Adaptation in Predictive Prosodic Processing in Bilinguals.

Native language listeners engage in predictive processing in many processing situations and adapt their predictive processing to the statistics of the input. In contrast, second language listeners engage in predictive processing in fewer processing situations. The current study uses eye-tracking data from two experiments in bilinguals' native language (L1) and second language (L2) to explore their predictive processing based on contrastive pitch accent cues, and their adaptation in the face of prediction errors.

Task Sensitivity in L2 English Speakers' Syntactic Processing: Evidence for Good-Enough Processing in Self-Paced Reading.

Native (L1) and second-language (L2) sentence processing can sometimes be shallow. A Good-Enough approach suggests that speakers may engage in shallow processing if the task permits. This study tests English native speakers and native Chinese L2 learners of English to explore whether different task demands affect their sentence processing.

Exploring the effect of lexical inferencing and dictionary consultation on undergraduate EFL students' vocabulary acquisition.

This study compares how lexical inferencing and dictionary consultation affect L2 vocabulary acquisition. Sixty-one L1 Arabic undergraduates majoring in English language read target words in semi-authentic English reading materials and were either asked to guess their meaning or look it up in a dictionary. A pre- and delayed post-test measured participants' knowledge of target words and overall vocabulary size.

Effects of Language Skills and Strategy Use on Vocabulary Learning Through Lexical Translation and Inferencing.

This study explores how vocabulary learning strategy usage and skills in the four language domains relate to participants' increase in vocabulary size and to the learning of specific vocabulary items over a certain period of time. Sixty-one advanced L1 Arabic L2 learners of English read target words in semi-authentic reading materials and were instructed to either guess the meaning from context or consult a dictionary. Pre- and delayed post-tests assessed vocabulary size and knowledge of the target vocabulary items.

Electrophysiological Differentiation of the Effects of Stress and Accent on Lexical Integration in Highly Fluent Bilinguals.

Individuals who acquire a second language (L2) after infancy often retain features of their native language (L1) accent. Cross-language priming studies have shown negative effects of L1 accent on L2 comprehension, but the role of specific speech features, such as lexical stress, is mostly unknown. Here, we investigate whether lexical stress and accent differently modulate semantic processing and cross-language lexical activation in Welsh-English bilinguals, given that English and Welsh differ substantially in terms of stress realisation.

Lexical alignment in triadic communication.

Lexical alignment refers to the adoption of one's interlocutor's lexical items. Accounts of the mechanisms underlying such lexical alignment differ (among other aspects) in the role assigned to addressee-centered behavior. In this study, we used a triadic communicative situation to test which factors may modulate the extent to which participants' lexical alignment reflects addressee-centered behavior.

Children's syntactic-priming magnitude: lexical factors and participant characteristics.

This study examines whether lexical repetition, syntactic skills, and working memory (WM) affect children's syntactic-priming behavior, i.e. their tendency to adopt previously encountered syntactic structures.

Production of tongue twisters by speakers with partial glossectomy.

Abstract A partial glossectomy can affect speech production. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of the presence of a tumour as well as the glossectomy surgery on the patients' production of tongue twisters with the sounds [t] and [k]. Fifteen patients with tongue cancer and 10 healthy controls took part in the study.