Bilingual children often lag behind monolinguals on standardized measures of language acquisition, such as vocabulary tests. This bilingual lag could be related bilinguals' lesser experience with the target language relative to monolinguals. In this study, we predicted that sequential Mandarin-English bilinguals would perform worse than same-aged…

Previous research has shown that language learners tend to produce fewer and less-natural multi-word sequences (MWSs) compared to native speakers of the same language. In the present study, collocational processing was investigated in a sentence reading task. Specifically, the familiar collocations were predicted to modulate the P3 mean amplitudes…

A significant body of literature has demonstrated that infants demonstrate a decline in sensitivity to nonnative sound contrasts by their first birthday, a transition often thought to be adaptive for later word learning. The present study investigated infants' sensitivity to these contrasts in a habituation-based discrimination and word learning…

Purpose: Auditory training is important in pedagogical and clinical settings. In search of a more effective perceptual program for training new suprasegmental categories, this study examined the effect of two auditory programs that incorporated five elements that have previously been identified to be effective for training nonnative segmental and…

Bilingual children have been shown to differ from monolingual children in several domains of human cognition. Comparatively few studies have investigated social-interactional processes in bilingual populations. Here, we investigated whether monolingual and bilingual children demonstrate similar susceptibility to an aspect of social functioning…

Most words spoken to infants are produced in larger units, such as clauses, phrases, and sentences. As such, language learners must recognize words amidst the words that surround them. However, the phonetic forms of words change based on surrounding context. Here, we investigate the effects of a common source of phonetic change--phonological…

Relative clause (RC) production is an important language milestone for children. Incorporating a felicitous context when assessing RC production is of theoretical and clinical value. This study investigated how a felicitous context influenced elicited production of RCs from monolingual English-speaking and bilingual Mandarin-English speaking…

Purpose: Previous research has shown that the language-learning mechanism is affected by bilingualism resulting in a novel word learning advantage for bilingual speakers. However, less is known about the factors that might influence this advantage. This article reports an investigation of 2 factors: phonotactic probability and phonological…

We conducted three experiments investigating in more detail the interaction between the two effects of bilingualism and L1-L2 similarity in the speech performance of balanced and unbalanced bilinguals. In Experiment 1, L1 Mandarin monolinguals and two groups of Hakka and Minnan balanced bilinguals (Hakka: more similar to Mandarin) performed a…

This article reports on a multiple-case study that investigates the impact of the promotion of Putonghua on individuals' social interactions and language identities in multilingual minority regions in China. Drawing on the theory of linguistic market, the study focuses on what mediates individuals' access to the linguistic market. The 24…

Previous studies on spoken word production have shown that native English speakers used phoneme-sized units (e.g., a word-initial phoneme, C) to produce English words, and native Mandarin Chinese speakers employed syllable-sized units (e.g., a word-initial consonant and vowel, CV) as phonological encoding units in Chinese. With spoken word…

Word-initial stops in Mandarin and English show a distinctive phonological categorization but a similar phonetic realization along the VOT (Voice Onset Time) continuum. Previous research reported that native Mandarin adults produce measurably longer long-lag VOTs than native English adults. The present study examined whether and how the difference…

This study investigated the durational features of English word-initial /s/+stop clusters produced by bilingual Mandarin (L1)-English (L2) children and monolingual English children and adults. The participants included two groups of five- to six-year-old bilingual children: low proficiency in the L2 (Bi-low) and high proficiency in the L2…

Research has demonstrated a bilingual advantage in how young children use referential cues such as eye gaze and pointing gesture to locate an object or to categorize objects. This study investigated the use of referential cues (i.e. eye gaze) in fast mapping in three groups of children that differed in their language exposure. One hundred and…

Previous studies showed that bilinguals tend to score lower on some language tests than monolinguals in each of their languages and outperform monolinguals on some cognitive tasks. We investigated whether short-term and working memory capacities that underlie language abilities differ between sequential bilinguals and monolinguals. We tested…