The influence of a talker's face (e.g., articulatory gestures) and voice, vocalic context, and word position were investigated in the training of Japanese and Korean English as a second language learners to identify American English /[invertedr]/ and /l/. In the pretest–posttest design, an identification paradigm assessed the effects of 3 weeks of training using multiple natural exemplars on videotape. Word position, adjacent vowel, and training type (auditory–visual [AV] vs. auditory only; multiple vs. single talker for Koreans) were independent variables. Findings revealed significant effects of training type (greater improvement with AV), talker, word position, and vowel. Identification accuracy generalized successfully to novel stimuli and a new talker. Transfer to significant production improvement was also noted. These findings are compatible with episodic models for the encoding of speech in memory.

In an orally presented vowel length categorization task with both word and nonword stimuli, a group of 10-year-old German-speaking poor spellers performed less accurately and consistently slower than a group of normal spellers of the same age. The poor spellers' level of performance was comparable to that of a group of 8-year-old inexperienced spellers. In an experimental design, the influence of the phonological characteristics of the preceding and succeeding consonant on children's decisions about vowel length was examined. The type of onset had hardly any effect whereas the offset consonant had a marked influence. It is concluded that vowel length categorization is associated with the ability to mark vowel length in spelling. Vowel length predicts but is not sufficient to explain difficulties in orthographically correct spelling of vowel length.

We examined mothers' speech to 2-year-old children in both quiet and moderately noisy conditions. Mothers were recorded while teaching their children two words, one of which occurred in the context of other people speaking. Parents used characteristics of infant-directed speech (IDS) to these older children. Even more interesting was that many of the prosodic changes typical in IDS were accentuated in noise. In a context in which multiple people were speaking simultaneously, mothers spoke to their children with both increased pitch and increased word duration relative to when they spoke in a quiet condition. However, these changes were quite small, lending only mixed support to proposals that one of the advantages of IDS is that it is easier to separate from background noise.

Second language speakers commonly acknowledge that taboo terms can be uttered with greater ease in their second language (L2) than in their first language (L1). To investigate this phenomenon psychophysiologically, 32 Turkish–English bilinguals rated a variety of stimuli for pleasantness in Turkish (L1) and English (L2) while skin conductance was monitored via fingertip electrodes. Participants demonstrated greater autonomic arousal to taboo words and childhood reprimands (“Shame on you!”) in their L1 compared to their L2. This finding provides quantifiable support for the subjective experiences of L2 speakers.

A rather robust literature exists that views children's language development in the context of interactions with adults. This literature generally focuses on typically developing children and suggests that joint attention facilitates communication development whereas directives do not. In order to understand the crucial features of input supporting language acquisition, research must examine children in less than optimal conditions, including children with chronic otitis media (OM). Controversy exists regarding the outcomes of children with OM, and we argue that parental input is an important factor often neglected in research that may mediate language outcomes. The current study investigates whether parents interact differently with their 12-month-old children based upon children's OM status. The results indicate that parents of chronically affected children direct attention more often and engage in fewer joint attentional episodes than parents of nonchronically affected children. Findings suggest that chronic OM has a localized affect on attentional interactions, the forms of input consistently implicated in language acquisition. Thus, children with OM may receive less than optimal input than peers.

The current study examined the effect of story presentation rates on story recall performance in 35 individuals with Down syndrome and 3 control groups (35 mental age matched, 35 syntax comprehension matched, and 35 syntax production matched children). Three short audiotaped stories were presented to each individual at three different rates (normal, storyteller [slow with expressive inflections], and slow rate). The effect of group but not rate was significant. Individuals with Down syndrome recalled more content words than the production-matched group and the production-matched group recalled fewer content words than the mental age matched and comprehension-matched groups. The results were interpreted in relation to working memory deficits in individuals with Down syndrome, developmental change in story recall of typically developing children, and the contribution of syntax comprehension to story recall.

Reading performance of English children in Grades 1–4 was compared with reading performance of German-, Dutch-, Swedish-, French-, Spanish-, and Finnish-speaking children at the same grade levels. Three different tasks were used: numeral reading, number word reading, and pseudoword reading. The pseudowords shared the letter patterns for onsets and rimes with the number words. The results showed that with the exception of English, pseudowords in the remaining orthographies were read with a high level of accuracy (approaching 90%) by the end of Grade 1. In contrast to accuracy, reading fluency for pseudowords was affected not only by regularity but also by other orthographic differences. The results highlight the need for a revision of English-based characterizations of reading development.