Research has demonstrated that features of lexical and lexicogrammatical use are important predictors of productive second language (L2) proficiency (e.g. Kyle et al. 2018). While some features of lexical use have been studied with L2s other than English (e.g. Tracy-Ventura 2017), multivariate lexical and lexicogrammatical approaches in these L2s…

The mental lexicon changes across the lifespan. Prior work, aggregating data among individuals of similar ages, found that the aging lexicon, represented as a network of free associations, becomes more sparse with age: degree and clustering coefficient decrease and average shortest path length increases. However, because this work is based on…

This dissertation project aims to investigate (1) how three different L2 Spanish instructors treat vocabulary in their beginner Spanish course (SPA 1) depending on their teaching experience, and (2) how an instructor treats vocabulary in a beginner Spanish course during the three academic quarters of his first year of teaching at the university…

The aim was to test the use of eye-tracking methodology for the early detection of ASD in a task of association between unfamiliar objects and pseudowords. Significant differences were found between ASD (n = 57) and TD (n = 57) Spanish speaking toddlers in the number and time of fixation. The TD children showed more and longer fixations on eyes…

This longitudinal study - conducted in the Midwestern United States - examines the child-level factors that promote Spanish-English bilingual toddlers' (n = 47; M[subscript age] = 18.80 months; SD[subscript age] = 0.57) productive vocabulary skills from 18 to 30 months of age. At 6-month intervals, caregivers reported on toddlers' Spanish and…

Core vocabulary lists and vocabulary inventories vary according to language. Lists from one language cannot and should not be assumed to be translatable, as words represent language-specific concepts and grammar. In this manuscript, we (a) present the results of a vocabulary overlap analysis between different published core vocabulary lists in…

Understanding factors that influence reading achievement among bilingual children is considerably more complex than it is for monolingual children. Research on dual language development indicates that bilingual children's oral language abilities are often distributed across languages in varied ways, due to heterogeneity of dual language exposure…

Background: Upper elementary grade students encounter increasingly complex texts with abundant morphologically complex words. Despite the positive effects of morphology-based vocabulary instruction, emergent bilinguals with limited word reading skills may need additional support. Methods: This study investigated the effects of morphological…

The relationship between emotion and language in children is an emerging field of research. To carry out this type of study, researchers need to precisely manipulate the emotional parameters of the words in their experimental material. However, the number of affective norms for words in this population is still limited. To fill this gap, the…

Learner corpus research has expanded from focusing primarily on English as a second language (L2) to include languages such as L2 Spanish, reflecting the growing importance of corpus linguistics in second language acquisition (SLA) research. In this context, and because prompts are the means by which learner corpora gather their texts, it has…

A locus of the difference in meaning between distributive and collective sentences can be the quantifiers that modify their subjects. A current theoretical account of distributive and collective sentences claims that sentences with quantifiers such as "the" in English, or "los" in Spanish, in subject position and an indefinite…

This dissertation investigates the development of cross-linguistic transfer in the use of strategies to repair preconsonantal word-external empty onsets (i.e., /C#V/) in Spanish heritage speakers. The main focus of this work is to analyze the use of /[glottal stop]/-epenthesis as a strategy to repair empty onsets, as its use is asymmetrical in the…

Nautical charts are an essential information resource for safe navigation. However, they are not only a useful resource for navigators; According to the International Hydrological Organization (IHO), they essentially fulfill two functions: 1) Maritime navigation, since most hydrographic services have the obligation to provide coverage of the…

Most bilingual children often display greater proficiency and preference for one of their two languages. Researchers refer to this asymmetry as language dominance. However, despite being possible to determine the overall language dominance in bilinguals, there may be substantial flexibility in their language use. In particular, the relative ease…

This correlational study investigated the direct and indirect relationships derivational morphology had to reading comprehension for Spanish-speaking language minority students in the fifth-grade. It also investigated the direct and indirect effects Spanish phonological awareness had on reading comprehension. Multivariate path analysis was used to…