Recent uci_langsci items

Evaluating synthesized speech intelligibility in noise

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Humans can modify their speech to improve intelligibility in noisy environments. With the advancement of speech synthesis technology, machines may also synthesize voices that remain highly intelligible in noise condition. This study evaluates both the subjective and objective intelligibility of synthesized speech in speech-shaped noise from three major speech synthesis platforms. It was found that synthesized voices have a similar intelligibility range to human voices, and some synthesized voices were more intelligible than human voices. It was also found that two modern automatic speech recognition systems recognized 10% more words than human listeners.

NUDGING: Inference-time Alignment of LLMs via Guided Decoding

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Large language models (LLMs) require alignment to effectively and safely follow user instructions. This process necessitates training an aligned version for every base model, resulting in significant computational overhead. In this work, we propose NUDGING, a simple, training-free algorithm that aligns any base model at inference time using a small aligned model. NUDGING is motivated by recent findings that alignment primarily alters the model's behavior on a small subset of stylistic tokens (e.g., discourse markers). We find that base models are significantly more uncertain when generating these tokens. Building on this insight, NUDGING employs a small aligned model to generate nudging tokens to guide the base model's output during decoding when the base model's uncertainty is high, with only a minor additional inference overhead. We evaluate NUDGING across 3 model families on a diverse range of open-instruction tasks. Without any training, nudging a large base model with a 7×-14×...

The acquisition of L2 English complex onsets by L1 Farsi speakers

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Much previous work has shown that sibilant-initial complex onsets (SC onsets) differ in their typological, phonological, articulatory, and acquisitional properties from other onsets. The exact mechanism(s) underlying these differences are poorly understood. In this study, we investigate the acquisition and production of L2 English complex onsets by L1 Farsi speakers, focusing on differences between SC onsets and other onset types. Results from an experimental study corroborate past reports that Farsi speakers repair most SC onsets using epenthesis before the cluster and other onsets using epenthesis into the cluster. The results also support the claim that SC onsets are more difficult to produce and are acquired more slowly than other onsets. A phonological modeling study suggests that the epenthesis asymmetries observed in the experimental study are best accounted for by a pressure to maximize perceptual similarity to the unepenthesized forms. We close with speculation on how...

Uniformity in speech: The economy of reuse and adaptation across contexts

Tue, 2 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Uniformity in speech: The economy of reuse and adaptation across contexts

Disentangling Words, Clitics, and Suffixes in Uyghur

Tue, 2 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Turkic languages have been shown to form words using a wide range of word-formation strategies, such as suffixation, cliticization, and auxiliaries. The present paper offers a detailed description of word formation in Uyghur, compares the patterns in Uyghur with the prior literature on Turkic, offers explicit diagnostics for suffixes and clitics, and proposes a morpho-syntactic analysis for each strategy.

The UCI Phonotactic Calculator: An online tool for computing phonotactic metrics

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper presents the UCI Phonotactic Calculator (UCIPC), a new online tool for quantifying the occurrence of segments and segment sequences in a corpus. This tool has several advantages compared to existing tools: it allows users to supply their own training data, meaning it can be applied to any language for which a corpus is available; it computes a wider range of metrics than most existing tools; and it provides an accessible point-and-click interface that allows researchers with more modest technical backgrounds to take advantage of phonotactic models. After describing the metrics implemented by the calculator and how to use it, we present the results of a proof-of-concept study comparing how well different types of metrics implemented by the UCIPC predict human responses from eight published nonce word acceptability judgment studies across four different languages. These results suggest that metrics that take into account the relative position of sounds and include word...

Comparing the quality of human and ChatGPT feedback of students’ writing

Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Background: Offering students formative feedback on their writing is an effective way to facilitate writing development. Recent advances in AI (i.e., ChatGPT) may function as an automated writing evaluation tool, increasing the amount of feedback students receive and diminishing the burden on teachers to provide frequent feedback to large classes. Aims: We examined the ability of generative AI (ChatGPT) to provide formative feedback. We compared the quality of human and AI feedback by scoring the feedback each provided on secondary student essays. We scored the degree to which feedback (a) was criteria-based, (b) provided clear directions for improvement, (c) was accurate, (d) prioritized essential features, and (e) used a supportive tone. Sample: 200 pieces of human-generated formative feedback and 200 pieces of AI-generated formative feedback for the same essays. Methods: We examined whether ChatGPT and human feedback differed in quality for the whole sample, for compositions...

Incorporating generative AI into a writing-intensive undergraduate course without off-loading learning

Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As generative AI becomes ubiquitous, writers must decide if, when, and how to incorporate generative AI into their writing process. Educators must sort through their role in preparing students to make these decisions in a quickly evolving technological landscape. We created an AI-enabled writing tool that provides scaffolded use of a large language model as part of a research study on integrating generative AI into an upper division STEM writing-intensive course. Drawing on decades of research on integrating digital tools into instruction and writing research, we discuss the framework that drove our initial design considerations and instructional resources. We then share our findings from a year of design-based implementation research during the 2023–2024 academic year. Our original instruction framework identified the need for students to understand, access, prompt, corroborate, and incorporate the generative AI use effectively. In this paper, we explain the need for students...

The affordances and contradictions of AI-generated text for writers of english as a second or foreign language

Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The affordances and contradictions of AI-generated text for writers of english as a second or foreign language

“ChatGPT seems too good to be true”: College students’ use and perceptions of generative AI

Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This study investigates how U.S. college students (N = 1001) perceive and use ChatGPT, exploring its relationship with societal structures and student characteristics. Regression results show that gender, age, major, institution type, and institutional policy significantly influenced ChatGPT use for general, writing, and programming tasks. Students in their 30s–40s were more likely to use ChatGPT frequently than younger students. Non-native English speakers were more likely than native speakers to use ChatGPT frequently for writing, suggesting its potential as a support tool for language learners. Institutional policies allowing ChatGPT use predicted higher use of ChatGPT. Thematic analysis and natural language processing of open-ended responses revealed varied attitudes towards ChatGPT, with some fearing institutional punishment for using ChatGPT and others confident in their appropriate use of ChatGPT. Computer science majors expressed concerns about job displacement due to...

Can AI provide useful holistic essay scoring?

Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Researchers have sought for decades to automate holistic essay scoring. Over the years, these programs have improved significantly. However, accuracy requires significant amounts of training on human-scored texts—reducing the expediency and usefulness of such programs for routine uses by teachers across the nation on non-standardized prompts. This study analyzes the output of multiple versions of ChatGPT scoring of secondary student essays from three extant corpora and compares it to quality human ratings. We find that the current iteration of ChatGPT scoring is not statistically significantly different from human scoring; substantial agreement with humans is achievable and may be sufficient for low-stakes, formative assessment purposes. However, as large language models evolve additional research will be needed to continue to assess their aptitude for this task as well as determine whether their proximity to human scoring can be improved through prompting or training.

Customized strategies for managing cochlear implant stimulation side effects

Wed, 7 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

OBJECTIVES: Cochlear implants restore functional hearing but may cause side effects like facial nerve stimulation, sound sensitivity or reactive tinnitus. The present study aimed to establish a general framework for optimizing stimulation parameters to manage these side effects while maximizing speech perception performance. A second objective was to understand how side effect origins impact treatment outcomes. METHODS: Eight adult cochlear implant subjects had intolerable side effects that rendered device usage difficult or even impossible. New maps were created by reducing stimulation levels, increasing pulse duration, reducing stimulation rate, altering channel gains and frequency maps, deactivating problematic electrodes, or a combination of the above. Outcomes were measured in terms of side effect reduction and changes in speech performance. RESULTS: Facial nerve stimulation was reduced or eliminated in five of five subjects. Sound hypersensitivity was eliminated in two of...

Adolescents' meaning making of salient emotional experiences during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

INTRODUCTION: This mixed-method longitudinal study examined American adolescents' meaning making of salient COVID-19 pandemic events. METHOD: Within phone interviews, adolescents (N = 124, M_age = 15.76 years; 46% Latine) narrated their most emotionally impactful pandemic experience at two time points ~30 days apart between July 2020 and March 2021. Narratives were coded for (1) content (i.e., event-type, relation to the pandemic, and the valence of the event [positive or negative]), (2) linguistic markers of subjective event processing (internal state language such as positive emotion, negative emotion, and cognition words), (3) narrative meaning-making, and (4) the outcome of adolescents' meaning-making (i.e., their "meanings made"). RESULTS: About 30% of adolescents spontaneously made meaning of their experience. Negative emotion words within narratives at time 1 positively predicted meaning making at time 2. Meaning making at time 1 predicted increased...

