The goals of the current study were (a) to assess differences in child and adult pausing and (b) to determine whether characteristics of child and adult pausing can be explained by the same language variables. Spontaneous speech samples were obtained from 10 5-year-olds and their accompanying parent using a storytelling/retelling task. Analyses of…

This study investigates whether developmental dyslexia involves an impairment in implicit phonological representations, as distinct from orthographic representations and metaphonological skills. A group of adults with dyslexia was matched with a group with no history of speech/language/literacy impairment. Tasks varied in the demands made on…

In the light of the literature describing oral language difficulties in developmental dyslexia (DD), event-related potentials were used in order to compare morphosyntactic processing in 16 adults with DD (aged 20-28 years) and unimpaired controls. Sentences including subject-verb agreement violations were presented auditorily, with grammaticality…

This article provides experimental evidence for the role of lexically specific representations in the processing of passive sentences and considerable education-related differences in comprehension of the passive construction. The experiment measured response time and decision accuracy of participants with high and low academic attainment using an…

In this study, 5-year-olds and adults described scenes that differed according to whether (a) the subject or object of a transitive verb represented an accessible or inaccessible referent, consistent or inconsistent with patterns of preferred argument structure, and (b) a simple noun was sufficient to uniquely identify an inaccessible referent.…

This study examined adult English native speakers' processing of sentences in which pronominal case marking conflicts with word order. Previous research has shown that English speakers rely heavily on word order for assigning case roles during sentence interpretation. However, in terms of cue reliability measures, we should expect English…

Neighborhood density influences adult performance on several word processing tasks. Some studies show age-related effects of density on children's performance, reflecting a developmental restructuring of the mental lexicon from holistic into segmental representations that may play a role in phonological awareness. To further investigate density…

The development of mental imagery in relation to the comprehension of concrete proverbs (e.g., "one rotten apple spoils the barrel") was examined in children, adolescents, and adults who were ages 11 to 29 years old (n = 210). The findings indicated that age-related changes occurred in mental imagery and in proverb comprehension during the years…

We tested the hypothesis that syntactic and narrative comprehension of a natural sign language can serve as the linguistic basis for skilled reading. Thirty-one adults who were deaf from birth and used American Sign Language (ASL) were classified as skilled or less skilled readers using an eighth-grade criterion. Proficiency with ASL syntax, and…

To assign lexical stress when reading, the Greek reader can potentially rely on lexical information (knowledge of the word), visual-orthographic information (processing of the written diacritic), or a default metrical strategy (penultimate stress pattern). Previous studies with secondary education children have shown strong lexical effects on…

Despite the importance of phonemic awareness in beginning literacy, several studies have demonstrated that adults, including teacher trainees, have surprisingly poor phonemic skills. Three experiments investigated whether adults' responses in phonemic awareness and spelling segmentation tasks are based on units larger than single letters and…

Clahsen and Felser (CF) have written a fairly comprehensive review of the current literature on on-line second language (L2) processing, presenting data from eye movement, self-paced reading, and event-related potential (ERP) studies with the aim of evidencing possible differences between native language (L1) and L2 processing. The thrust of the…

Clahsen and Felser (CF) have written a beautiful and important paper. I applaud their integrative empirical approach, and believe that their theoretical account is largely correct, if not in some of its specific claims, at least in its broader assumptions. CF directly compare their shallow structure hypothesis (SSH) with a model that my colleagues…

We join other responders in thanking Clahsen and Felser (CF) for pulling together these observations about the development of language processing. We are especially impressed by the generality and inclusiveness of CF's treatment of development in L1 and L2. Because most of their specifics concerned comprehension processes, our contribution will…

In their Keynote Article, Clahsen and Felser (CF) provide a detailed summary and comparison of grammatical processing in adult first language (L1) speakers, child L1 speakers, and second language (L2) speakers. CF conclude that child and adult L1 processing makes use of a continuous parsing mechanism, and that any differences found in processing…