The present study examines the effects of the frequency of phoneme, syllable, and word units in the Granada corpus of Spanish phonological speech errors. We computed several measures of phoneme and syllable frequency and selected the most sensitive ones, along with word (lexeme) frequency to compare the frequencies of source, target, and error units at the phoneme, syllable, and word levels. Results showed that phoneme targets have equivalent frequency to matched controls, whereas source phonemes are lower in frequency than chance (the Weak Source effect) and target phonemes (the David effect). Target, source, and error syllables and words also were of lower frequency than chance, and error words (when they occur) were lowest in frequency. Contrary to most current theories, which focus on faulty processing of the target units, present results suggest that faulty processing of the source units (phonemes, syllables, and words) is an important factor contributing to phonological speech errors. Low-frequency words and syllables have more difficulty ensuring that their phonemes, especially those of low frequency, are output only in their correct locations.

Classic psycholinguistics seeks universal language mechanisms for all people, emphasing the "modal" listener: hearing, neurotypical, monolingual, young adults. Applied psycholinguistics then characterizes differences in terms of their deviation from modal. This mirrors naturalist philosophies of health which presume a normal function, with illness as a deviation. In contrast, normative positions argue that illness is partially culturally derived. It occurs when a person cannot meet socio-culturally defined goals, separating differences in biology (disease) from socio-cultural function (illness). We synthesize this with mechanistic functionalist views in which language emerges from diverse lower level mechanisms with no one-to-one mapping to function (termed the functional mechanistic normative approach). This challenges primarily psychometric approaches-which are culturally defined-suggesting a process-based approach may yield more insight. We illustrate this with work on word recognition across multiple domains: cochlear implant users, children, language disorders, L2 learners, and aging. This work investigates each group's solutions to the problem of word recognition as interesting in its own right. Variation in process is value-neutral, and psychometric measures complement this, reflecting fit with cultural expectations (disease vs. illness). By examining variation in processing across people with a variety of skills and goals, we arrive at deeper insight into fundamental principles.

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD; aka specific language impairment) are characterized based on deficits in language, especially morphosyntax, in the absence of other explanatory conditions. However, deficits in speech production, as well as fine and gross motor skill, have also been observed, implicating both the linguistic and motor systems. Situated at the intersection of these domains, and providing insight into both, is manual gesture. In the current work, we asked whether children with DLD showed phonological deficits in the production of novel gestures and whether gesture production at 4 years of age is related to language and motor outcomes two years later. Twenty-eight children (14 with DLD) participated in a two-year longitudinal novel gesture production study. At the first and final time points, language and fine motor skills were measured and gestures were analyzed for phonological feature accuracy, including handshape, path, and orientation. Results indicated that, while early deficits in phonological accuracy did not persist for children with DLD, all children struggled with orientation while handshape was the most accurate. Early handshape and orientation accuracy were also predictive of later language skill, but only for the children with DLD. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

Verbal working memory (VWM) deficits are common in individuals with developmental language disorder (DLD) but are not well understood. This study evaluated how both memory and language production factors influence VWM performance in children and adults with DLD, focusing on the influence of serial position, phonological activation (PA), and lexical frequency. Participants were 30 children with DLD and 26 with typical language (TL), and 21 adults with DLD and 23 with TL. The participants completed a listening span task in which they were asked to recall the final words of sentences in sets of increasing size. Responses (dependent variable) were coded as correct, incorrect, or no response. Final words were coded for frequency, serial position within the set, and PA (number of occurrences of the initial phoneme, vowel, and whole word in the task). These variables, along with age and language status, were entered as predictors in mixed-effects multinomial regression models. Extreme serial position, greater PA, and higher frequency reduced incorrect and no responses. These effects were attenuated for the DLD group, and the effect of greater PA varied with set size. The findings suggest that for individuals with DLD, VWM performance is affected by more limited effective language experience and by the dynamic task demands.

The study of bilingualism has a history that extends from deciphering ancient multilingual texts to mapping the structure of the multilingual brain. The language experiences of individual bilinguals are equally diverse and characterized by unique contexts of acquisition and use that can shape not only sociocultural identity, but also cognitive and neural function. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this variability in scholarly perspectives and language experiences has given rise to a range of methods for defining bilingualism. The goal of this paper is to initiate a conversation about the utility of a more unified approach to how we think about, study, and measure bilingualism. Using concrete case studies, we illustrate the value of enhancing communication and streamlining terminology across researchers with different methodologies within questions, different questions within domains, and different domains within scientific inquiry. We specifically consider the utility and feasibility of a Bilingualism Quotient (BQ) construct, discuss the idea of a BQ relative to the well-established Intelligence Quotient (IQ), and include recommendations for next steps. We conclude that though the variability in language backgrounds and approaches to defining bilingualism presents significant challenges, concerted efforts to systematize and synthesize research across the field may enable the construction of a valid and generalizable index of multilingual experience.

