Individual differences in L2 language and literacy outcomes in English-speaking students in French-L2 immersion programs

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Caroline Erdos*, Fred Genesee*, & Robert Savage** *Department of Psychology, McGill University, **Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology, McGill University

Abstract

The goals of this research are: (1) to understand individual differences in second language (L2) oral and reading acquisition among English-speaking students in French-L2 immersion programs; (2) to determine if predictors of oral and literacy development in English also predict individual differences (and in particular difficulty) in oral and literacy development in French-L2; and (3) to determine to what extent and how risk for reading and language acquisition difficulties/impairment in a second language overlap. To accomplish these goals, we administered a comprehensive battery of predictor tests in English to English-speaking students in early total French Immersion at the beginning and end of Kindergarten (K). We subsequently administered a battery of tests of oral language and reading achievement in English and in French at the end of grade 1.

Phonological priming effects in bilinguals

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Corinne Haigh* & Debra Jared** *Department of Psychology, McGill University, **Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario

Abstract

English-French bilinguals performed one of four priming tasks. Critical stimuli were English target words that had been preceded by French-derived pseudohomophone primes (e.g. tis-TEA, "tis" rhymes with "gris"). Results provided clear evidence of cross-language phonological priming when participants read in their second language, however no such evidence was found for participants reading in the first language. Phonological activation can appear to be both language selective and nonselective, depending on whether a bilingual is reading in their weaker or stronger language.

Les enfants dysphasiques présentent-ils des difficultés de traitement émotionnel?

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Amina Skhiri École d'Orthophonie et d'Audiologie, Université de Montréal

Abstract

La dysphasie est définie comme un trouble primaire du développement du langage. Cette définition, axée sur les déficits du langage, semble restrictive et ne rend pas compte de l’ensemble des difficultés vécues par ces enfants. En particulier, ces enfants éprouvent des difficultés à interpréter des émotions de base comme la joie ou la peur. Une grande part des études se base sur des stimuli émotionnels présentés oralement avec des images statiques. Nous questionnerons la portée de tels résultats et présenterons les bénéfices (théoriques, diagnostiques et cliniques) à retirer d’études plus avancées du traitement émotionnel des enfants dysphasiques.

Influence of prosody on the production of determiners and adjectives in two-year-old children's sentences

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Roseline Fréchette and Marie Labelle Department of Linguistics, UQAM

Abstract

Nine French-speaking children of 1;11 to 2;7 were asked to repeat 54 four to five word sentences of the form “Pronoun V NP” with three conditions: a) det + monosyllabic noun; b) det + bisyllabic noun; c) det + monosyllabic adjective + monosyllabic noun. If language-specific prosodic structures play a role in acquisition, early determiners in an iambic language like French should be licensed by the stress pattern of the following noun. The results show 1) more determiner omission in condition b than in a; 2) more determiner omission in c than in b.

The difference between conditions a & b suggests that children’s productions are constrained by the prosodic foot; for condition c, the fact that children do not attach the determiner to the adjective to form a binary foot suggests that the higher level of structure introduced by the adjective plays a role in functional word production.

L2 acquisition of scalar implicatures: Not every implicature is the same

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Moti Lieberman Department of Linguistics, McGill University

Abstract

Second language speakers are said to have problems with integrating pragmatic information into their linguistic representations. Recently, scalar implicatures have been presented as a phenomenon with which L2 speakers differ from native speakers. L2 speakers are argued to be more “logical” in their interpretations of some classes of scalar implicatures than L1 speakers, due to a deficit in working memory stemming from speaking in their non-native tongue. I present data from a new study examining interpretations of scalar implicatures, which cast new light on how L2 speakers handle these sentences, and challenges the current deficit view regarding automatic pragmatic integration.

Working memory and oral fluency during spontaneous language production

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Irena O'Brien*, Debra Titone*, Caroline Palmer*, Natalie Phillips**, David McFarland***, Anna Jamrozik****, Lisa Jewett*****Department of Psychology, McGill University, **Department of Psychology, Concordia University, *** École d'orthophonie et d'audiology, Université de Montréal, ****

Abstract

Models of language production propose that speech is planned incrementally. We investigated whether individual differences in working memory are related to planning in spontaneous speech. Spontaneous speech recordings and working memory measures (modified listening span and backward digit span) were obtained from native English speakers. Multiple regressions revealed that native English speakers with higher backward digit spans spoke with longer runs and shorter pauses. Additionally, speakers with shorter sentence processing times in the listening span task spoke faster and exhibited fewer dysfluencies. These findings suggest that good working memory resources facilitate fluent spontaneous speech by allowing more efficient incremental planning.