Linguistic geniuses such as Heinrich Schliemann have long fascinated many with their exceptional capabilities to master multiple languages on top of their own mother tongues. These individuals are believed to be able to extract the probabilistic, abstract patterns underlying a target form's linguistic and frequency distribution in second language…

Over the past decade, the LLAMA language aptitude test battery has come to play an increasingly important role as an instrument in research on individual differences in language development. However, a potentially serious problem that has been pointed out by several scholars is that the LLAMA has not yet been carefully validated. We addressed this…

This study longitudinally examined the effects of cognitive and sociopsychological individual differences (aptitude, motivation, personality) and the quantity and quality of second language (L2) experience on L2 speech gains in naturalistic settings. We elicited L2 spontaneous speech from 50 Chinese learners of English at the beginning and the end…

Garfield is an exceptional language learner and US polyglot. This oral history project explores his trajectory from a childhood coma to knowing 15 languages. It examines his investment in his second language acquisition (SLA), a concept comprising identity, ideology, and capital (Darvin & Norton, 2015). Qualitative content analyses of 10 h of…

Learning a second/foreign language (L2) is a long process and L2 learners certainly will encounter setbacks and discouragements during this process. However, their reactions to these failures might be different based on their perceptions of L2 learning ability and their subsequent effort put into L2 learning. Based on this, the present study aimed…

This study investigates the validity of syntactic priming as a measure of implicit language aptitude. Syntactic priming refers to the tendency to reproduce a linguistic structure due to a previous exposure to the structure. The validity of the construct was verified by collating evidence for divergent validity--whether it is dissociable from…

Purpose: Cluttering is a fluency disorder that has been noted clinically in individuals with fragile X syndrome (FXS). Yet, cluttering has not been systematically characterized in this population, hindering identification and intervention efforts. This study examined the rates of cluttering in male young adults with FXS using expert clinical…

Does language have a role to play in conceptual development, and if so, what is that role? Understanding the contents of another person's mind parallels the development in early childhood of mental state language. Does the conceptual understanding get reflected in and drive the language development, or does the language allow the representation of…

Despite the extensive research on bilingual development, our understanding of how lexical competition unfolds in the bilingual mind remains limited. Previous studies have predominantly focused on crosslinguistic competition, neglecting the examination of the competition process within each language and the influence of diverse bilingual…

This study analyzed the effect of guided inquiry learning model on creativity viewed from social interaction skill of the kindergarten children of group B in North Kuta district, Badung regency. This study used the 2x2 factorial design. The population was all kindergarten B's in the North Kuta district with the total of 1.951 children from 49…

The present study investigates whether CLIL learners' high scores in English as a foreign language (EFL) can be attributed to three specific learner variables: 'EFL aptitude', 'EFL confidence' and 'international orientation' -- and whether out-of-school EFL exposure has an effect. The study was undertaken in eight secondary school CLIL classes in…

English lessons are obligatory from second grade onwards in Turkish state schools which means that language learners are exposed to English early on. Despite an early start, language learners struggle to acquire foreign language speaking skills. The problem of speaking English is a frequently encountered topic of discussion in educational…

A number of studies suggest a link between musical training and both specific and general cognitive abilities, but despite some positive results, there is disagreement about which abilities are improved. This study aims to investigate the effects of a music education program both on a domain-specific competence (meta-musical awareness), and on…

The aims of the study are to construct an online instrument to assess different aspects of morphological awareness and to examine its development and its relation to reading comprehension in grades 2-4 in Hungarian children. Altogether, 4134 students were tested. The online test evaluated inflectional, derivational, and compound morphological…

While semantic and syntactic properties of verb meaning can impact the success of verb learning at a single age, developmental changes in how these factors influence acquisition are largely unexplored. We ask whether the impact of syntactic and semantic properties on verb vocabulary development varies with age and language ability for toddlers…