Modifying Curriculum for Novice Computational Thinking Elementary Teachers and English Language Learners

Wed, 9 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The demand for computational thinking (CT) problem solving abilities surge as every aspect of life becomes more dependent on complex digital technologies. Just as in math and language, a strong CT foundation needs to be established in early education in order for students to develop an instinctive CT perspective of the world. The urgent demand for CT instruction in elementary school quickly draws attention to the shortage of elementary school-level teachers qualified and interested in CT. Additionally, with a commitment to equity in the United States education system and knowledge of the high percentage of English language learning (ELL) students in schools, the obligation to create curricula that will provide access to CT knowledge, skills, and practices for elementary-level ELL students is loudly apparent. In response to these two needs, our team has adapted existing Scratch-based CT curriculum to support classroom teachers with minimal CT experience and to be more accessible...

“Todes” and “Todxs”, linguistic innovations or grammatical gender violations?

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This study compared the processing of non-binary morphemes in Spanish (e.g., todxs, todes) with the processing of canonical grammatical gender violations in Spanish pronouns (e.g., Los maestros… todas…). Using self-paced reading, the study examined how individual differences in working memory and gender/sex diversity beliefs affected language processing at three regions of interest (ROI): the pronoun, the pronoun +1, and the pronoun +2. Seventy-eight Spanish-English bilinguals completed two self-paced reading tasks, one with non-binary pronouns and another with grammatical gender violations, as well as a working memory task, a language dominance questionnaire, and a gender/sex diversity beliefs questionnaire. Processing costs were operationalized as longer reaction times (RTs) or inaccurate responses. Results showed overall processing costs for non-binary morphemes at all 3 ROIs, but no processing costs were observed in terms of accuracy or response times to the comprehension...

Assessing Relative Linguistic Impairment With Model-Based Item Selection.

Sat, 8 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

PURPOSE: A picture naming test is presented that reveals impairment to specific mechanisms involved in the naming process, using accuracy scores on curated item sets. A series of psychometric validation experiments are reported. METHOD: Using a computational model that enables estimation of item difficulty at the lexical and sublexical stages of word retrieval, two complimentary sets of items were constructed that challenge the respective psycholinguistic levels of representation. The difference in accuracy between these item sets yields the relative linguistic impairment (RLI) score. In a cohort of 91 people with chronic left-hemisphere stroke who enrolled in a clinical trial for anomia, we assessed psychometric properties of the RLI score and then used the new scale to make predictions about other language behaviors, lesion distributions, and functional activation during naming. RESULTS: RLI scores had adequate psychometric properties for clinical significance. RLI scores contained...

Promoting Adolescents' Social Responsibility through Parent-Adolescent Conversations about the COVID-19 Pandemic

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

PURPOSE: This longitudinal mixed-method study examined the content and qualities of parent-adolescent conversations about the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether discourse about social responsibility (i.e., care for others and health protective behaviors [HPBs]) within conversations predicted changes in adolescents' socially responsible behavior across the first year of the pandemic. METHODS: Participants were 122 ethnically/racially diverse parent-adolescent dyads from Southern California. In spring 2020 (Time 1), adolescents completed an online survey measuring their engagement in HPBs (e.g., social distancing) and prosociality (both pandemic-specific and global). A few months following survey completion (Time 2), parent-adolescent dyads engaged in an audio-recorded conversation about the pandemic. In winter 2020 (Time 3), adolescents' engagement in HPBs and prosociality were reassessed via an online survey. RESULTS: Dyads spent 25% of conversational turns, on average, discussing...

Preface

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

New evidence for the role of morphological markedness of gender agreement cues in monolingual and heritage-bilingual facilitative processing

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The presence of gender agreement markers prior to the noun speeds recognition of the noun in monolingual speakers of languages such as German, Spanish, Dutch and Polish, but this effect is still understudied for bilingual speakers. The present Visual World eye-tracking study investigated the real-time processing of gender agreement cues on adjectives and verbs to see if they facilitate recognition of the noun in both monolingual and heritage Russian speakers. Participants viewed visual displays in Ambiguous vs. Unambiguous conditions, crossed with MASC or FEM target nouns. Monolingual speakers looked more to the target in Unambiguous than Ambiguous conditions for both FEM (more salient cues) and MASC (null/less salient cues) targets. Heritage speakers (HSs) demonstrated facilitative use of the more salient FEM cues, in line with previous findings, but not MASC cues. We conclude that the morphological saliency of the agreement marker impacts HSs’ ability to access the gender feature...

Modification by depictives: In favor of a binding-based account

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper, I use the properties of depictives in Digor and Iron Ossetic, two closely related Iranian languages of the Caucasus, to argue in favor of binding-based accounts of the depictive-host relationship. I show that anaphor binding and the ability to host depictives in these languages pattern together – the two properties define identical, and nontrivial, classes of syntactic positions. I proceed to propose a parameterization of the analysis and show that it indeed accounts for a variety of attested depictive systems.

Hyperraising from TP in Moro

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examines raising out of finite clauses, or hyperraising, in Moro, a Kordofanian language spoken in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. This paper demonstrates that finite complement clauses that permit hyperraising are TPs. Evidence for this conclusion comes from the unavailability of complementizers, as well as special morphology that is more generally linked to clausal reduction. Parallel facts are shown to obtain for raising from nonfinite clauses, which similarly disallow complementizers. The Moro pattern provides evidence for a general ban on A-movement out of CP in Moro independent of the finiteness of the clause, which is attributed to a CP horizon on φ-probes in Moro, in the framework of Keine (2019, 2020), in conjunction with the claim that Moro is a language without abstract case licensing requirements for DPs.

Advancing the Science of Teaching Reading: Introduction to the Special Issue

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Advancing the Science of Teaching Reading: Introduction to the Special Issue

Bantu verb stem morphotactics revisited

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In Hyman (2003a), I proposed a default pan-Bantu template to account for a recurrent sequencing of the Causative, Applicative, Reciprocal and Passive (CARP) suffixes, in this order. Divergences from CARP were said to result from language-specific overrides where a suffix earlier in the template has scope over a suffix later in the template. In this paper, I further examine CARP in light of data from additional Bantu languages, especially Ikalanga, Ndebele, Runyankore, Ekegusii, and the Tiania variant of Kimeru. I show, first, that although certain pairs of derivational voice suffixes such as Causative and Applicative overwhelmingly occur in the predicted CA order, others, such as Applicative and Reciprocal, occur as RA in some Bantu languages, systematically violating CARP. I conclude that rather than CARP being a template, the ordering properties need to be stated independently for each pair of suffixes on a language-by-language basis. By analyzing constraints on suffix sequences...

Front matter

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Front matter

Noun class in Dutch and German diasporic, multiethnolectal, and homeland contexts

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

To provide a new comparison to Polinsky’s (2018) discussion of noun class or gender in heritage North Germanic languages, this paper examines changes in noun classes in two West Germanic sister languages, German and Dutch, in essentially mirror-image contexts: first, diasporic, heritage varieties of these languages undergoing shift to English in the United States. At the same time, new varieties are emerging in the relevant homelands as migrant and refugee communities acquire German and Dutch in settings where these are the dominant, standard languages. Changes to German are similar across both communities – with maintenance of the basic system but some specific minor changes – and changes to Dutch are likewise similar across the settings – albeit here with reduction and even loss of the noun-class system. We further compare these settings to patterns of variation and change in the homeland varieties of Dutch and German.

Hitting the high notes: Argument reversal in contact event descriptions in Nakh-Dagestanian and beyond

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The literature on Nakh-Dagestanian languages often highlights the argument realization pattern found in contact event descriptions. In these languages, the instrument is expressed as the verb’s object, and the surface contacted is expressed as a dative or locative DP. This pattern is the reverse of the default pattern found in English, where the surface is the direct object and the instrument is expressed in a with phrase. In order to promote further investigations into this property of Nakh-Dagestanian languages, this paper places this pattern in a larger cross-linguistic context. There are other languages that do not express the surface as an object in their contact event descriptions, with some also showing the argument realization reversal. Further, in these languages the non-object expression of the surface correlates with other typological properties, including the expression of manner outside the verb, smaller manner verb inventories, and verb-framed directed motion...

Word-learning heuristics in bilingual vocabulary acquisition: A longitudinal study of a Bulgarian-English child in the US

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The early stages of lexical development in children pose various questions about the selection and application of word-learning heuristics. In many proposals these processes are assumed to be facilitated by a specific lexical bias that differs in strength in monolingual and bilingual populations, namely, the Mutual Exclusivity (ME) bias (Markman & Wachtel 1988; Houston-Price et al. 2010). The present study analyzes the role and operation of ME bias in the bilingual vocabulary acquisition of a child who is acquiring Bulgarian and English from birth in the US. The analysis focuses on the child production of translation equivalents (TEs) at three measurement points: 18, 24 and 30 months. The findings reveal a flexible use of the ME bias modulated by the child bilingual linguistic experience and his emerging understanding of word-concept mappings in different contexts.

