Another look at the role of vowel letters in word reading in L2 English among native Korean readers
This study investigated the role of vowels in L2 English word reading among native Korean readers. Seventy six Korean- and English-speaking adults read words in a naming test. Stimuli included four conditions: lowercase, uppercase, letter strings with no vowels (e.g., cmmn for common), and letter strings with randomly missing letters (e.g., corct for correct). Overall, the vowel deletion manipulation gave rise to higher accuracy and faster reading than the random omission condition for the two groups. When the baseline was controlled, the group and condition variables jointly affected accuracy, but the condition and L1 scr...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research

Assessment of linguistic and verbal short-term memory components of language abilities in aphasia
Publication date: Available online 21 February 2018Source: Journal of NeurolinguisticsAuthor(s): Nadine Martin, Irene Minkina, Francine P. Kohen, Michelene Kalinyak-FliszarAbstractSome current models of aphasia emphasize a role of short-term memory in the processing of language and propose that the language impairment in aphasia involves impairment to cognitive processes that activate and maintain representations of words over the time-period needed to support single word and multiple word tasks, including verbal span tasks. This paper reports normative data from 39 people with aphasia and 16 age-matched neurotypical contr...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research

Working memory in aphasia: Peeling the onion
Publication date: Available online 7 March 2018Source: Journal of NeurolinguisticsAuthor(s): Stephanie C. Christensen, Heather Harris Wright, Ileana RatiuAbstractCompared to neurologically healthy adults, persons with aphasia (PWA) demonstrate impaired performance on working memory (WM) tasks. These deficits in WM are thought to underlie language processing problems in PWA. However, most studies use WM tasks that are verbal in nature, making it difficult to determine if these deficits are due to domain-general attentional processes related to WM or domain-specific verbal abilities. The purpose of the current study was to e...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research

Deconstructing and reconstructing cross-language transfer in bilingual reading development: An interactive framework
Publication date: Available online 8 March 2018Source: Journal of NeurolinguisticsAuthor(s): Sheila Cira Chung, Xi Chen, Esther GevaAbstractThe concept of cross-language transfer is central in bilingual reading development. This is because researchers and educators search for the conditions that allow learning that takes place in one language to enhance learning in the other language (Perkins & Salomon, 1992). In the past, the research focus was primarily on cross-language transfer in spoken language. However, since the 90s, cross-language transfer has been studied in relation to literacy aspects, such as word reading, spe...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research

Chinese-English bilinguals transfer L1 lexical reading procedures and holistic orthographic coding to L2 English
This study examines second language (L2) reading by individuals with a Chinese or Korean native literacy (L1) background. It tests a hypothesis about the L1-L2 transfer of word reading procedures, which predicts that Chinese-English (CE) bilinguals transfer a bias towards lexical reading procedures and holistic orthographic coding to L2 English reading, whereas Korean-English (KE) bilinguals transfer a bias towards sublexical reading procedures and analytic orthographic coding. To test this hypothesis, we gave a word naming task to CE and KE groups matched on English language experience and use. The stimuli were English wo...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research

Radical repetition effects in beginning learners of Chinese as a foreign language reading
Publication date: Available online 23 March 2018Source: Journal of NeurolinguisticsAuthor(s): Atsuko Takashima, Ludo VerhoevenAbstractThe aim of the present study was to examine whether repetition of radicals during training of Chinese characters leads to better word acquisition performance in beginning learners of Chinese as a foreign language. Thirty Dutch university students were trained on 36 Chinese one-character words for their pronunciations and meanings. They were also exposed to the specifics of the radicals, that is, for phonetic radicals, the associated pronunciation was explained, and for semantic radicals the ...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research

Effects of working memory demands on sentence production in aphasia
Publication date: Available online 31 March 2018Source: Journal of NeurolinguisticsAuthor(s): Jee Eun Sung, Bora Eom, Soo Eun LeeAbstractThe purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of task demands on sentence production and their relation to working memory (WM) capacity in people with aphasia using a verb-final language. The current study manipulated the WM loads on the sentence production tasks by varying the following three factors: task type (syntactic priming vs. sentence completion), sentence type (active vs. passive), and canonicity (canonical vs. noncanonical word order). Task type and word order canonic...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research

