In two visual world eye-tracking experiments, this dissertation examines the role of literacy on predictive processing during spoken language comprehension. Previous studies have shown that comprehenders can use morphosyntactic cues available in the input to generate predictions about upcoming information. Recent key findings also suggest that…

Background: The abbreviated version of the Token Test (aTT) is widely used to assess language comprehension deficits in stroke patients (SPs). However, aTT has not been validated for Latin American Spanish speakers, so clinicians tend to use cut-off scores for aTT validated in developed countries. Aims: To provide normative data for the Spanish…

Dual-language books' (DLBs) two-language format could support biliteracy development, but little is known about how children read them. Fifty-four third and fifth graders read aloud DLBs with English or Spanish first on each page to determine DLBs' potential affordances. Although there were no significant differences in oral reading fluency or…

This report examines the potential impacts of task and proficiency on listener judgments of intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness in L2 Spanish. This study extends Huensch and Nagle ["Language Learning," 71, 626-668, (2021)], who explored the partial independence among the global speech dimensions for speech samples taken…

Although current approaches to second language (L2) pronunciation underscore that instruction should concentrate on pronunciation features that help learners be more intelligible (and not necessarily more native like), there is little empirical evidence as to what those features are, especially in languages other than English. To address this gap,…

Some theories of sentence processing make a distinction between two kinds of meaning: a linguistic meaning encoded at the lexicon (i.e., selectional restrictions), and an extralinguistic knowledge derived from our everyday experiences (i.e., world knowledge). According to such theories, the former meaning is privileged over the latter in terms of…

Research on the effects on early bilingualism on reading development is scarce. Here, we tackle this question by investigating whether the exposure to dual-language contexts (use of two languages in the same conversational situation) induces a boost in phonological and reading performance through more balanced spatial auditory attentional skills.…

Motivated by a series of interconnected studies on simultaneous attention to form and meaning, we revisit L2 learners' real-time processing of text by using eye-tracking as an unobtrusive method to provide concurrent data on attention allocation. Seventy-five L2 Spanish learners were instructed to attend to an assigned form in a reading passage…

Reading-while-listening (RWL) has been suggested to facilitate reading comprehension by establishing letter-to-sound correspondences in the word recognition process. However, previous findings are inconsistent regarding the effect of RWL on foreign language (L2) reading comprehension. To understand why such inconsistency occurs, the moderating…

This study reviews the effect of comprehension and perceived text difficulty in promoting reading enjoyment and interest to read more among novice learners practicing extensive and pleasure reading. Sixty-seven college students in their first semester of Spanish were asked to read a children-like story picture book in Spanish and were then given…

Purpose: Converging evidence demonstrates that robust academic vocabulary and morphology instruction improves literacy outcomes of multilingual adolescents. However, few interventions have focused on teaching word analysis using bound Latin roots, the major meaning-carrying constituents of academic words (e.g. voc meaning "speak" in…

This study examines the influence of language environment on language and reading skills and the cross-linguistic contributions to reading outcomes in 132 Spanish-English bilingual children ages 7-12 (52% female; 98% Hispanic). We present three major findings: children's language knowledge is separable into general (e.g., phonological awareness)…

Purpose: The purpose of this pilot study was to determine whether parallel measures of narrative-based listening comprehension and reading comprehension reflected the same construct and yielded comparable scores from a diverse sample of second- and third-grade students. One hundred ten students participated in this study. Method: Three listening…

This experimental study aimed to influence reading comprehension skills through the development of one or both components of the Simple View of Reading (decoding and listening comprehension), by using a differentiated instruction approach. Reading comprehension skill gains were compared in an intervention group versus a control, after the delivery…

Background: Function words, and more specifically prepositions and prepositional locutions, are considered to be one of the most important difficulties for children with DLD. Aims: To examine the capacity of bilingual children with developmental language disorder (DLD) to comprehend different Spanish prepositions and prepositional locutions in a…