Acoustic cues to deception on a picture naming task were analyzed in three groups of English speakers: monolinguals, bilinguals with English as their first language (English-L1), and bilinguals with English as a second language (English-L2). Results revealed that all participants had longer reaction times when generating falsehoods than when producing truths, and that the effect was more robust for English-L2 bilinguals than for the other two groups. Articulation rate was higher for all groups when producing lies. Mean fundamental frequency and intensity cues were not reliable cues to deception, but there was lower variance in both of these parameters when generating false vs. true labels for all participants. Results suggest that naming latency was the only cue to deception that differed by language background. These findings broadly support the cognitive-load theory of deception, suggesting that a combination of producing deceptive speech and using a second language puts an extra load on the speaker.

This study investigated whether individual differences in vocabulary size, speech perception and production, and nonword repetition in 2½ to 3-year-old children predicted phonological awareness two years later. One hundred twenty-two children were tested twice. During the first testing period, we measured children's receptive vocabulary, speech perception, nonword repetition, and articulation. At the second testing period, we measured children's phonological awareness. The best predictors of phonological awareness at age 5 were receptive vocabulary and a measure of phonological processing derived from performance on the nonword repetition task. The results of this study suggest that nonword repetition accuracy can be used to index implicit phonological awareness at an age when children are too young to perform explicit phonological awareness tasks reliably.

Memory for speech benefits from linguistic structure. Recall is better for sentences than for random strings of words (the "sentence superiority effect"; SSE), and evidence suggests that ongoing speech may be organized advantageously as clauses in memory (recall by word position shows within-clause "U shape"). In this study, we examined the SSE and clause-based organization for closed-set speech materials with low semantic predictability and without typical prosody. An overall SSE was observed and accuracy by word position was enhanced at the clause boundaries for these materials. Next, we tested the effects of mental manipulation on the SSE and clause-based organization. Listeners heard word strings that were syntactic, were arranged syntactically then presented backwards, or were random draws. Participants responded to materials as presented or in reversed order, requiring mental manipulation. Clause-level organization was apparent only for materials presented in syntactic order regardless of response order. After accounting for benefits due to reductions in uncertainty for these close-set materials, an SSE was present for syntactic materials regardless of response order, and for the syntactic backwards condition with reverse-order response (yielding a syntactically correct sentence in the response). Thus, the SSE was both resistant to and could be obtained following mental manipulation.

Vocabulary represents a key barrier to language and literacy development for many English learners. This study examined the relationship between Spanish-speaking English learners' conceptually-scored Spanish-English vocabulary, academic English proficiency, and English reading comprehension. Second- and fourth-grade English learners ( = 62) completed standardized conceptually-scored vocabulary measures in the fall and state-administered standardized measures of academic English proficiency and English reading comprehension in the spring. Conceptually-scored vocabulary measures are designed to tap knowledge of the number of known concepts, regardless of the specific language (Spanish or English) used to label the concept. Regression analyses revealed that academic English proficiency and English reading comprehension were not predicted by the conceptually-scored measure of receptive vocabulary. However, both academic English proficiency and English reading comprehension were predicted by the conceptually-scored measure of expressive vocabulary. Importantly, the relationship between conceptually-scored expressive vocabulary and English reading comprehension remained after controlling for academic English proficiency. Results underscore the utility of measures that incorporate English learners' first and second language skills in understanding the vocabulary knowledge English learners bring to English language and literacy learning tasks.

Despite the importance of understanding the narrative abilities of bilingual children, minimal research has focused on Spanish-English bilingual preschoolers. Therefore, this study examined the cross-language macrostructure and within-language microstructure relations in the English and Spanish narratives of bilingual preschoolers and examined whether language dominance impacted these relations. Narratives were elicited from 200 preschool-aged children of Latino heritage. Microstructure measures included the Number of Different Words, Mean Length of Utterance in Words, and Subordination Index. The Narrative Scoring Scheme measured macrostructure (Heilmann, Miller, Nockerts, & Dunaway, 2010). Using standardized language testing of expressive vocabulary and sentence comprehension, the children were classified into two groups: balanced dominance and Spanish dominant. Results revealed that English macrostructure and Spanish macrostructure were not related after controlling for microstructure measures within languages. Children's microstructure abilities in each language were strongly related to their macrostructure abilities within that language. Dominance did not moderate these relations. Consistent with previous research on school-age children, vocabulary was a unique predictor of macrostructure production. This study highlights the additional importance of utterance length within both languages to macrostructure during the preschool years. The absence of unique cross-language macrostructure relations and the absence of dominance group moderation may have been due to the immaturity of the children's narratives.

