It is well-established that allographs like the uppercase and lowercase forms of the Roman alphabet (e.g., a and A) map onto the same "abstract letter identity," orthographic representations that are independent of the visual form. Consistent with this, in the allograph match task ("Are 'a' and 'A' the same letter?"), priming…

The Hebb repetition paradigm has recently attracted attention as a measure of serial order learning, which underlies word-form learning abilities. Although children are good vocabulary learners, it is surprising that previous Hebb learning studies with young children show rather weak Hebb effects. In this study, we conducted two experiments to…

This study investigated how well second language (L2) readers of English use context to identify proper names as such. It represents a first step in exploring a widely held assumption that L2 readers of English can easily identify proper names by their form and function. The study isolates the issue of function to investigate whether context alone…

This paper examines learners' fluency development in L2 silent reading rate and comprehension. In both L1 and L2 readings, a positive relationship between readers' silent reading rate and comprehension has not been as firmly established as theories might propose. Based on Wallot et al. (2014), the paper indicates the need to look at readers'…

Many studies evidence the flexibility of speech perception in the first language (L1), which allows rapid adaptation to unfamiliar foreign accents. Two influential studies by Bradlow and Bent (2008) and a follow-up study by Baese-Berk et al. (2013) found that increased variability as a function of the number of talkers and accents facilitated the…

This article reports on a study that combined two strands of research: studies of incidental vocabulary learning and studies of the classroom lexical environment (in which vocabulary exposure is measured and the potential for learning estimated). The study looked at the orthographic lexical environment in a language classroom over a semester and…

Models of written word recognition in languages using the Roman alphabet assume that a word's visual form is quickly mapped onto abstract units. This proposal is consistent with the finding that masked priming effects are of similar magnitude from lowercase, uppercase, and alternating-case primes (e.g., beard-BEARD, BEARD-BEARD, and BeArD-BEARD).…

Contrastive focus, conveyed by prosodic cues, marks important information. Studies have shown that 6-year-olds learning English and Japanese can use contrastive focus during online sentence comprehension: focus used in a "contrastive context" facilitates the identification of a target referent (speeding up processing), whereas focus used…

This paper investigates the effect of using L1 translations versus L2 definitions on the learning and testing of L2 vocabulary recognition knowledge. For this study, 48 Japanese L2 learners of English studied 200 lexical items from the academic word list (AWL) over a 10-week period. To support their learning, the participants were provided with…

Serial ordering mechanisms have been investigated extensively in psychology and psycholinguistics. It has also been demonstrated repeatedly that long-term phonological knowledge contributes to serial ordering. However, the mechanisms that contribute to serial ordering have yet to be fully understood. To understand these mechanisms, we demonstrate…

We examined the relationship between morphological awareness and word reading skills in syllabic Hiragana and morphographic Kanji. Participants were 127 Grade 1 Japanese-speaking children who were followed until Grade 2. The results showed that Grade 1 morphological awareness was uniquely and comparably associated with word reading skills in both…

This study examined Japanese children's understanding of two Japanese notational systems: "hiragana" and "kanji". In three experiments, 126 3- to 6-year-olds were asked to name words written in hiragana or kanji as they appeared with different pictures. Consistent with Bialystok ("Journal of Experimental Child…

The present study addressed the role of speed as a factor in tests of second language (L2) vocabulary knowledge, presupposing that speed of performance is important in actual language use. Research questions were: (a) Do learners with a larger vocabulary size answer faster on an L2 vocabulary breadth test than smaller vocabulary sized learners?;…

Studies using the lexical decision task with English stimuli have demonstrated that homophones are responded to more slowly than nonhomophonic controls. In contrast, several studies using Chinese stimuli have shown that homophones are responded to more rapidly than nonhomophonic controls. In an attempt to better understand the impact of homophony,…

This study investigated the application of the speeded lexical decision task to L2 aural processing efficiency. One-hundred and twenty Japanese university students completed an aural word/nonword task. When the variation of lexical decision time (CV) was correlated with reaction time (RT), the results suggested that the single-word recognition…