Morphosyntactic processing in late second-language learners

The goal of the present study was to investigate the electro- physiological correlates of second-language (L2) morphosyn- tactic processing in highly proficient late learners of an L2 with long exposure to the L2 environment. ERPs were col- lected from 22 English–Spanish late learners while they read sentences in which morphosyntactic features of the L2 present or not present in the first language (number and gender agree- ment, respectively) were manipulated at two different sentence positions—within and across phrases. The results for a control group of age-matched native-speaker Spanish participants in- cluded an ERP pattern of LAN-type early negativity followed by P600 effect in response to both agreement violations and for both sentence positions. The late L2 learner results included a similar pattern, consisting of early negativity followed by P600, in the first sentence position (within-phrase agreement viola- tions) but only P600 effects in the second sentence position (across-phrase agreement violation), as well as significant am- plitude and onset latency differences between the gender and the number violation effects in both sentence positions. These results reveal that highly proficient learners can show electro- physiological correlates during L2 processing that are qualita- tively similar to those of native speakers, but the results also indicate the contribution of factors such as age of acquisition and transfer processes from first language to L

The Multilingual Picture Database

Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s).The growing interdisciplinary research field of psycholinguistics is in constant need of new and up-to-date tools which will allow researchers to answer complex questions, but also expand on languages other than English, which dominates the field. One type of such tools are picture datasets which provide naming norms for everyday objects. However, existing databases tend to be small in terms of the number of items they include, and have also been normed in a limited number of languages, despite the recent boom in multilingualism research. In this paper we present the Multilingual Picture (Multipic) database, containing naming norms and familiarity scores for 500 coloured pictures, in thirty-two languages or language varieties from around the world. The data was validated with standard methods that have been used for existing picture datasets. This is the first dataset to provide naming norms, and translation equivalents, for such a variety of languages; as such, it will be of particular value to psycholinguists and other interested researchers. The dataset has been made freely available.Peer reviewe

All hands on deck: negotiation over gesture forms in collaborative discourse

Language Related Episodes occur when speakers explicitly question lexical and grammatical aspects of the language they are using, resulting in collaborative discourse and assisted performance from peers. This paper demonstrates how such negotiation and repair may occur in relation to the gestural component of a speaker's expression, leading us to introduce the parallel term ‘Gesture Related Episodes’. Our single case analysis reveals a range of issues that have received little attention, including the problems that people experience with gestures, what constitutes struggling in the gestural modality, and how people help each other to gesture more effectively in collaborative discourse. Our discussion links these issues to the L2 concerns and knowledge asymmetries in our data, as well as to conceptual and conventional features of gestures more generally

Factors associated with children’s understanding of mathematical equivalence: An investigation across six countries

Many primary school students have difficulties understanding mathematical equivalence with considerably poorer performance in some countries than in others. However, students’ formal understanding of equivalence has significant and long-lasting effects as it predicts arithmetic and algebra achievement throughout school years. Currently, little is known about the factors influencing students’ understanding of mathematical equivalence particularly across different countries. We have conducted the first large-scale study to explore the factors associated with primary school students’ understanding of mathematical equivalence across six countries (China, England, New Zealand, South Korea, Turkey, and the US). Participants were 2760 primary school students and their teachers (N = 108). Using multilevel structural equation modelling, we found that students’ knowledge of definitions of the equals sign relates to their equation-solving performance. We also found that while teachers’ knowledge of students’ relational strategies does relate to students’ understanding of equivalence, teachers’ knowledge of students’ operational strategies, and the format of arithmetic practice presented in the students’ current year textbooks do not. Using England as the reference country, we found that this pattern was similar across the samples from all the participating countries. Taken together, our findings have important theoretical and practical implications, providing a more complete picture of the individual and classroom-level factors associated with students’ understanding of equivalence