Previous bilingual studies showed reduced hemispheric asymmetry in visual tasks such as face perception in bilinguals compared with monolinguals, which suggested that hemispheric asymmetry in visual tasks could be modulated by experience in reading one or two languages. Here we examined whether difference in hemispheric asymmetry in visual tasks can also be observed in bilinguals who have diffe...

This study examined language-specific links among auditory processing, linguistic prosody awareness, and Mandarin (L1) and English (L2) word reading in 61 Mandarin-speaking, English-learning children. Three auditory discrimination abilities were measured: pitch contour, pitch interval, and rise time (rate of intensity change at tone onset). Linguistic prosody awareness was measured three ways: ...

Previous research with unbalanced, different-script bilinguals has typically produced null L2-L1 noncognate masked translation priming effects in lexical decision tasks (LDT). Two novel models of the bilingual mental lexicon have emerged to account for these null results: the episodic L2 hypothesis and the Sense model. In contrast, the BIA+ model predicts significant priming whenever bilinguals...

By administering Simon, Simon switching, and operation-span working memory tasks to Cantonese-English bilingual children who varied in their first-language (L1, Cantonese) and second-language (L2, English) proficiencies, as quantified by standardized vocabulary test performance, the current study examined the effects of L1 and L2 proficiency on attentional control performance. Apart from mean p...

In the present paper, we investigated the acquisition of three English sentence types, statements (S), absolute yes-no questions (AQ), and declarative questions (DQ), by L1 Spanish-L2 English adult speakers. Learners of English must acquire not only the syntactic and intonational cues that distinguish AQs from DQs, but also the pragmatic distinction between the two. Participants completed two p...

L2 language socialization asks how learners come to gain the ability to write appropriately and sufficiently in an institutional academic community of practice. In the same line, this study focuses on the process of socialization of an Iranian English L2 essay writing class in the context of higher education. The theoretical backgrounds rely on the socialization and Vygotsky's sociocult...