When language users predict upcoming speech, they generate pluralistic expectations, weighted by likelihood (Kuperberg & Jaeger, 2016). Many variables influence the prediction of highly-likely sentential outcomes, but less is known regarding variables affecting the prediction of outcomes. Here we explore how English vocabulary size and self-identification as a Native Speaker (NS) of English modulate adult bi-/multilinguals' pre-activation of less-likely sentential outcomes in two visual-world experiments. Participants heard transitive sentences containing an agent, action and theme while viewing four referents varying in expectancy by relation to the agent and action. In experiment 1 (N=70), spoken themes referred to highly-expected items (e.g., ship). Results indicate lower-skill (smaller vocabulary size) and less confident (not identifying as NS) bi-/multilinguals activate less-likely action-related referents more than their higher-skill/confidence peers. In experiment 2 (N=65), themes were one of two less-likely items (The pirate chases the . Results approaching significance indicate an opposite but similar size effect: higher-skill/confidence listeners activate less-likely action-related (e.g., bone) referents slightly more than lower-skill/confidence listeners. Results across experiments suggest higher-skill/confidence participants more flexibly modulate their linguistic predictions per the demands of the task, with similar but not identical patterns emerging when bi-/multilinguals are grouped by self-ascribed NS-status versus vocabulary size.

American Sign Language (ASL) and English differ in linguistic resources available to express visual-spatial information. In a referential communication task, we examined the effect of language modality on the creation and mutual acceptance of reference to non-nameable figures. In both languages, description times reduced over iterations and references to the figures' geometric properties ("shape-based reference") declined over time in favor of expressions describing the figures' resemblance to nameable objects ("analogy-based reference"). ASL signers maintained a preference for shape-based reference until the final (sixth) round, while English speakers transitioned toward analogy-based reference by Round 3. Analogy-based references were more time efficient (associated with shorter round description times). Round completion times were longer for ASL than for English, possibly due to gaze demands of the task and/or to more shape-based descriptions. Signers' referring expressions remained unaffected by figure complexity while speakers preferred analogy-based expressions for complex figures and shape-based expressions for simple figures. Like speech, co-speech gestures decreased over iterations. Gestures primarily accompanied shape-based references, but listeners rarely looked at these gestures, suggesting that they were recruited to aid the speaker rather than the addressee. Overall, different linguistic resources (classifier constructions vs. geometric vocabulary) imposed distinct demands on referring strategies in ASL and English.

Using speakers of either African American English (AAE) or Southern White English (SWE), we asked whether a working memory measure was linguistically unbiased-i.e., equally able to distinguish between children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) across dialects, with similar error profiles and similar correlations to standardized test scores. We also examined whether the measure was affected by a child's nonmainstream dialect density. Fifty-three kindergarteners with SLI and 53 typically developing controls (70 AAE and 36 SWE) were given a size judgment working memory task, which involved reordering items by physical size before recall, as well as tests of syntax, vocabulary, intelligence and nonmainstream density. Across dialects, children with SLI earned significantly poorer span scores than controls, and made more nonlist errors. Span and standardized language test performance were correlated, however they were also both correlated with nonmainstream density. After partialing out density, span continued to differentiate the groups and correlate with syntax measures in both dialects. Thus, working memory performance can distinguish between children with and without SLI and is equally related to syntactic abilities across dialects. However, the correlation between span and nonmainstream dialect density indicates that processing-based verbal working memory tasks may not be as free from linguistic bias as often thought. Additional studies are needed to further explore this relationship.

Many adults struggle with second language acquisition, but learn new native-language words relatively easily. We investigated the role of sublexical native-language patterns on novel word acquisition. Twenty English monolinguals learned 48 novel written words in five repeated testing blocks. Half were orthographically wordlike (e.g., , high neighborhood density and high segment/bigram frequency), while half were not (e.g., , low neighborhood density and low segment/bigram frequency). Participants were faster and more accurate at recognizing and producing wordlike items, indicating a native-language similarity benefit. Individual differences in memory and vocabulary size influenced learning, and error analyses indicated that participants extracted probabilistic information from the novel vocabulary. Results suggest that language learners benefit from both native-language overlap and regularities within the novel language.

