The interplay of prominence-lending factors and language production in children

Testing the limits of accent adaptation in 15-month-old infants

Studies examining accent adaptation in infancy repeatedly find it emerges only around 19 months (e.g., Best et al., 2009; Mulak et al., 2013). Yet standing in contrast to this body of work—and its support for theories that early phonological representations are underspecified and/or exemplar-based—is a single study finding 15-month-old infants demonstrate readily-observable accent adaptation in some contexts (van Heugten and Johnson, 2014). Here, we perform a much-needed replication and extend their task to probe the limitations of these early abilities. Following van Heugten and Johnson (2014), a group of 15-month-old Canadian English-learning infants heard a female Australian-accented talker read a story and were then tested for adaptation by their recognition of new words produced by the same talker. For another group of infants, we alter the identity of the talker reading the story (a new male talker) but not the test talker. Results from infants in the first group replicate the original study, supporting alternative views that abstract phonological representations are early-emerging. However, circumstances under which infants can leverage learning of accent information across talkers remain unclear. Further work in cross-talker adaptation has the potential to shed light on processes involved in accent adaptation, which remain poorly understood into adulthood.

Predictive Sentence Parsing in Monolingual and Bilingual Learners.

There is now substantial empirical support for incremental models of speech processing where language is processed in real-time as it unfolds. Developmental studies indicate that very young children process speech incrementally, demonstrating the ability to "listen ahead." The predictive use of linguistic information to anticipate upcoming words has primarily been studied in monolingual children from widely represented linguistic communities (e.g., English speakers). In this study, bilingual Mandarin-English-learning and monolingual English-learning Singaporean children were tested on their use of verb information to predict upcoming food and body part nouns, including in the presence of mispronunciations of the same nouns. When nouns were preceded by a constraining verb, children's target fixation increased. However, overall target fixation remained higher for correct pronunciations than for mispronunciations, suggesting that children were also sensitive to mispronunciations. Further, constraining verbs facilitated children's target fixation even in the presence of speech errors. The difference between target fixation on correct pronunciation compared to mispronunciation trials was smaller in bilinguals than monolinguals when verbs were present, and this effect appeared at a later time window across trials for monolinguals than it did for bilinguals, suggesting earlier resolution of conflicting linguistic cues in bilinguals. Findings contribute to growing knowledge about how language experience interacts with the temporal dynamics of incremental sentence processing in young learners.

L2 learners take more time to catch the rhyme: An eye-tracking study on predictive processing

When control words lose control: emergence of top-down processing effects in Spanish spoken word recognition

Research on cross-dialectal spoken word recognition suggests integrated processing of social and linguistic information, enabled by the encoding of fine-grained sociophonetic detail. Asymmetries in encoding strength have also been documented, especially concerning idealized or socially meaningful variants. To date, the literature has demonstrated discrepancies between immediate and long-term processing, the latter being understudied, along with an overwhelming focus on English varieties. The current study therefore examined immediate and long-term processing of three /s/ variants in Peninsular Spanish: [s̺], [s̪], and [s̪ θ ]. Each variant represents distinct geographic and social associations, providing a fruitful context to assess the implicit interaction of linguistic and extralinguistic information in processing. Seville capital participants ( N  = 42) completed a long-term form priming task containing word-initial /s/ items. Talkers ( N  = 6; one man and one woman per location) were from Seville capital, Seville outskirts, or central Spain. Response times initially demonstrated recognition equivalence in terms of processing speed: response times showed no differences among the three word-initial /s/ variants. However, faster processing of /s/ words produced by talkers from Seville capital and central Spain emerged after a long lag. Moreover, no recognition differences were observed between the two variants. Participants were less accurate in recognizing /s/ words produced with the Seville outskirts variant, suggesting processing difficulty. Unexpectedly, control words produced by one Seville capital talker were recognized especially quickly. The findings are discussed with respect to memory inequality and top-down processing effects and support the interaction of social and linguistic information in spoken word recognition.

The Impact of Task Structure and Immediacy on International EAL Learners’ Attention Orientation During Speech Production

The paper examines the effects of task structure and task immediacy in attentional allocation in the process of engaging with (L2) speech production among international learners of English as an additional language (EAL) in Canada. In a series of four experimental conditions (structural support (structured vs. unstructured)) and immediacy (Here/Now), sixty B2 learners were asked to complete a narrative task. There/Then). Participants provided retrospective verbal reports to establish the sources of dysfluency in their speech. There are four processing stages: conceptualization, lexical encoding, syntactic encoding, and phonological encoding, which were based on the model of speech production proposed by Levelt to code the dysfluency markers. The findings indicated that unstructured tasks produced more pauses associated with conceptualization, suggesting greater requirements for message planning. Conversely, There/Then condition tasks, especially with structural support, had many more dysfluencies that were lexical, syntactic, and phonological encoding in nature, indicating increased focus on the linguistic form. The large effect size across conditions indicates that task design strongly influenced the allocation of attentional resources. Most notably, structured narratives in the past tense, without contextual support, significantly heightened attention to form, as evidenced by increased pauses during lexical, syntactic, and phonological encoding.

A Test of the Cognitive Benefits of Bilingualism With the Early Childhood Inhibitory Touchscreen Task

ABSTRACT There is some evidence suggesting that bilingual children differ from monolingual children in cognitive processing due to their exposure to a more complex environment. While several studies have supported this hypothesis, most research has focused on school‐age children. The present study examined whether differences in inhibitory control between monolinguals and bilinguals are present early in life with the Early Childhood Inhibitory Touchscreen Task (ECITT). This task provides a reliable measure of inhibition control in infants, requiring them to shift their responses from a previously rewarded location to a new one. It minimizes language and memory demands while engaging infants through animations, making it an ideal measure for very young children. A sample of 60 infants (mean age 20.21 months) was tested, with language exposure measured on a continuum using the Language Exposure Assessment Tool (LEAT). Vocabulary was assessed using the McArthur‐Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MCDI), and inhibitory control was assessed, as well as a range of executive functions, with the Early Executive Functions Questionnaire (EEFQ). The ECITT data replicate previous research, showing that overall performance on this task improves with age. However, inhibitory control skills did not vary as a function of the amount of second language exposure. The current results suggest that inhibitory control skills do not differ as a function of language exposure diversity in toddlers younger than 24 months.