The argument-adjunct asymmetry revisited: The role of focus alternatives in island effects

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The unacceptability of filler-gap dependencies in island constructions has been attributed to multiple factors including syntactic constraints, processing difficulty, and discourse conditions. This study examines Chinese wh-questions in relative clause islands (RC-islands). While Chinese adjunct wh-questions have been shown to be sensitive to RC-islands, whether argument wh-questions are is still under debate. We explore the hypothesis that the unacceptability of wh-questions with RC-islands arises from the difficulty of generating a set of focus alternatives relevant for the question. In a sentence acceptability experiment, we manipulated the availability of context – specifically the availability of focus alternatives that may serve as answers to the target wh-question. The focus alternatives reduced the sensitivity of argument wh-questions to RC-islands, but not the adjunct wh-questions. We discuss the implications...

Malagasy voices

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We compare the voice system of Malagasy with those discussed in recent typologies (Zúñiga & Kittilä 2019; Legate 2021). Malagasy is a special case of a Philippine-type language (Shibatani 1988; Foley 2008; Himmelmann 2008; Kaufman 2009; Chen & McDonnell 2019) and presents their typically rich voice morphology. Some typological features of note are:

1. Malagasy has several voices, both active and non-active, built with overt affixes, not auxiliary verbs. Active verbs are not less marked than non-actives.

2. Voice is selected by some lexical items.

3. Some voices compose, yielding verbs with multiple voice affixes. Favored and forbidden compositions support several typological generalizations.

4. Voiced Predicate Phrases feed structure building operations: relative clause formation, nominalizations, imperatives, subject deletion, incorporation, coordination… In sum: Malagasy syntax rides on its voice system.

Optional labeling and its effect on structural distance

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Subjects and objects famously show robust asymmetries in their patterning, so much so that those patterns are taken to indicate fundamental geometrical differences in their positions in the derivations of syntactic structures. However, there are clear cases where subjects and objects fail to show this otherwise normative asymmetry. Following work done in Longenbaugh & Polinsky (2018), I propose an analysis of those instances of surprising symmetry that makes them predictable. I argue that terms merge for Case or EPP reasons, the resulting structure need not undergo any labeling. Instances where this lack of labeling fails to intervene between two terms renders them structurally equidistant for further operations and thus provides the venue for symmetry between subjects and objects.

Gender and ellipsis revisited

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Across several languages that encode grammatical gender, an intriguing pattern emerges under ellipsis. Whereas certain noun pairs disallow gender mismatches altogether between the antecedent and the ellipsis site, a second set of noun pairs allows them freely, and a third set allows them only when the grammatically masculine noun is in the antecedent but not vice versa (Bobaljik & Zocca 2011). We illustrate this pattern through the lens of Spanish and argue that the empirical generalizations can be captured via a universal identity condition regulating ellipsis that is split into two statements, where each statement refers to different syntactic primitives. On the one hand, the identity condition requires featural non-distinctness, which is a weaker requirement than strict featural identity. On the other hand, the identity condition requires that ROOTs, unlike features, be strictly identical. Coupled with the independently needed mechanism of repair-by-ellipsis, we argue that...

Russian plural declension and inquorate genders

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The goal of this paper is to provide an analysis of Russian plural declension classes against the background of two conflicting views on the morphosyntax of number and gender features: as two separate nodes or as a single bundle. I argue that the realization of case endings in the Russian plural declension is sensitive to the gender of the stem and demonstrate that, contrary to frequently held assumptions, not only is gender morphologically active in the plural despite full neutralization in syntax, but plural and singular stems can in fact differ in gender.

Morphological case in child Heritage Russian: Comparing Russian in contact with Hebrew and Norwegian vs. the monolingual baseline

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The current study extends seminal work by Maria Polinsky on American Russian to other varieties of Russian acquired in contact with Norwegian and Hebrew. Two groups of child heritage language (HL) speakers of Russian participated in the study: Russian-Norwegian (n=17) and Russian-Hebrew (n=34). Their performance was compared to Russian-speaking monolingual children (n=79), evenly distributed across the four age groups: 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds. We also tested a group of monolingual Russian-speaking adult controls. All participants performed the same picture-description task targeting Structural accusative, Inherent dative, and Lexical cases assigned by the prepositions na ‘on’, v ‘in’, and pod ‘under’, differentiating locative and directional semantics. The performance of monolingual Russian-speaking children was homogeneous and target-like with respect to the specified structures from age 3. Child HL-Russian speakers in both groups displayed...

Realizing features: A case study of the syntax-morphology interface

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The conceptualization of FEATURES has remained a central theme in generative approaches to the syntax-morphology interface since the early 1990s. They have played an enhanced role in late-insertion approaches to morphosyntax, in which the establishment of feature-exponence relations is of fundamental importance. In this chapter we review, and critique, the advantages and disadvantages of direct (Nanosyntax) and indirect (Distributed Morphology) approaches to this interface. To illustrate the similarities and differences, we demonstrate how nominal suffixes are realized in varieties of Norwegian (including the heritage variant, North American Norwegian, NAmNo). We show that while both direct and indirect approaches to the syntax-morphology interface are capable of modeling the alternations observed in Norwegian nominal suffixes, they sometimes do so via different mechanisms, opening the door for future comparative work.

Raising, control and case

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The paper presents raising and control phenomena in Khwarshi (Tsezic/Northeast Caucasian). Despite the fact that all the arguments of nonfinite clauses, including subjects, can be locally case-licensed, Khwarshi possesses both (forward) raising and (forward) control configurations. Khwarshi raising and control differ with respect to standard diagnostics including argument structure of the matrix predicate, argument selection, interpretation of subject idioms and scope options. Moreover, control appears to be more restricted than raising: only subjects can be controlled but both subjects and objects can raise. The paper discusses theoretical implications of the findings and contributes to expanding the scope of raising and control by introducing data from a less-studied language.

Talking about language endangerment and Indigenous languages in the classroom: Some dos and don’ts I have learned through fieldwork in the Brazilian Amazon

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

How we discuss the phenomenon of language endangerment can have unexpected consequences. In this paper, I offer five recommendations as to how we should and should not talk about endangered languages in our classrooms. My discussion of these recommendations draws extensively upon my experience conducting field research on Tuparí, an Indigenous Amazonian language spoken in the Brazilian state of Rondônia.

Back matter

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Back matter

Reconciling ATB and parasitic gaps: A smuggling analysis of P-mismatches in Italian

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article addresses the longstanding debate on the unification of parasitic gaps (PGs) and across-the-board (ATB) constructions, discussing novel data from Italian. We show that PP PGs are indeed possible in the language (contra Cinque 1990), which undermines a previous argument against unification. We further show that apparent mismatches in the prepositional content of the main clause extractee and the “parasitic” extractee are allowed with certain reciprocal verbs like litigare ‘argue’, which feature an underlying unaccusative structure (van Craenenbroeck & Johnson 2023b) and prepositions that can “disappear” in specific alternations. We argue that PG constructions are derived through smuggling (Hicks 2009) of the parasitic extractee, which is underspecified for case, to the edge of the adjunct clause, from where it can then undergo ATB movement under identity with the main clause extractee. In using this analysis to explain the range of possible mismatches...

Remarks on case and agreement asymmetries in coordination

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Recent literature has claimed that while coordination may give rise to agreement asymmetries, case is always symmetric among the conjuncts in a coordinate structure (Weisser 2020). In other words, a predicate may agree with only one conjunct, but all conjuncts are predicted to realize the same case features. This paper offers evidence against this claim, showing that both types of asymmetries can be found. I then reflect on the wider implications of this data for the relation between case and agreement. The purported lack of case asymmetries but existence of agreement asymmetries has been taken as evidence that case should be evaluated based on syntactic hierarchy, while agreement can be at least partly postsyntactic. Given this reasoning, it follows that analyses that regard case as a byproduct of agreement are incompatible without additional stipulations. Although this paper establishes the existence of both case and agreement asymmetries, I show that the data pose similar issues...

Anatomy of a complex numeral: Overcounting, with special attention to Ch’ol

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper provides a comprehensive cross-linguistic overview of overcounting, whereby a target numeral is expressed by counting toward the next-higher multiple of the base. I identify three major morphological patterns in overcounting numerals: P-connector, V-connector and no overt connector. I then zoom in on the structure of overcounting numerals in Ch’ol (Mayan). I argue that these numerals are construed with a covert, latively interpreted P, whose silence is due to P-drop.

On the inner structure of manner adverbial expressions: From a monolingual perspective to a comparative-linguistic perspective

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This chapter discusses the inner structure of superficially different manner-adverbial patterns in Dutch, with a special focus on the surface pattern A+P, as in hardop (loud-up; ‘aloud’). In the spirit of the generative linguistic quest for cross-constructional symmetry, it is proposed that these adverbial patterns are all manifestations of one and the same abstract, underlying syntactic configuration, namely the Extended Adpositional Phrase (XPP). After this in-depth, single-language study of manner adverbials, the chapter continues with a more global, cross-linguistic perspective on the inner structure of manner adverbials, starting from the hypothesis that, at a more abstract level, the adverbial patterns attested cross-linguistically all have an adpositional design. Finally, the chapter briefly discusses the relationship between inner structure and outer behavior (i.e., distribution) of manner adverbial expressions. Specifically, the question is addressed to what...