Recognizing familiar words quickly and accurately facilitates learning new words, as well as other aspects of language acquisition. This study used the visual world paradigm with semantic and phonological competitors to study lexical processing efficiency in 2-5 year-old children. Experiment 1 found this paradigm was sensitive to vocabulary-size differences. Experiment 2 included a more diverse group of children who were tested in their native dialect (either African American English or Mainstream American English). No effect of stimulus dialect was observed,. Results showed that vocabulary size was a better predictor of eye gaze patterns than maternal education, but that maternal education level had a moderating effect; as maternal education level increased, vocabulary size was less predictive of lexical processing efficiency.

The aim of the present study was to investigate how children and adults allocate cognitive resources to performing segmental encoding and monitoring in a dual task paradigm and the response patterns of the primary and secondary tasks in the dual task.

Real-world speech learning often occurs in high pressure situations such as trying to communicate in a foreign country. However, the impact of pressure on speech learning success is largely unexplored. In this study, adult, native speakers of English learned non-native speech categories under pressure or no-pressure conditions. In the pressure conditions, participants were informed that they were paired with a (fictitious) partner, and that each had to independently exceed a performance criterion for both to receive a monetary bonus. They were then informed that their partner had exceeded the bonus and the fate of both bonuses depended upon the participant's performance. Our results demonstrate that pressure significantly enhanced speech learning success. In addition, neurobiologically-inspired computational modeling revealed that the performance advantage was due to faster and more frequent use of procedural learning strategies. These results integrate two well-studied research domains and suggest a facilitatory role of motivational factors in speech learning performance that may not be captured in traditional training paradigms.

This study examines the interaction between language impairment and different levels of bilingual proficiency. Specifically, we explore the potential of articles and direct object pronouns as clinical markers of primary language impairment (PLI) in bilingual Spanish-speaking children. The study compared children with PLI and typically developing children (TD) matched on age, English language proficiency, and mother's education level. Two types of bilinguals were targeted: Spanish-dominant children with intermediate English proficiency (asymmetrical bilinguals, AsyB), and near-balanced bilinguals (BIL). We measured children's accuracy in the use of direct object pronouns and articles with an elicited language task. Results from this preliminary study suggest language proficiency affects the patterns of use of direct object pronouns and articles. Across language proficiency groups, we find marked differences between TD and PLI, in the use of both direct object pronouns and articles. However, the magnitude of the difference diminishes in balanced bilinguals. Articles appear more stable in these bilinguals and therefore, seem to have a greater potential to discriminate between TD bilinguals from those with PLI. Future studies using discriminant analyses are needed to assess the clinical impact of these findings.

The Intermodal Preferential Looking (IPL) task was developed to assess comprehension in infants and toddlers. We extend this methodology to examine word comprehension in preschool children using two measures: proportion of looking time to target (LTT) and longest look (LL) to target. Children (3-6 years) were tested with the IPL for comprehension of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Both LTT and LL scores showed that, across all ages, eye gaze to the target word increased from baseline to test; there were higher scores for nouns compared to verbs and adjectives. We also compare IPL performance to scores on a standardized test of receptive vocabulary (PPVT-4). Correlations with PPVT-4 scores were stronger for LTT than LL measures. The IPL may provide an alternative method for assessing word comprehension in preschool children with behavioral limitations.

This paper examined the interaction between narrative performance, language exposure, and standardized measures of morphosyntax and semantics, in bilingual children tested two times, 1 year apart. We aimed to 1) identify the factor structure of oral narrative measures, and 2) examine the direction and strength of the effects of (i) language exposure and (ii) the relationship between language domains and narrative production. A total of 143 Spanish (L1)-English (L2) bilingual children completed a battery of oral narrative and oral language proficiency assessments in Spanish and English at two time points (kindergarten and Grade 1). Factor analyses yielded an identical two-factor structure of bilingual oral narrative measurements, namely productivity (word production) and complexity (sentence structure), in both Spanish and English across the two time points. Cross-lagged analysis showed that narrative production predicted semantics and morphosyntax performance in Spanish and English one year later. Cross-language transfer from L1 to L2 on the complexity of narrative was noted. Language exposure predicted only Spanish narrative production, but not English. These results suggest within- and cross-language transfer, highlighting the importance of L1 language development. In addition, current findings highlight the importance of language exposure for L1 in early school-age children.