as the linguistic basis for skilled reading. Thirty-one adults who were deaf from birth and used American Sign Language (ASL) were classified as skilled or less skilled readers using an eighth-grade criterion. Proficiency with ASL syntax, and narrative comprehension of ASL and Manually Coded English (MCE) were measured in conjunction with variables including exposure to print, nonverbal IQ, and hearing and speech ability. Skilled readers showed high levels of ASL syntatic ability and narrative comprehension whereas less skilled readers did not. Regression analyses showed ASL syntactic ability to contribute unique variance in English reading performance when the effects of nonverbal IQ, exposure to print, and MCE comprehension were controlled. A reciprocal relationship between print exposure and sign language proficiency was further found. The results indicate that the linguistic basis of reading, and the reciprocal relationship between print exposure and “through the air” language, can be bimodal, as in being a sign language or a spoken language, and bilingual, as in being ASL and English.

This study compared the rate of literacy acquisition in orthographically transparent Welsh and orthographically opaque English using reading tests that were equated for frequency of written exposure. Year 2 English-educated monolingual children were compared with Welsh-educated bilingual children, matched for reading instruction, background, locale, and math ability. Welsh children were able to read aloud accurately significantly more of their language (61% of tokens, 1821 types) than were English children (52% tokens, 716 types), allowing them to read aloud beyond their comprehension levels (168 vs. 116%, respectively). Various observations suggested that Welsh readers were more reliant on an alphabetic decoding strategy: word length determined 70% of reading latency in Welsh but only 22% in English, and Welsh reading errors tended to be nonword mispronunciations, whereas English children made more real word substitutions and null attempts. These findings demonstrate that the orthographic transparency of a language can have a profound effect on the rate of acquisition and style of reading adopted by its speakers.

Foreign language (FL) films with subtitles are becoming increasingly popular, and many European countries use subtitling as a cheaper alternative to dubbing. However, the extent to which people process subtitles under different subtitling conditions remains unclear. In this study, participants watched part of a film under standard (FL soundtrack and native language subtitles), reversed (native language soundtrack and FL subtitles), or intralingual (FL soundtrack and FL subtitles) subtitling conditions while their eye movements were recorded. The results revealed that participants read the subtitles irrespective of the subtitling condition. However, participants exhibited more regular reading of the subtitles when the film soundtrack was in an unknown FL. To investigate the incidental acquisition of FL vocabulary, participants also completed an unexpected auditory vocabulary test. Because the results showed no vocabulary acquisition, the need for more sensitive measures of vocabulary acquisition are discussed. Finally, the reading of the subtitles is discussed in relation to the saliency of subtitles and automatic reading behavior.

Language development is frequently characterized as a process where learning proceeds implicitly, that is, incidentally and in absence of awareness of what was learned. This article reports the results of two experiments that investigated whether second language acquisition can also result in implicit knowledge. Adult learners were trained on an artificial language under incidental learning conditions and then tested by means of grammaticality judgments and subjective measures of awareness. The results indicate that incidental exposure to second language syntax can result in unconscious knowledge, which suggests that at least some of the learning in this experiment was implicit. At the same time, however, it was also found that conscious (but unverbalizable) knowledge was clearly linked to improved performance in the grammaticality judgment task.

Two studies examined individual cognitive differences affecting the acquisition of second language word forms. Experiment 1 measured 40 undergraduates' ability to learn phonological sequences, their phonological short-term store capacity as indexed by ability to repeat nonwordlike nonwords, and their learning of novel foreign language vocabulary (German) in an experimental task. Phonological sequence learning predicted receptive vocabulary learning. Phonological sequence learning and phonological store capacity made independent additive contributions to productive vocabulary learning. Experiment 2 determined the interactions of phonological sequence learning ability, phonological store capacity, and second language acquisition during a longitudinal field study of 44 novice undergraduate learners of Spanish during a 10-week course. Students' initial skill in phonological sequence learning predicted their final levels of Spanish receptive language and their eventual ability to repeat Spanish-wordlike nonwords. The results suggest that phonological store capacity and phonological sequence learning ability are initially separable constraints on second language vocabulary acquisition and that sequence learning ability underpins the acquisition of long-term phonological knowledge. Subsequent apprehension and consolidation of a novel word form is a product not only of phonological short-term store capacity but also of this long-term knowledge of the phonological regularities of language.

Children's bilingual status is important because the interest here is in narrative performance in both languages of bilingual children, in particular the within-subject, cross language comparisons. As Paradis (2010) has argued, there are some structures where performance differences will point to a temporary lack of opportunity for mastery, whereas other structures will be markers of underlying difficulties. We expect the discriminators to be language specific, depending on attested vulnerabilities for each of the languages involved. Narratives were examined for macrostructure (goals, attempts, and outcomes), microstructure (e.g., length, lexis, and morphosyntax), and mental state terms (MSTs). Thirty-one preschool children (TLD = 19, SLI = 12) retold stories accompanied by six pictures that were matched across content (Baby Birds/Baby Goats) and to the extent possible across languages (first language/second language) for macrostructure, microstructure, and MSTs in the framework of the Working Group on Narrative and Discourse Abilities in COST Action 0804 Language Impairment in a Multilingual Society: Linguistic Patterns and the Road to Assessment. The macrostructure results confirmed previous findings showing similar performance in both languages for children with TLD and those diagnosed with SLI. Consistent with previous findings on narrative abilities among bilingual children, microstructure analysis of verbal productivity, length of communication units, and lexical diversity distinguished children with TLD from those with SLI. An analysis of MSTs yielded more MSTs in children's second language, in particular more mental verbs. The most prevalent MSTs used in all narratives were early acquired perceptual and motivational verbs (“see” and “want”). Overall, distinctions between narratives of children with TLD and SLI were found primarily for microstructure features, where error analysis was particularly important in uncovering possible markers, especially in second languages.