Focus and word order in Ch’ol: A production study

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ch’ol is a Mayan language with verb-initial order and preverbal topic and focus positions (Vázquez Álvarez 2011; Clemens & Coon 2018). This paper presents the results of a systematic investigation of Ch’ol word order across various focus environments, including (i) broad focus, (ii) subject focus, (iii) object focus, (iv) contrastive subject focus, and (v) contrastive object focus. We analyze semi-spontaneous responses to questions designed to elicit these focus types from 31 Ch’ol speakers. Both verb-initial and subject-initial clauses are present across five focus conditions, revealing a more nuanced relationship between information structure and word order than previously reported. We also find that while contrastive focus is predominantly marked via fronting of the focused constituent, more variation is found with information focus, and fronting is found to be nonobligatory in every focus condition.

Verbal expressions of ability and possibility in Japanese

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Two important claims about modals have been proposed in the past few decades. The first claim is that modals have uniform lexical semantics, but are interpreted as epistemic when located structurally above temporal elements and as root when located below them. The second claim is that, across languages, items that express root ability have episodic, non-ability-attributing interpretations in addition to generic, ability-attributing interpretations. With these two claims as background, this study examines verbal expressions of modality in Japanese. The study shows that (i) there are only three verbal expressions of modality in Japanese: the ability suffix -e/rare, the possibility suffix -e/uru, and the negative possibility suffix -kane; (ii) while these three expressions’ syntactic positions with respect to tense do not contradict the first claim, they do not provide strong support for it either; and (iii) Japanese sentences with the ability suffix -e/rare...

The judgment and interpretation of Mandarin relative clauses by heritage speakers and second language learners

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article examines the judgment and interpretation of Mandarin relative clauses (RCs) by heritage speakers (HSs) and second language learners (L2ers) of Mandarin, using an acceptability judgment task (AJT) and a picture-based truth-value judgment task (TVJT), in order to examine whether there is dominant language transfer in this domain, and whether HSs and/or L2ers exhibit a subject-extracted RC (SRC) advantage. The HSs and L2ers were both English-dominant and matched on Mandarin proficiency. The AJT tested whether participants knew that Mandarin RCs are head-final, unlike head-initial English RCs. The TVJT tested whether participants correctly interpreted Mandarin RCs with two animate nouns. In the AJT, both HSs and L2ers rated head-final RCs significantly above head-initial RCs, overcoming English transfer of RC headedness with increased proficiency. In the TVJT, HSs performed similarly to L2ers; neither group showed a clear SRC advantage, contrary to the predictions of...

čto-clause translucence and the theory of weak islands: Beyond Subjacency, the ECP, and even the PIC

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article addresses two issues that emerge from a close look at extraction out of Russian indicative čto-clauses – the first being that these clauses show unexpected weak-island behavior, and the second the generally problematic question of how it can be possible for weak islands to allow “marginal” extraction at all (in argument cases), a grammaticality status never traditionally explained in pre-minimalist literature and theoretically impossible on core minimalist assumptions. An approach is proposed for weak islands under Minimalism that eliminates the non-minimalist principles that were claimed to account for their behavior (especially Subjacency and the Empty Category Principle [ECP]) and also allows for an understanding of why Russian indicative čto-clauses show the partial opacity observed.

Revisiting the COMP-trace effect: Syntax after all?

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The COMP-trace phenomenon has long resisted easy explanation or even consensus as to whether it is ultimately due to the syntax or something else. Two analyses are examined here, one based on a principle of syntax (Anti-locality) and the other based on a principle of sentence planning (Principle of End Weight; PEW). Three cases are presented in which the Anti-locality analysis predicts that a COMP-trace effect will arise, while the PEW analysis does not. In all three cases, involving inversion in matrix clauses, inversion in embedded clauses, and clauses headed by prepositional complementizers, the COMP-trace effect does seem to occur, suggesting that the Anti-locality analysis is correct. This result is compared to earlier evidence that suggested that the PEW analysis was empirically superior, and a new way of understanding these results is proposed that is compatible with the evidence presented here in favor of Anti-locality.

On O-Constructions in Jarawara

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The language Jarawara (Arauan, spoken in Brazil) exhibits a puzzling set of passive-like properties in its “O-Construction” (Dixon 2000, 2004). We argue that O-Constructions have a type of passive voice in some person combinations but not in others, and that they are unified in that they always have topic agreement on C with the internal argument. We relate this approach to recent research on Algonquian inverse systems (especially Oxford 2023a,b, 2024) which have also been argued to involve a passive-like voice-based alternation for specific person combinations. Our analysis captures facts about case, word order, divergences between C and T agreement, and the distribution of the passive-like prefix hi- (among other properties). Our findings provide support for the approach to person restrictions embodied in Oxford’s work and also demonstrate how topic agreement and the A system can interact. More generally, this work shows how a nuanced approach to passive constructions,...

Antipassive in a Minimalist universal grammar

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Legate (2021) deconstructs passive into three characteristic properties – agent demotion, theme promotion, and morphological marking – and shows that these properties vary independently across languages. She concludes that this range of variation supports an approach, such as Minimalism, in which universal grammar includes no information specific to voice. This brief note takes a similar approach to antipassive, a clause type whose typology has been investigated by Polinsky (2017). I first deconstruct antipassive into two characteristic properties – demotion of the internal argument, which comes in several subvarieties, and voice marking – and then suggest that these properties vary independently across languages. The data are drawn primarily from Austronesian languages.

Mandan φ-marking and the morphosyntax of first person plural

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the Mandan (Western Siouan) complex verb, the makeup of the prefixal field features two loci for φ-feature marking, separated by what the Siouanist literature calls “preverbs” (PV). The pre-PV φ-slot is for marking first person plural (1PL); the post-PV φ-slot is for markers of speech-act participants. The question central to this paper is what explains the positioning relative to the preverbs of the 1PL marker and the other φ-morphology of Mandan. The Mandan 1PL prefix, which has a morphologically transparent dual inclusive reading, is syntactically represented in the form of a comitative phrasal structure involving the asyndetic coordination of a plural pronoun and a combination of the first person singular and second person pronouns: ‘we, viz., I with you’. While 1PL is a morphosyntactic complex occupying SpecTP (preceding preverbs), the first and second person markers are agreement inflections (following preverbs), linked to pro’s in A-positions.

Shifting Russian-speaking diasporas: New directions in the study of Russian as a heritage language

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Russophone diaspora is one of the most established and well-studied diasporas across the world; however, the events of the past decade, especially since the start of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, and the intensification of political and social persecutions in the Russian Federation, began to significantly contribute to the reshaping of the Russian-speaking communities by a) prompting an intensified large-scale movement of Russian speakers across the globe and b) raising new questions about the future of Russophone communities in the world and the development of Russian as a heritage language. This paper provides a brief overview of the formation of Russophone diasporas and then focuses on the new wave of immigrants from the Russian Federation as well as refugees from Ukraine. It considers new sociolinguistic ecologies that are being shaped by this most recent movement of Russian-speaking migrants and the effect newcomers may have on more established Russian-speaking...

Self‐regulation and comprehension in shared reading: The moderating effects of verbal interactions and E‐book discussion prompts

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The study examined how children's self-regulation skills measured by the strengths and weaknesses of ADHD symptoms and normal behavior rating are associated with story comprehension and how verbal engagement and e-book discussion prompts moderate this relation. Children aged 3-7 (N = 111, 50% female, Chinese as first language) read an interactive Chinese-English bilingual story e-book with or without discussion prompts twice with their parents (2020-2021). Results demonstrated that the lower children's self-regulation skills, the more they struggled with story comprehension. Critically, our data suggest that embedding e-book discussion prompts and more verbalization in English can mitigate this negative association for children with inattention/hyperactivity. These findings have critical implications for future e-book design, interventions, and home reading practice for children with inattention/hyperactivity and those at risk for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Developmental trajectories of eye movements in oral and silent reading for beginning readers: a longitudinal investigation

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Eye movements provide a sensitive window into cognitive processing during reading. In the present study, we investigated beginning readers’ longitudinal changes in temporal and spatial measures of eye movements during oral versus silent reading, the extent to which variation in eye movements is attributable to individual differences and text differences, and the functional form of growth trajectories of eye-movement variables. Data were from 363 English-speaking children (52% male; 59.8% White) in the US who were followed longitudinally from Grade 1 to Grade 3. Results showed a rapid decrease in temporal eye-movement measures (e.g., first fixation) and an increase in spatial eye-movement measures (initial landing position) in both oral and silent reading. The majority of variance in eye movements was attributable to individual differences whereas some variance in initial landing position was due to text differences. Most eye-movement measures had nonlinear growth trajectories...

