The effects of late acquisition of L2 and the consequences of immigration on L1 for semantic and morpho-syntactic language aspects

It has been hypothesized that some aspects of a second language (L2) might be learned easier than others if a language is learned late. On the other hand, non-use might result in a loss of language skills in one's native, i.e. one's first language (L1) (language attrition). To study which, if any, aspects of language are affected by either late acquisition or non-use, long-term German immigrants to the US and English native speakers who are long-term immigrants to Germany as well as two additional control groups of native German speakers were tested with an auditory semantic and morpho-syntactic priming paradigm. German adjectives correctly or incorrectly inflected for gender and semantically associated or not associated with the target noun served as primes. Participants made a lexical decision on the target word. All groups of native German speakers gained from semantically and morpho-syntactically congruent primes. Evidence for language attrition was neither found for semantic nor morpho-syntactic priming effects in the German immigrants. In contrast, English native speakers did not gain from a morpho-syntactic congruent prime, whereas semantic priming effects were similar as for the remaining groups. The present data suggest that the full acquisition of at least some syntactic functions may be restricted to limited periods in life while semantic and morpho-syntactic functions seem to be relatively inured to loss due to non-use.     

Representation of grammatical properties of Italian verbs in the mental lexicon

The present study focuses on the representation of verbs in the Italian mental lexicon and investigates some grammatical properties: inflectional class, mood, tense, and person. Two experiments based on free recall of single inflected forms are reported. The patterns of recall and error are taken as evidence for the grammatical and morphological information exploited in the access to the verb forms. The pattern of results provides support for the hypothesis that in the mental lexicon the information about conjugation and mood is an organizational criterion for the representation of verbal forms. An interaction between mood and conjugation, likely to arise from the difference in productivity between conjugations, is also observed.     

Morphological units in the Arabic mental lexicon: evidence from an individual with deep dyslexia

An ongoing debate in Arabic morphology concerns the nature of the smallest unit governing lexical organization and representation in this language. A standard model maintains that Arabic words are typically analyzable into a three-consonantal root morpheme carrying the core meaning of words and a prosodic template responsible mostly for grammatical information. This view has been largely supported by research in both theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics. An alternative theory holds that the meaning of words in Arabic is, rather, encoded in the 'etymon' comprising two unordered consonants of the root only. Results from a recent priming experiment have shown that the etymon induces strong morphological priming effects, supporting its morphological/lexical status. In this paper we present data from a patient with deep dyslexia questioning the role of the etymon as a psychologically real representational unit in Arabic and arguing, instead, for the central role of the root in both morphological and lexical representation in this language.     

Novel word integration in the mental lexicon: Evidence from unmasked and masked semantic priming

We sought to establish whether novel words can become integrated into existing semantic networks by teaching participants new meaningful words and then using these new words as primes in two semantic priming experiments, in which participants carried out a lexical decision task to familiar words. Importantly, at no point in training did the novel words co-occur with the familiar words that served as targets in the primed lexical decision task, allowing us to evaluate semantic priming in the absence of direct association. We found that familiar words were primed by the newly related novel words, both when the novel word prime was unmasked (Experiment 1) and when it was masked (Experiment 2), suggesting that the new words had been integrated into semantic memory. Furthermore, this integration was strongest after a 1-week delay and was independent of explicit recall of the novel word meanings: Forgetting of meanings did not attenuate priming. We argue that even after brief training, newly learned words become an integrated part of the adult mental lexicon rather than being episodically represented separately from the lexicon.     

Persistence of emphasis in language production: A cross-linguistic approach

This study investigates the way in which speakers determine which aspects of an utterance to emphasize and how this affects the form of utterances. To do this, we ask whether the binding between emphasis and thematic roles persists between utterances. In one within-language (Dutch-Dutch) and three cross-linguistic (Dutch-English) structural priming experiments, we measured persistence effects for four different Dutch transitives (actives, PP-initial passives, PP-medial passives, and PP-final passives). Whereas English allows only one passive (PP-final passive), Dutch allows three different variants with the same functional assignment, but different constituent structures. Additionally, the degree of emphasis on the agent differs significantly between the PP-initial passive and the other passives (Experiment 1). Experiment 2 showed persistence of actives, PP-medial, and PP-final passives in Dutch, but no priming between passives with different constituent structures. Experiments 3 and 4, however, showed that both PP-medial and PP-final passives prime the use of English passives. Experiment 5 confirmed that the emphasis on thematic roles persists: the proportion of passives in the PP-initial passive condition fell midway between the proportions produced in the active and PP-medial passive condition.     

