AIMS To test the hypothesis that exposure to ambient language in the womb alters phonetic perception shortly after birth. This two-country study aimed to see whether neonates demonstrated prenatal learning by how they responded to vowels in a category from their native language and another non-native language, regardless of how much postnatal experience the infants had. METHOD A counterbalanc...

The study examines a number of acoustic properties of non-native speech directed to a native speaker, a non-native speaker with a shared first language background, and a non-native speaker with a different first language. Results demonstrate that the interlocutor condition interacts with the language attitudes factor: Participants with more positive attitudes towards their second language (Engl...

background: bilingual individuals reported that they experience more intensive emotions in native language. this study tries to investigate this claim psychophysiologicaly. the effect of age and second language acquisition context on physiological appearances of first and second languages were also investigated.   methods: 60turkish and kurdish bilinguals were explored. the emotional stimuli em...

The influence of phonological similarity on bilingual language processing was examined within and across languages in three experiments. Phonological similarity was manipulated within a language by varying neighborhood density, and across languages by varying extent of cross-linguistic overlap between native and non-native languages. In Experiment 1, speed and accuracy of bilinguals' picture na...

This paper describes the CMU Let’s Go!! bus information system, an experimental system designed to study the use of spoken dialogue interfaces by non-native speakers. The differences in performance of the speech recognition and language understanding modules of the system when confronted with native and non-native spontaneous speech are analyzed. Focus is placed on the linguistic mismatch betwe...

This article presents a selective overview of studies that have investigated how advanced adult second language (L2) learners process morphologically complex words. The studies reported here have used different kinds of experimental tasks (including speeded grammaticality judgments, lexical decision, or priming) to examine three domains of morphological processing (regular and irregular inflect...

We investigated the effects of non-native language (English) exposure on event-related potentials (ERPs) in first- and second-year (four- and five-year-old) preschool Japanese native speakers while they listened to semantically congruent and incongruent Japanese sentences. The children were divided into a non-native language exposed group (exposed group) and a group without such experiences (co...

Numerous studies have shown that the native language influences foreign word recognition and that this influence is modulated by the proficiency in the non-native language. Here we explored how the degree of reliance on cross-language similarity (as measured by the cognate facilitation effect) together with other domain-general cognitive factors contribute to reading comprehension achievement i...

Learning attitudes and motivation are among the most important factors that affect students' second language learning outcomes. Many previous studies also revealed have a positive relationship with students’ However, non-native Chinese Language (CL) learners may require more attention. Hence, objectives of this study (1) to identify Malaysian former SJKC CL learners’ proficiency levels; (2) exa...