Do Spelling and Vocabulary Improve Classification Accuracy of Children's Reading Difficulties Over and Above Word Reading?

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It is widely recognized that individuals with dyslexia have difficulties with word reading and spelling, and individuals with reading comprehension difficulties have low vocabulary knowledge. However, little is known about the extent to which spelling and vocabulary are informative of reading difficulties. In the present study, we investigated whether information on students' spelling and vocabulary in kindergarten increases the precision of identifying students with reading difficulties, using longitudinal data from kindergarten to Grade 2. The sample was composed of 247 kindergartners (55% boys; 56% White children, 35% African American children, and 5% mixed-race children; 72% from low SES) who were followed to Grade 2. Spelling improved the accuracy of identifying students who experienced word reading difficulties in kindergarten and Grade 1. In contrast, vocabulary did not improve the accuracy of identifying students with reading difficulties over and above word reading and...

Yes, they can: Developing transcription skills and oral language in tandem with SRSD instruction on close reading of science text to write informative essays at grades 1 and 2

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yes, they can: Developing transcription skills and oral language in tandem with SRSD instruction on close reading of science text to write informative essays at grades 1 and 2

Dimensionality of Writing Skills in English and Spanish, and the Relations of Language and Cognitive Skills to Written Composition for English‐Spanish Emergent Bilingual Children in Grade 1

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We examined the relations of language skills (vocabulary, listening comprehension, and oral retell), transcription skills (spelling and handwriting fluency), and domain-general cognitions/executive functions (working memory and attentional control) to writing quality for English-Spanish emergent bilingual children in Grade 1. Data were from a convenience sample of 211 children (57% girls; 82% Hispanic, 9.5% White, 4% Asian American children) who were assessed on written composition, vocabulary, listening comprehension, oral retell, and spelling in English and Spanish; handwriting fluency and working memory in English; and attentional control rated by their teachers. Confirmatory factor analysis results showed that writing quality in English and Spanish in narrative and opinion genres was best described as a unidimensional skill. Structural equation model results showed that English oral language, English spelling, and Spanish spelling skills, but not Spanish oral language skill,...

The Relations of Morphological Awareness with Language and Literacy Skills Vary Depending on Orthographic Depth and Nature of Morphological Awareness

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We examined the relation of morphological awareness with language and literacy skills, namely phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, vocabulary, word reading, spelling, text reading fluency, and reading comprehension. We also examined potential moderators of the relations (grade level, orthographic depth of language, receptive vs. productive morphological awareness, inflectional vs. derivational vs. compound morphological awareness, and L1/L2 status). After systematic search, a total of 232 articles (965 unique samples, N = 49,936 participants, and 2,765 effect sizes in 17 languages) met inclusion criteria. Morphological awareness was, on average, moderately related to phonological awareness (r =.41), orthographic awareness (r =.39), vocabulary (r =.50), word reading (r =.49), spelling (r =.48), text reading fluency (r =.53), and reading comprehension (r =.54). Importantly, morphological awareness had a stronger relation with word reading in orthographically deep languages...

The relations of morphological awareness with vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension for Korean-speaking middle school students

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The relations of morphological awareness with vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension for Korean-speaking middle school students

The influence of parent conversation goal and structure on children’s event reports

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Parents vary in conversational goals and style when discussing events with their children-two aspects of parent socialization that may be related, or exert opposing influence on the development of young children's report accuracy (a critical factor in children's eyewitness reports). In a sample of 116 parent-child dyads (M _age = 53.17 months, range: 36-72 months), we examined the roles of parent social conversation goals (parent-reported and experimentally manipulated) and parent cognitive elaboration in children's ability to accurately report about a laboratory event. Parent cognitive elaboration varied by conversation goal and was positively associated with child accuracy across age but only when parents strongly endorsed social conversation goals. Parent questioning strategies and children's response accuracy varied with age. This work has implications for how we understand short- and long-term impacts caregivers exert on children's event reporting and suggests...

Diversity and the Transition to Adulthood in America

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Diversity and the Transition to Adulthood in America

Effective writing instruction for students in grades 6 to 12: a best evidence meta-analysis

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The current best evidence meta-analysis reanalyzed the data from a meta-analysis by Graham et al. (J Educ Psychol 115:1004–1027, 2023). This meta-analysis and the prior one examined if teaching writing improved the writing of students in Grades 6 to 12, examining effects from writing intervention studies employing experimental and quasi-experimental designs (with pretests). In contrast to the prior meta-analysis, we eliminated all N of 1 treatment/control comparisons, studies with an attrition rate over 20%, studies that did not control for teacher effects, and studies that did not contain at least one reliable writing measure (0.70 or greater). Any writing outcome that was not reliable was also eliminated. Across 148 independent treatment/control comparisons, yielding 1,076 writing effect sizes (ESs) involving 22,838 students, teaching writing resulted in a positive and statistically detectable impact on students’ writing (ES = 0.38). Further, six of the 10 writing treatments...

A Meta-Analysis of Writing Treatments for Students in Grades 6–12

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

There is considerable concern that many adolescents do not attain the writing competence needed to be successful in school, their personal lives, or the workplace. Ensuring that students acquire this competence is a basic responsibility of schools. In order to meet this objective, teachers need access to effective practices for teaching writing. In this meta-analysis, we examined if teaching writing improved the writing and reading of students in Grades 6–12, and what specific writing treatments enhanced students’ writing. Our review included writing treatments tested using an experimental or quasi-experimental design (with pretests) and published and unpublished studies, and computed effect sizes (ESs) for all writing and reading outcomes assessed. Across 406 independent comparisons, yielding 3,514 ESs involving 52,529 students, teaching writing had a positive and statistically detectable impact on students’ writing (ES=0.47) and reading (ES= 0.22). Moreover, a variety of different...

Linguistic Features of Secondary School Writing: Can Natural Language Processing Shine a Light on Differences by Sex, English Language Status, or Higher Scoring Essays?

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article provides three major contributions to the literature: we provide granular information on the development of student argumentative writing across secondary school; we replicate the MacArthur et al. model of Natural Language Processing (NLP) writing features that predict quality with a younger group of students; and we are able to examine the differences for students across language status. In our study, we sought to find the average levels of text length, cohesion, connectives, syntactic complexity, and word-level complexity in this sample across Grades 7-12 by sex, by English learner status, and for essays scoring above and below the median holistic score. Mean levels of variables by grade suggest a developmental progression with respect to text length, with the text length increasing with grade level, but the other variables in the model were fairly stable. Sex did not seem to affect the model in meaningful ways beyond the increased fluency of women writers. We saw...

Expanding the Direct and Indirect Effects Model of Writing (DIEW): Reading–Writing Relations, and Dynamic Relations as a Function of Measurement/Dimensions of Written Composition

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Within the context of the Direct and Indirect Effects model of Writing, we examined a dynamic relations hypothesis, which contends that the relations of component skills, including reading comprehension, to written composition vary as a function of dimensions of written composition. Specifically, we investigated (a) whether higher order cognitive skills (i.e., inference, perspective taking, and monitoring) are differentially related to three dimensions of written composition-writing quality, writing productivity, and correctness in writing; (b) whether reading comprehension is differentially related to the three dimensions of written composition after accounting for oral language, cognition, and transcription skills; and whether reading comprehension mediates the relations of discourse oral language and lexical literacy to the three dimensions of written composition; and (c) whether total effects of oral language, cognition, transcription, and reading comprehension vary for the...

Crosslinguistic Transfer of Higher Order Cognitive Skills and Their Roles in Writing for English-Spanish Dual Language Learners

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We investigated the dimensionality and relations between L1 and L2 writing skills in narrative and informational genres, and higher order cognitive skills-inference, perspective taking, and comprehension monitoring-for Spanish-English dual language learners in primary grades. Dimensions of written composition and higher order cognitive skills were examined, comparing nine alternative models. Data from 317 dual language learners in Grades 1 and 2 were used in confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. For the dimensionality of written composition, a unidimensional model, where writing was characterized as a single underlying construct across languages (Spanish and English) and genres (narrative & opinion), fit the data best. With regard to the dimensionality of higher order cognitive skills, data supported a bifactor model with (a) a general factor that captures common variance across languages and across inference, perspective taking, and comprehension...

Relations between reading and writing: a longitudinal examination from grades 3 to 6

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We investigated developmental trajectories of and the relation between reading and writing (word reading, reading comprehension, spelling, and written composition), using longitudinal data from students in Grades 3–6 in the US. Results revealed that word reading and spelling were best described as having linear growth trajectories whereas reading comprehension and written composition showed nonlinear growth trajectories with a quadratic function during the examined developmental period. Word reading and spelling were consistently strongly related (.73 ≤ rs ≤ .80) whereas reading comprehension and written composition were weakly related (.21 ≤ rs ≤ .37). Initial status and linear slope were negatively and moderately related for word reading (− .44) whereas they were strongly and positively related for spelling (.73). Initial status of word reading predicted initial status and growth rate of spelling; and growth rate of word reading predicted growth rate of spelling. In contrast,...