Further investigation on the mnemonic effect of gestures: Their meaning matters

Three experiments are reported that examine the nature of knowledge underlying performance in the invariant learning task. Previous research (Bright & Burton, 1994; McGeorge & Burton, 1990) has supported an account of performance based on the implicit abstraction and application of a rule pertaining to the invariant feature. In contrast, we found effects in both the digit and clock invariant tasks that are difficult to explain solely in terms of subjects acquiring the experimenters' rule. In all three experiments, manipulation of test item properties that are independent of the invariant feature led to a detriment in performance that is not predicted by an account based on the experimenters' rules. Furthermore, the use of an on-line measure of awareness (confidence ratings) provided some evidence that performance is mediated by low confidence explicit knowledge.     

Two faces,two languages: An fMRI study of bilingual picture naming

This fMRI study explores how nonlinguistic cues modulate lexical activation in the bilingual brain. We examined the influence of face race on bilingual language production in a picture-naming paradigm. Chinese–English bilinguals were presented with pictures of objects and images of faces (Asian or Caucasian). Participants named the picture in their first or second language (Chinese or English) in separate blocks. Face race and naming language were either congruent (e.g., naming in Chinese when seeing an Asian face) or incongruent (e.g., naming in English when seeing an Asian face). Our results revealed that face cues facilitate naming when the socio-cultural identity of the face is congruent with the naming language. The congruence effects are reflected as effective integration of lexical and facial cues in key brain regions including IFG, MFG, ACC, and caudate. Implications of the findings in light of theories of language processing and cultural priming are discussed.     

Individual differences in the acquisition of second language phonology

Perceptual training was employed to characterize individual differences in non-native speech sound learning. Fifty-nine adult English speakers were trained to distinguish the Hindi dental–retroflex contrast, as well as a tonal pitch contrast. Training resulted in overall group improvement in the ability to identify and to discriminate the phonetic and the tonal contrasts, but there were considerable individual differences in performance. A category boundary effect during the post-training discrimination of the Hindi but not of the tonal contrast suggests different learning mechanisms for these two stimulus types. Specifically, our results suggest that successful learning of the speech sounds involves the formation of a long-term memory category representation for the new speech sound.     

Mental models in the brain: On context-dependent neural correlates of mental models

In this paper, the concept of context-dependent realisation of mental models is introduced and discussed. Literature from neuroscience is discussed showing that different types of mental models can use different types of brain areas. Moreover, it is discussed that the same occurs for the formation and adaptation of mental models and the control of these processes. This makes that it is hard to claim that all mental models use the same brain mechanisms and areas. Instead, the notion of context-dependent realisation is proposed here as a better manner to relate neural correlates to mental models. It is shown in some formal detail how this context-dependent realisation approach can be related to well-known perspectives based on bridge principle realisation and interpretation mapping realisation.     

Critical period effects in second language learning: the influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language

Lenneberg (1967) hypothesized that language could be acquired only within a critical period, extending from early infancy until puberty. In its basic form, the critical period hypothesis need only have consequences for first language acquisition. Nevertheless, it is essential to our understanding of the nature of the hypothesized critical period to determine whether or not it extends as well to second language acquisition. If so, it should be the case that young children are better second language learners than adults and should consequently reach higher levels of final proficiency in the second language. This prediction was tested by comparing the English proficiency attained by 46 native Korean or Chinese speakers who had arrived in the United States between the ages of 3 and 39, and who had lived in the United States between 3 and 26 years by the time of testing. These subjects were tested on a wide variety of structures of English grammar, using a grammaticality judgment task. Both correlational and t-test analyses demonstrated a clear and strong advantage for earlier arrivals over the later arrivals. Test performance was linearly related to age of arrival up to puberty; after puberty, performance was low but highly variable and unrelated to age of arrival. This age effect was shown not to be an inadvertent result of differences in amount of experience with English, motivation, self-consciousness, or American identification. The effect also appeared on every grammatical structure tested, although the structures varied markedly in the degree to which they were well mastered by later learners. The results support the conclusion that a critical period for language acquisition extends its effects to second language acquisition.     

Patterns of acquisition in the emerging mental lexicon: the case of to and for in English.

