The present study looks into the effects of early multilingual education by investigating linguistic knowledge and metalinguistic awareness in young learners at the primary level. The study aims to establish whether children in multilingual education programmes perform higher on a measure of metalinguistic awareness and with regards to their L1…

Immersion through Virtual Reality (VR) gives the subjective impression that the learner has a realistic experience (Dede, 2009). The pedagogical potential of VR provides the means of enabling constructivist places of contextualised learning. This paper aims to examine the potential the VR application "Mondly" may have to maximise…

Different words generally have different meanings. However, some words seemingly share similar meanings. An example are null and overt pronouns in Italian, which both refer to an individual in the discourse. Is the interpretation and processing of a form affected by the existence of another form with a similar meaning? With a pupillary response…

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in adolescents is understudied in Italy. This study evaluated the Italian Obsessive Compulsive Inventory--Child Version (OCI-CV) and its predictive validity on OCD symptoms at 1-year-follow-up, an aspect that was not investigated by previous international research. Use of OCI-CV in schools might enhance early…

Orthographic forms (spellings) can affect pronunciation in a second language (L2); however, it is not known whether the same orthographic form can affect both L2 pronunciation and metalinguistic awareness. To test this, we asked 260 speakers of English--first-language (L1) English speakers, L1 Italian and L2 English sequential bilinguals, and L1…

Verbal working memory resources may impact syntax comprehension. Thirteen Italian children with cochlear implants (CIs) were assessed in relative clause (RC) comprehension, digit span and nonword repetition and compared to 13 chronological age peers (CA) and 13 younger controls (LA) with normal hearing (NH). The RC comprehension task tested…

Despite the fact that the influence of learning experiences on foreign language learning motivation has been widely acknowledged and emphasised, there are hardly any studies concentrating on these learning experiences. Hence, the aim of this study is to map the language learning experiences of former and current language learners in order to…

The present study aimed at investigating whether L2 learning affects phonological short-term and working memory and first language (L1) development. The performance of a group of 31 4- to-5-year-old sequential bilinguals attending an International School on tasks assessing phonological short-term and working memory and linguistic performance in L1…

Recent evidence demonstrates that pictures corresponding to iconic signs are named faster than pictures corresponding to non-iconic signs. The present study investigates the locus of the iconicity advantage in hearing bimodal bilinguals. A naming experiment with iconic and non-iconic pictures in Italian Sign Language (LIS) was conducted. Bimodal…

Academic globalisation and the internationalisation of scientific knowledge currently place higher education between two forces: global competitiveness and innovation on the one hand, local attractiveness and diversity on the other. In view of this double requirement, this paper aims to examine language policy and analyse its impact on language…

The global quarantine measures and restrictions have posed a challenge to the structure and procedure of university summative assessment process. Foreign Languages Acquisition and Linguistic Education assessment are interdisciplinary processes, informed by the nature of linguistic content and types of communicative and professional activities…

We report on an analysis of spontaneous gesture production in 2-year-old children who come from three countries (Italy, United Kingdom, Australia) and who speak two languages (Italian, English), in an attempt to tease apart the influence of language and culture when comparing children from different cultural and linguistic environments.…

The effects of song and elaboration were assessed on the acquisition and retention of lexical items by beginner learners of Italian. Lexical acquisition investigated through an incidental learning experiment based on the premise that growth in L2 vocabulary can be facilitated by subvocal rehearsal and elaborate processing of lexical items.…

Background: Proxy quality of life (QoL) evaluation has been reported to be influenced by many factors. The present study was designed to investigate the impact that the presence of severe intellectual disability (ID) may have on proxy attribution of QoL in the instrumental assessment. Methods: The "other person" form (proxy…

Although metaphors are essential tools in everyday communication and educational settings, the literature lacks evidence of effective training tools to promote metaphor comprehension in typical development. Grounding in theoretical pragmatics, we developed a novel metaphor comprehension training (MetaCom) for school-age children that focuses on…