Co-Occurrence of Reading and Writing Difficulties: The Application of the Interactive Dynamic Literacy Model

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article presents the application of the interactive dynamic literacy (IDL) model (Kim, 2020b) toward understanding difficulties in learning to read and write. According to the IDL model, reading and writing are part of communicative acts that draw on largely shared processes and skills as well as unique processes and skills. As such, reading and writing are dissociable but interdependent systems that have hierarchical, interactive, and dynamic relations. These key tenets of the IDL model are applied to the disruption of reading and writing development to explain co-occurrence of reading-writing difficulties using a single framework. The following hypotheses are presented: (a) co-occurrence between word reading and spelling and handwriting difficulties; (b) co-occurrence of dyslexia with written composition difficulties; (c) co-occurrence between reading comprehension and written composition difficulties; (d) co-occurrence of language difficulties with reading difficulties...

What is Text Reading Fluency and Is It a Predictor or an Outcome of Reading Comprehension? A Longitudinal Investigation

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Text reading fluency refers to the ability to read connected texts with accuracy, speed, and expression (prosody), and has garnered substantial attention as an important skill for reading comprehension. However, two fundamental questions remain-the dimensionality of text reading fluency including text reading efficiency (accuracy and speed) and reading prosody, and the directionality of the relation between text reading fluency and reading comprehension. These questions were addressed using longitudinal data from Grade 1 (M_age = 6.36 years) to Grade 3 (M_age = 8.34 years). Majority of children were White (approximately 60%) and African American (26%) with 39% to 52% from low-SES backgrounds, depending on the grade. Text reading fluency, word reading, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension were measured. Results from confirmatory factor analysis revealed that text reading fluency is a multidimensional construct with a trifactor structure,...

Executive Functions and Morphological Awareness Explain the Shared Variance between Word Reading and Listening Comprehension

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Purpose: A large body of literature showed that word reading and listening comprehension-two proximal predictors of reading comprehension according to the simple view of reading-are related. Grounded on the direct and indirect effects model of reading (Kim, 2020a, 2020b, 2023), we examined the extent to which the relation is explained by domain-general cognitions or executive functions (working memory and attentional control) and emergent literacy skills (language and code-related skills including morphological awareness, phonological awareness, orthographic pattern recognition, letter naming fluency, and rapid automatized naming). Method: Data were from English-speaking children in Grade 1 (N = 372; 52% boys; 60% White children, 26% African American children, 6% multiracial children, 6% Hispanic children, and 2% Asian American children). Results: Results from structural equation models showed that word reading and listening comprehension were moderately related (.54)....

Crosslinguistic influence on spelling in written compositions: Evidence from English-Spanish dual language learners in primary grades

Wed, 8 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: We investigated spelling errors in English and Spanish essays by Spanish-English dual language learners in Grades 1, 2, and 3 (N = 278; 51% female) enrolled in either English immersion or English-Spanish dual immersion programs. We examined what types of spelling errors students made, whether they made spelling errors that could be due to crosslinguistic influence, and whether errors were associated with instructional program, English learner status, and grade level. Compositions were transcribed and coded using the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software. Spelling errors were suggestive of crosslinguistic influence that was mostly unidirectional from one language to the other rather than bidirectional. Spelling errors were related to instructional program such that students in Spanish-English dual immersion made more English spelling errors in English compositions due to Spanish influence, and students in English immersion made more spelling errors...

How syllabi relate to outcomes in higher education: A study of syllabi learner-centeredness and grade inequities in STEM

Thu, 2 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Fostering equity in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs can be accomplished by incorporating learner-centered pedagogies, resulting in the closing of opportunity gaps (defined here as the difference in grades earned by minoritized and non-minoritized students). We assessed STEM courses that exhibit small and large opportunity gaps at a minority-serving, research-intensive university, and evaluated the degree to which their syllabi are learner-centered, according to a previously validated rubric. We specifically chose syllabi as they are often the first interaction students have with a course, establish expectations for course policies and practices, and serve as a proxy for the course environment. We found STEM courses with more learner-centered syllabi had smaller opportunity gaps. The syllabus rubric factor that most correlated with smaller gaps was Power and Control, which reflects Student's Role, Outside Resources, and Syllabus Focus....

Using implicit encouragement to increase narrative productivity in children: Preliminary evidence and legal implications

Sun, 7 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Statements made by children in a range of legal settings can irrevocably impact their family structure, relationships, and living environment. Because these statements can fundamentally alter children's futures, efforts have been made to identify methods to enhance children's reports by increasing comprehensiveness, completeness, and accuracy. Interviewer support has broadly been considered a method of interest, but variations in what constitutes "support" have highlighted the need for greater specificity in documenting how different facets of supportive behaviors relate to children's reporting tendencies. In this review, we describe work focused on the effects of interviewer support, on children's memory completeness and accuracy. We then describe to a subset of interviewer behaviors that encourage elaboration in dyadic interactions: back-channeling and vocatives. We present preliminary evidence suggesting that these utterances, referred to as implicit encouragement, can increase...

English only? Monolinguals in linguistically diverse contexts have an edge in language learning

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Accumulating evidence shows how language context shapes bilingual language use and its cognitive consequences. However, few studies have considered the impact of language context for monolinguals. Although monolinguals' language processing is assumed to be relatively stable and homogeneous, some research has shown novel learning through exposure alone. Monolinguals living in linguistically diverse contexts regularly overhear languages they do not understand, and may absorb information about those languages in ways that shape their language networks. The current study used behavioral and ERP measures to compare monolinguals living in a linguistically diverse environment and a unilingual environment in their ability to learn vowel harmony in Finnish. Monolinguals in both contexts demonstrated similar learning of studied words; however, their ERPs differed for generalization. Monolinguals in the diverse context revealed an anterior late positivity, whereas monolinguals in the unilingual...

Cognitive control ability mediates prediction costs in monolinguals and bilinguals

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this study, we examined the role that cognitive control and language regulation ability play in mediating readers' susceptibility to prediction error costs when reading in the native language (L1) or a second language (L2). Twenty-four English monolinguals (Experiment 1) and 28 Chinese-English bilinguals (Experiment 2) read sentences in English while their EEG was recorded. The sentences varied in the predictability of an upcoming expected word and in whether that prediction was confirmed. Monolinguals showed sensitivity to sentence contexts in which expectations were not met (i.e., when unexpected words were encountered) in the form of a late, frontally-distributed positivity, but for bilinguals this effect was more complex. For both groups, performance on the prediction task was modulated by individual differences on the AX-CPT, a measure of inhibitory control. However, the bilinguals' reading performance in the L2 was affected not only by inhibitory control, but also by...

Cognitive Control Facilitates Attentional Disengagement during Second Language Comprehension

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Bilinguals learn to resolve conflict between their two languages and that skill has been hypothesized to create long-term adaptive changes in cognitive functioning. Yet, little is known about how bilinguals recruit cognitive control to enable efficient use of one of their languages, especially in the less skilled and more effortful second language (L2). Here we examined how real-time cognitive control engagement influences L2 sentence comprehension (i.e., conflict adaptation). We tested a group of English monolinguals and a group of L2 English speakers using a recently-developed cross-task adaptation paradigm. Stroop sequences were pseudo-randomly interleaved with a visual-world paradigm in which participants were asked to carry out spoken instructions that were either syntactically ambiguous or unambiguous. Consistent with previous research, eye-movement results showed that Stroop-related conflict improved the ability to engage correct-goal interpretations, and disengage incorrect-goal...

Cortical field maps across human sensory cortex

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Cortical processing pathways for sensory information in the mammalian brain tend to be organized into topographical representations that encode various fundamental sensory dimensions. Numerous laboratories have now shown how these representations are organized into numerous cortical field maps (CMFs) across visual and auditory cortex, with each CFM supporting a specialized computation or set of computations that underlie the associated perceptual behaviors. An individual CFM is defined by two orthogonal topographical gradients that reflect two essential aspects of feature space for that sense. Multiple adjacent CFMs are then organized across visual and auditory cortex into macrostructural patterns termed cloverleaf clusters. CFMs within cloverleaf clusters are thought to share properties such as receptive field distribution, cortical magnification, and processing specialization. Recent measurements point to the likely existence of CFMs in the other senses, as well, with topographical...