A corpus analysis of 32 English-speaking children's first usages of the prepositions to and for (which have similar properties semantically and grammatically) was undertaken for the purpose of tracking intralexemic sense acquisition and lexical organization in an often neglected word class. The earliest senses used by these children do not reflect historical patterns of semantic extension. Diachronically, concrete, spatial, and semantically transparent usages emerged before more abstract, nonspatial, and opaque usages. Developmentally, frequency of use in the child's linguistic environment and co-occurrence in collocations with favored verbs or other useful expressions proved to be the major determinant of early production, suggesting that external rather than internal/cognitive factors play the major role in lexical development.     

On the time course of exogenous cueing effects in bilinguals: Higher proficiency in a second language is associated with more rapid endogenous disengagement

Previous investigations have demonstrated a bilingual advantage on various aspects of executive control. It remains unclear how the language proficiency of bilinguals might relate to the mechanisms involved in attentional disengagement. In the present investigation, we tested the hypothesis that high bilingual proficiency would lead to a more rapid endogenous disengagement of attention from task-irrelevant peripheral cues. We predicted that more rapid attentional disengagement would result in an earlier appearance of inhibition of return (IOR). In this study Hindi–English bilinguals who differed in their L2 (English) proficiency participated in a target detection task. Visual targets were preceded by uninformative peripheral cues at various stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) allowing for us to visualize the time course of cue-related facilitation and inhibition. High-proficient Hindi–English bilinguals showed an earlier appearance of IOR than did low-proficient bilinguals, suggesting increased efficiency in disengagement of attention from task-irrelevant inputs. Furthermore, consistent with the “global” advantage that characterizes bilinguals in many tasks, the high-proficient group outperformed low-proficient bilinguals in overall reaction time.     

Universality and specificity in infant-directed speech: Pitch modifications as a function of infant age and sex in a tonal and non-tonal language

The aim of this study was to investigate the prosodic characteristics of infant-directed speech (IDS) to boys and girls in a tonal (Thai) and non-tonal (Australian English) language. Speech was collected from mothers speaking to infants at birth, and 3, 6, 9, and 12 months, and also to another adult. Mean-F₀, pitch range, and utterance slope-F₀ were extracted, and the integrity of the tonal information in Thai investigated. The age trends across the two languages differed for each of these measures but Australian English IDS was generally more exaggerated than Thai IDS. With respect to sex differences, Australian English mothers used higher mean-F₀, pitch range, and more rising utterances for girls than boys, but Thai mothers used more subdued mean-F₀ and more falling utterances for girls than boys. Despite variations in pitch modifications by Thai and Australian English mothers, overall IDS is more exaggerated than adult-directed speech (ADS) in both languages. Furthermore, tonal information in Thai was only slightly less identifiable in Thai IDS than Thai ADS. The universal features and language-specific differences in IDS are discussed in terms of facilitating infant socialization at younger ages, and language acquisition later in infancy.     

Revisiting the limits of language: The odor lexicon of Maniq

It is widely believed that human languages cannot encode odors. While this is true for English, and other related languages, data from some non-Western languages challenge this view. Maniq, a language spoken by a small population of nomadic hunter–gatherers in southern Thailand, is such a language. It has a lexicon of over a dozen terms dedicated to smell. We examined the semantics of these smell terms in 3 experiments (exemplar listing, similarity judgment and off-line rating). The exemplar listing task confirmed that Maniq smell terms have complex meanings encoding smell qualities. Analyses of the similarity data revealed that the odor lexicon is coherently structured by two dimensions. The underlying dimensions are pleasantness and dangerousness, as verified by the off-line rating study. Ethnographic data illustrate that smell terms have detailed semantics tapping into broader cultural constructs. Contrary to the widespread view that languages cannot encode odors, the Maniq data show odor can be a coherent semantic domain, thus shedding new light on the limits of language.     

Critical period effects on universal properties of language: the status of subjacency in the acquisition of a second language.

Recent studies have shown clear evidence for critical period effects for both first and second language acquisition on a broad range of learned, language-specific grammatical properties. The present studies ask whether and to what degree critical period effects can also be found for universal properties of language considered to be innate. To address this issue, native Chinese speakers who learned English as a second language were tested on the universal principle subjacency as it applies to wh-question formation in English. Subjects arrived in the U.S.A. between the ages of 4 and 38 years. They were immersed in English for a number of years (a minimum of 5) and were adults at the time of testing. Non-native performance on subjacency was found for subjects of all ages of arrival. Performance declined continuously over age of arrival until adulthood, (r = -.63). When immersion occurred as late as adulthood, performance dropped to levels slightly above chance. In all of the analyses performed, subjacency did not differ from language-specific structures in the degree or manner in which it was affected by maturation. These results suggest that whatever the nature of the endowment that allows humans to learn language, it undergoes a very broad deterioration as learners become increasingly mature.     

