The present study investigated whether the ability to encode the sounds of difficult second-language (L2) contrasts into novel nonnative lexical representations is modulated by the phonological form of the words to be learned. In 3 experiments, German learners of English were trained on word-picture associations with either novel minimal pairs…

We investigated how letter length, phoneme length, and consonant clusters contribute to the word length effect in 2nd- and 4th-grade children. They read words from three different conditions: In one condition, letter length increased but phoneme length did not due to multiletter graphemes (H"aus"-B"auch"-S"chach"). In…

Effects of syllable structure and of alphabetic reading skills on the development of phoneme awareness were investigated in a longitudinal study. Awareness of phonemes in syllable onsets and codas was examined in first graders speaking Czech (n = 45) and German (n = 33). Czech children showed higher awareness of phonemes in onsets than in codas,…