A Framework of Rapid Regional Tsunami Damage Recognition From Post-event TerraSAR-X Imagery Using Deep Neural Networks

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Near real-time building damage mapping is an indispensable prerequisite for governments to make decisions for disaster relief. With high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems, such as TerraSAR-X, the provision of such products in a fast and effective way becomes possible. In this letter, a deep learning-based framework for rapid regional tsunami damage recognition using post-event SAR imagery is proposed. To perform such a rapid damage mapping, a series of tile-based image split analysis is employed to generate the data set. Next, a selection algorithm with the SqueezeNet network is developed to swiftly distinguish between built-up (BU) and nonbuilt-up regions. Finally, a recognition algorithm with a modified wide residual network is developed to classify the BU regions into wash away, collapsed, and slightly damaged regions. Experiments performed on the TerraSAR-X data from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan show a BU region extraction accuracy of 80.4%...

Semantic Compression for Edge-Assisted Systems

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A novel semantic approach to data selection and compression is presented for the dynamic adaptation of IoT data processing and transmission within 'wireless islands', where a set of sensing devices (sensors) are interconnected through one-hop wireless links to a computational resource via a local access point. The core of the proposed technique is a cooperative framework where local classifiers at the mobile nodes are dynamically crafted and updated based on the current state of the observed system, the global processing objective and the characteristics of the sensors and data streams. The edge processor plays a key role by establishing a link between content and operations within the distributed system. The local classifiers are designed to filter the data streams and provide only the needed information to the global classifier at the edge processor, thus minimizing bandwidth usage. However, the better the accuracy of these local classifiers, the larger the energy necessary...

Improving Differentially Private Models with Active Learning

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Broad adoption of machine learning techniques has increased privacy concerns for models trained on sensitive data such as medical records. Existing techniques for training differentially private (DP) models give rigorous privacy guarantees, but applying these techniques to neural networks can severely degrade model performance. This performance reduction is an obstacle to deploying private models in the real world. In this work, we improve the performance of DP models by fine-tuning them through active learning on public data. We introduce two new techniques - DIVERSEPUBLIC and NEARPRIVATE - for doing this fine-tuning in a privacy-aware way. For the MNIST and SVHN datasets, these techniques improve state-of-the-art accuracy for DP models while retaining privacy guarantees.

Do Cross-Language Script Differences Enable Bilinguals to Function Selectively When Speaking in One Language Alone?

Wed, 3 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The present study examined the role of script in bilingual speech planning by comparing the performance of same and different-script bilinguals. Spanish-English bilinguals (Experiment 1) and Japanese-English bilinguals (Experiment 2) performed a picture-word interference task in which they were asked to name a picture of an object in English, their second language, while ignoring a visual distractor word in Spanish or Japanese, their first language. Results replicated the general pattern seen in previous bilingual picture-word interference studies for the same-script, Spanish-English bilinguals but not for the different-script, Japanese-English bilinguals. Both groups showed translation facilitation, whereas only Spanish-English bilinguals demonstrated semantic interference, phonological facilitation, and phono-translation facilitation. These results suggest that when the script of the language not in use is present in the task, bilinguals appear to exploit the perceptual difference...

Two Languages in Mind

Wed, 3 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A series of discoveries in the last two decades has changed the way we think about bilingualism and its implications for language and cognition. One is that both languages are always active. The parallel activation of the two languages is thought to give rise to competition that imposes demands on the bilingual to control the language not in use to achieve fluency in the target language. The second is that there are consequences of bilingualism that affect the native as well as the second language. The native language changes in response to second language use. The third is that the consequences of bilingualism are not limited to language but appear to reflect a reorganization of brain networks that hold implications for the ways in which bilinguals negotiate cognitive competition more generally. The focus of recent research on bilingualism has been to understand the relation between these discoveries and the implications they hold for language, cognition, and the brain across...

Bilingual word recognition in deaf and hearing signers: Effects of proficiency and language dominance on cross-language activation

Wed, 3 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Recent evidence demonstrates that American Sign Language signs are active during print word recognition in deaf bilinguals who are highly proficient in both ASL and English. In the present study, we investigate whether signs are active during print word recognition in two groups of unbalanced bilinguals: deaf ASL-dominant and hearing English-dominant bilinguals. Participants judged the semantic relatedness of word pairs in English. Critically, a subset of both the semantically related and unrelated English word pairs had phonologically related translations in ASL, but participants were never shown any ASL signs during the experiment. Deaf ASL-dominant bilinguals (Experiment 1) were faster when semantically related English word pairs had similar form translations in ASL, but slower when semantically unrelated words had similar form translations in ASL, indicating that ASL signs are engaged during English print word recognition in these ASL-dominant signers. Hearing English-dominant...

Cognitive Control Facilitates Attentional Disengagement during Second Language Comprehension

Wed, 3 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Bilingualism reveals fundamental variation in language processing.

Wed, 3 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Although variation in the ways individuals process language has long been a topic of interest and discussion in the psycholinguistic literature, only recently have studies of bilingualism and its cognitive consequences begun to reveal the fundamental dynamics between language and cognition. We argue that the active use of two languages provides a lens through which the interactions between language use, language processing, and the contexts in which these take place can be fully understood. Far from bilingualism being considered a special case, it may provide the common basis upon which the principles of language learning and use can be modeled.

Grammatical processing in two languages: How individual differences in language experience and cognitive abilities shape comprehension in heritage bilinguals

Wed, 3 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Recent studies have demonstrated variation in language processing for monolingual and bilingual speakers alike, suggesting that only by considering individual differences will an accurate picture of the consequences of language experience be adequately understood. This approach can be illustrated in ERP research that has shown that sentence contexts that traditionally elicit a P600 component in response to a syntactic violation, elicit an N400 response for a subset of individuals. That result has been reported for monolingual speakers processing sentences in their L1 and also for bilinguals processing sentences in their L2. To date, no studies have compared variation in L1 and L2 ERP effects in the very same bilingual speakers. In the present paper, we do that by examining sentence processing in heritage bilinguals who acquired both languages from early childhood but for whom the L2 typically becomes the dominant language. Variation in ERPs produced by the non-dominant L1 and...

Phonetic variation in bilingual speech: A lens for studying the production–comprehension link

Wed, 3 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We exploit the unique phonetic properties of bilingual speech to ask how processes occurring during planning affect speech articulation, and whether listeners can use the phonetic modulations that occur in anticipation of a codeswitch to help restrict their lexical search to the appropriate language. An analysis of spontaneous bilingual codeswitching in the Bangor Miami Corpus (Deuchar et al., 2014) reveals that in anticipation of switching languages, Spanish-English bilinguals produce slowed speech rate and cross-language phonological influence on consonant voice onset time. A study of speech comprehension using the visual world paradigm demonstrates that bilingual listeners can indeed exploit these low-level phonetic cues to anticipate that a codeswitch is coming and to suppress activation of the non-target language. We discuss the implications of these results for current theories of bilingual language regulation, and situate them in terms of recent proposals relating the coupling...

Bilingualism as a desirable difficulty: Advantages in word learning depend on regulation of the dominant language

Wed, 3 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Bilingualism imposes costs to language processing but benefits to word learning. We test a new hypothesis that relates costs in language processing at study to benefits in learning at test as desirable difficulties. While previous studies have taught vocabulary via bilinguals' native language (L1), recent evidence suggests that bilinguals acquire regulatory skill in the L1 to coordinate the use of each language. We hypothesized that L1 regulation underlies the observed costs and benefits, with word learning advantages depending on learning via the L1. Four groups learned novel Dutch words via English translations: English monolinguals, and English-Spanish, Spanish-English, and Chinese-English bilinguals. Only English-Spanish bilinguals demonstrated a word learning advantage, but they adopted a costly study strategy compared to monolinguals. The results suggest that bilingual advantages in vocabulary learning depend on learning via the L1 or dominant language because learning via...

Aging in two languages: Implications for public health

Wed, 3 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

With the population aging and a dramatic increase in the number of senior citizens, public health systems will be increasingly burdened with the need to deal with the care and treatment of individuals with dementia. We review evidence demonstrating how a particular experience, bilingualism, has been shown to protect cognitive function in older age and delay onset of symptoms of dementia. This paper describes behavioral and brain studies that have compared monolingual and bilingual older adults on measures of cognitive function or brain structure and reviews evidence demonstrating a protective effect of bilingualism against symptoms of dementia. We conclude by presenting some data showing the potential savings in both human costs in terms of demented patients and economic considerations in terms of public money if symptoms of dementia could be postponed.

Interactional Context Mediates the Consequences of Bilingualism for Language and Cognition

Wed, 3 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Proficient bilinguals use two languages actively, but the contexts in which they do so may differ dramatically. The present study asked what consequences the contexts of language use hold for the way in which cognitive resources modulate language abilities. Three groups of speakers were compared, all of whom were highly proficient Spanish-English bilinguals who differed with respect to the contexts in which they used the two languages in their everyday lives. They performed two lexical production tasks and the "AX" variant of the Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT), a nonlinguistic measure of cognitive control. Results showed that lexical access in each language, and how it related to cognitive control ability, depended on whether bilinguals used their languages separately or interchangeably or whether they were immersed in their second language. These findings suggest that even highly proficient bilinguals who speak the same languages are not necessarily alike in the way in...