Population sex differences in IQ at age 11: the Scottish mental survey 1932

There is uncertainty whether the sexes differ with respect to their mean levels and variabilities in mental ability test scores. Here we describe the cognitive ability distribution in 80,000+ children—almost everyone born in Scotland in 1921—tested at age 11 in 1932. There were no significant mean differences in cognitive test scores between boys and girls, but there was a highly significant difference in their standard deviations (P<.001). Boys were over-represented at the low and high extremes of cognitive ability. These findings, the first to be presented from a whole population, might in part explain such cognitive outcomes as the slight excess of men achieving first class university degrees, and the excess of males with learning difficulties.     

Neural correlates of variable working memory load across adult age and skill: dissociative patterns within the fronto-parietal network

We examined neural changes related to variations in working memory load by using an n -back task with three levels and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Younger adults were divided into high- and low-performing groups (Young-High; Young-Low) and compared with older adults. Relative to Young-High, capacity-constraints in working memory were apparent between load 1–2 for the elderly and between load 2–3 for Young-Low. Capacity-constraints in neural activity followed this pattern by showing a monotonically increasing response in parietal cortex and thalamus for Young-High, whereas activity leveled off at 1-back for the elderly and at 2-back for Young-Low. The response in dorsal frontal cortex followed a similar pattern with the addition that the magnitude of activation differed within capacity limitations (Old > Young at 1-back; Young-Low > Young-High at 2-back). These findings indicate that an important determinant of WM capacity is the ability to keep the frontal cortex adequately engaged in relation to current task demands.     

Experiencing past and future personal events: functional neuroimaging evidence on the neural bases of mental time travel

Functional MRI was used in healthy subjects to investigate the existence of common neural structures supporting re-experiencing the past and pre-experiencing the future. Past and future events evocation appears to involve highly similar patterns of brain activation including, in particular, the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior regions and the medial temporal lobes. This result seems to support the view of a common neurocognitive system, which would allow humans to mentally travel through time. Past events recollection was associated with greater amplitude of hippocampal and anterior medial prefrontal hemodynamic responses. This result is discussed in terms of the involvement of the self in the conscious experience of past and future events representations. More generally, our data provide new evidence in favour of the idea that re- and pre-experiencing past and future events may rely on similar cognitive capacities.     

Lexical learning in bilingual adults: the relative importance of short-term memory for serial order and phonological knowledge

Studies of monolingual speakers have shown a strong association between lexical learning and short-term memory (STM) capacity, especially STM for serial order information. At the same time, studies of bilingual speakers suggest that phonological knowledge is the main factor that drives lexical learning. This study tested these two hypotheses simultaneously in participants with variable levels of English-French bilingual proficiency. A word-nonword paired-associate learning task was administered, with nonwords obeying French phonotactic patterns. French phonological knowledge was estimated by a composite French proficiency score summarizing productive and receptive French vocabulary knowledge as well as quantitative and qualitative measures of French exposure. STM measures maximized retention of order information (serial order reconstruction) or retention of phonological item information (single nonword delayed repetition). The French proficiency score and the serial order STM measure independently predicted performance on the paired-associate learning task. These results highlight the conjoined role of phonological knowledge and serial order STM in lexical learning. Importantly, serial order STM remains a strong predictor of lexical learning, even for bilingual individuals who have broad phonological knowledge.     

Individual differences in ERPs during mental rotation of characters: Lateralization,and performance level

The cognitive process of imaging an object turning around is called mental rotation. Many studies have been put forward analyzing mental rotation by means of event-related potentials (ERPs). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured during mental rotation of characters in a sample (N = 82) with a sufficient size to obtain even small effects. A bilateral ERP amplitude modulation as a function of angular displacement was observed at parietal leads without any lateralization. Sex had no effect on mental rotation of characters, neither with respect to performance nor with respect to brain potentials. When the sample was split into groups of high- and low-performers, however, the results indicated (a) in line with the idea of neural efficiency substantially larger amplitudes for low-performers; (b) that the smaller amplitudes of the high-performers involved larger parietal networks; and (c) a left-parietal disengagement of neural activity for high-performers but a right-parietal disengagement for low-performers. The latter finding became evident through an analysis of internal consistencies of ERP amplitudes across conditions and performance levels, showing that internal consistencies were reduced at all three leads in the high-performance group for the biggest rotation angle, relative the other conditions and the low-performing group.