Children acquire linguistic competence via social interactions with adults and learn to converse in accordance with the norms of their communities. The present dissertation examined the communicative patterns of Thai-English bilingual mothers and children in their two languages, as well as compared the bilinguals’ conversations to each of their monolingual...
As monolinguals and bilinguals hear words unfold over time, they experience competition from words that share sounds within the same language (e.g., st- activates strict and stamp). Unique to bilinguals is that they are also prone to competition from similar sounding-words between their two languages. In the present dissertation, we...
Both the timing (i.e., ‘when’) and amount (i.e., ‘how much’) of language exposure have been shown to affect language-learning outcomes. Monolinguals and (most) bilinguals confound these two factors of early exposure and extended exposure (i.e., their first-acquired language is their most used or dominant language), making it difficult to isolate...
The general goal of this dissertation research was to examine linguistic and cognitive mechanisms in foreign vocabulary learning within theoretical frameworks of working memory and connectionist word processing models.
In Study 1, the effect of bimodal (auditory-and-visual) vs. unimodal (auditory-only) presentation on foreign word learning was examined at different levels...