English only? Monolinguals in linguistically diverse contexts have an edge in language learning

Wed, 3 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Cognitive control ability mediates prediction costs in monolinguals and bilinguals

Wed, 3 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Research on bilingualism as discovery science

Wed, 3 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

An important aim of research on bilingualism is to understand how the brain adapts to the demands of using more than one language.In this paper, we argue that pursuing such an aim entails valuing our research as a discovery process that acts on variety.Prescriptions about sample size and methodology, rightly aimed at establishing a sound basis for generalization, should be understood as being in the service of science as a discovery process. We propose and illustrate by drawing from previous and contemporary examples within brain and cognitive sciences, that this necessitates exploring the neural bases of bilingual phenotypes:the adaptive variety induced through the interplay of biology and culture. We identify the conceptual and methodological prerequisites for such exploration and briefly allude to the publication practices that afford it as a community practice and to the risk of allowing methodological prescriptions, rather than discovery, to dominate the research endeavor.

Tinnitus treatment with precise and optimal electric stimulation

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Electric stimulation is a potent means of neuromodulation that has been used to restore hearing and minimize tremor, but its application on tinnitus symptoms has been limited. We examine recent evidence to identify the knowledge gaps in the use of electric stimulation for tinnitus treatment. RECENT FINDINGS: Recent studies using electric stimulation to suppress tinnitus in humans are categorized according to their points of attacks. First, noninvasive, direct current stimulation uses an active electrode in the ear canal, tympanic membrane, or temporal scalp. Second, inner ear stimulation uses charge-balanced biphasic stimulation by placing an active electrode on the promontory or round window, or a cochlear implant array in the cochlea. Third, intraneural implants can provide targeted stimulation of specific sites along the auditory pathway. Although these studies demonstrated some success in tinnitus suppression, none established a link between tinnitus suppression...

Visual cortex in aging and Alzheimer's disease: changes in visual field maps and population receptive fields

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Although several studies have suggested that cortical alterations underlie such age-related visual deficits as decreased acuity, little is known about what changes actually occur in visual cortex during healthy aging. Two recent studies showed changes in primary visual cortex (V1) during normal aging; however, no studies have characterized the effects of aging on visual cortex beyond V1, important measurements both for understanding the aging process and for comparison to changes in age-related diseases. Similarly, there is almost no information about changes in visual cortex in Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common form of dementia. Because visual deficits are often reported as one of the first symptoms of AD, measurements of such changes in the visual cortex of AD patients might improve our understanding of how the visual system is affected by neurodegeneration as well as aid early detection, accurate diagnosis and timely treatment of AD. Here we use fMRI to first compare...

Nicotine enhances auditory processing in healthy and normal-hearing young adult nonsmokers

Sun, 22 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

RationaleElectrophysiological studies show that systemic nicotine narrows frequency receptive fields and increases gain in neural responses to characteristic frequency stimuli. We postulated that nicotine enhances related auditory processing in humans.ObjectivesThe main hypothesis was that nicotine improves auditory performance. A secondary hypothesis was that the degree of nicotine-induced improvement depends on the individual’s baseline performance.MethodsYoung (18–27 years old), normal-hearing nonsmokers received nicotine (Nicorette gum, 6mg) or placebo gum in a single-blind, randomized, crossover design. Subjects performed four experiments involving tone-in-noise detection, temporal gap detection, spectral ripple discrimination, and selective auditory attention before and after treatment. The perceptual differences between posttreatment nicotine and placebo conditions were measured and analyzed as a function of the pre-treatment baseline performance.ResultsNicotine significantly...

ChatGPT in education: global reactions to AI innovations

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The release and rapid diffusion of ChatGPT have caught the attention of educators worldwide. Some educators are enthusiastic about its potential to support learning. Others are concerned about how it might circumvent learning opportunities or contribute to misinformation. To better understand reactions about ChatGPT concerning education, we analyzed Twitter data (16,830,997 tweets from 5,541,457 users). Based on topic modeling and sentiment analysis, we provide an overview of global perceptions and reactions to ChatGPT regarding education. ChatGPT triggered a massive response on Twitter, with education being the most tweeted content topic. Topics ranged from specific (e.g., cheating) to broad (e.g., opportunities), which were discussed with mixed sentiment. We traced that authority decisions may influence public opinions. We discussed that the average reaction on Twitter (e.g., using ChatGPT to cheat in exams) differs from discussions in which education and teaching–learning researchers...

Design, Fabrication, and Evaluation of a Parylene Thin-Film Electrode Array for Cochlear Implants

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

OBJECTIVE: To improve the existing manually assembled cochlear implant electrode arrays, a thin-film electrode array (TFEA) was microfabricated having a maximum electrode density of 15 sites along an 8-mm length, with each site having a 75 μm × 1.8 μm (diameter × height) disk electrode. METHODS: The microfabrication method adopted photoresist transferring, lift-off, two-step oxygen plasma etching, and fuming nitric acid release to reduce lift-off complexity, protect the metal layer, and increase the release efficiency. RESULTS: Systematic in vitro characterization showed that the TFEA's bending stiffness was 6.40 × 10^-10 N·m² near the base and 1.26 × 10^-10 N·m² near the apex. The TFEA electrode produced an average impedance of 16 kΩ and a maximum current limit of 800 μA, measured with 1-kHz sinusoidal current using monopolar stimulation in saline. A TFEA prototype was implanted in a cat cochlea to obtain in vivo measurements...

Attachment, Household Chaos, and Children’s Health

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

INTRODUCTION: Despite growing interest in the links between sociocontextual factors and children's behavioral functioning, few studies have investigated how such factors, in combination, relate to health outcomes or vary across mental and physical well-being. We evaluated the direct and interactive associations of parental attachment and household chaos with preschool-age children's mental and physical health. METHOD: Ninety-four parents completed questionnaires about their attachment styles, disorganization and confusion in the home, and their children's health functioning. RESULTS: Attachment avoidance and anxiety in parents predicted poorer mental health in children, particularly in highly chaotic homes. Moreover, parental attachment anxiety, but not avoidance, predicted poorer reported physical health in children and, in conjunction with chaotic homes, more hospitalizations. DISCUSSION: The results help illuminate how multiple domains in children's immediate environment jointly...

Attorney Questions Predict Jury‐eligible Adult Assessments of Attorneys, Child Witnesses, and Defendant Guilt

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Children are often the primary source of evidence in maltreatment cases, particularly cases of child sexual abuse, and may be asked to testify in court. Although best-practice protocols for interviewing children suggest that interviewers ask open-ended questions to elicit detailed responses from children, during in-court testimony, attorneys tend to rely on closed-ended questions that elicit simple (often "yes" or "no") responses (e.g., Andrews, Lamb, & Lyon, ; Klemfuss, Quas, & Lyon, ). How then are jurors making decisions about children's credibility and ultimately the case outcome? The present study examined the effect of two attorney-specific factors (e.g., temporal structure and questioning phase) on mock jurors' perceptions of attorney performance, child witness credibility, storyline clarity, and defendant guilt. Participants were randomly assigned to read a trial excerpt from one of eight conditions and were then asked to evaluate the attorney, child witness, and...

Visual Field Map Clusters in High-Order Visual Processing: Organization of V3A/V3B and a New Cloverleaf Cluster in the Posterior Superior Temporal Sulcus

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The cortical hierarchy of the human visual system has been shown to be organized around retinal spatial coordinates throughout much of low- and mid-level visual processing. These regions contain visual field maps (VFMs) that each follows the organization of the retina, with neighboring aspects of the visual field processed in neighboring cortical locations. On a larger, macrostructural scale, groups of such sensory cortical field maps (CFMs) in both the visual and auditory systems are organized into roughly circular cloverleaf clusters. CFMs within clusters tend to share properties such as receptive field distribution, cortical magnification, and processing specialization. Here we use fMRI and population receptive field (pRF) modeling to investigate the extent of VFM and cluster organization with an examination of higher-level visual processing in temporal cortex and compare these measurements to mid-level visual processing in dorsal occipital cortex. In human temporal cortex,...

Semantic Difficulty for Bilingual Children: Effects of Age, Language Exposure, and Language Ability.

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

PURPOSE: Semantic tasks evaluate dimensions of children's lexical-semantic knowledge. However, the relative ease of semantic task completion depends on individual differences in developmental and language experience factors. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how language experience and language ability impact semantic task difficulty in English for school-age Spanish-English bilingual children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). METHOD: Participants included 232 Spanish-English bilingual children in second through fifth grade with (n = 35) and without (n = 197) DLD. Data included children's performance on the English Semantics subtest of the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment-Middle Extension Field Test Version (BESA-ME), age of English acquisition, and percent English language exposure. Task difficulty, a measurement of the relative ease of task completion, was calculated for six semantic task types included on the BESA-ME. Multilevel...