Sentence processing in aphasia: An examination of material-specific and general cognitive factors
Publication date: Available online 4 April 2018Source: Journal of NeurolinguisticsAuthor(s): Laura L. MurrayAbstractThe purpose of this study was to characterize further the nature of sentence processing deficits in acquired aphasia. Adults with aphasia and age- and education-matched adults with no brain damage completed a battery of formal cognitive-linguistic tests and an experimental sentence judgment task, which was performed alone and during focused attention and divided attention or dual-task conditions. The specific aims were to determine whether (a) increased extra-linguistic cognitive demands (i.e., focused and di...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research

On the association between memory capacity and sentence comprehension: Insights from a systematic review and meta-analysis of the aphasia literature
Publication date: Available online 4 April 2018Source: Journal of NeurolinguisticsAuthor(s): Maria Varkanitsa, David CaplanAbstractThe role of short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) in sentence comprehension has been controversial; many neuropsychological studies and studies with neurologically intact individuals have revealed co-occurrence of STM/WM and sentence comprehension while other studies have found no relation between the two. The aim of this article is to revisit the association between memory capacity and sentence comprehension by systematically reviewing all relevant studies in the aphasia literature p...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research

Reading comprehension in L1 and L2: An integrative approach
Publication date: Available online 7 April 2018Source: Journal of NeurolinguisticsAuthor(s): Ping Li, Roy B. ClarianaAbstractLike other areas of research in reading and language, the study of reading comprehension has traditionally focused on readers of native or first language, and relatively little attention has been directed to the study of second language reading comprehension. Even fewer studies have examined the neurocognitive bases of second language reading comprehension. In this article we take these research gaps as a starting point for providing an integrative analysis of reading comprehension in first and secon...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research

Beyond the simple view of early first and second language reading: The impact of lexical quality
Publication date: Available online 14 April 2018Source: Journal of NeurolinguisticsAuthor(s): Ludo Verhoeven, Marinus Voeten, Anne VermeerAbstractAccording to the simple view of reading (SVR), reading comprehension is the product of word decoding and listening comprehension. Against this background, we examined the additional role of early lexical quality in the prediction of reading comprehension, either directly or indirectly via word decoding or listening comprehension. Following a longitudinal design, 566 children learning to read Dutch as L1 and 463 children learning to read Dutch as L2 in the Netherlands were tested ...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research

Do adults acquire a second orthography using their native reading network?
Publication date: Available online 16 April 2018Source: Journal of NeurolinguisticsAuthor(s): Lea Martin, Elizabeth A. Hirshorn, Corrine Durisko, Michelle W. Moore, Robert Schwartz, Yihao Zheng, Julie A. FiezAbstractAdult second language learners typically aim to acquire both spoken and written proficiency in the second language (L2). It is widely assumed that adults fully retain the capacity they used to acquire literacy as children for their native language (L1). However, given basic principles of neural plasticity and a limited body of empirical evidence, this assumption merits investigation. Accordingly, the current wo...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research

Working memory and discourse production in people with aphasia
This study explored the relationship between Working Memory (WM) and discourse production in people with aphasia, based on data from the AphasiaBank. The dataset comprised the children's story “Cinderella” and basic WM measures of span, collected from 45 participants (15 people with nonfluent Broca's aphasia, 15 people with anomic aphasia, 15 people with fluent Wernicke's aphasia). Discourse samples were coded for and analyzed in terms of content, micro- (words and sentences) and macro- (groups of sentences) linguistic components, known to demonstrate multi-level discourse ability. Comparisons were made among the diffe...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research

Becoming a balanced, proficient bilingual: Predictions from age of acquisition & genetic background
Publication date: May 2018Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics, Volume 46Author(s): Kelly A. Vaughn, Arturo E. HernandezAbstractGenetic variants related to dopamine functioning (e.g., the ANKK1/TaqIa polymorphism within the DRD2 gene and the Val158Met polymorphism within the COMT gene) have previously been shown to predict cognitive flexibility and learning (e.g., Colzato et al., 2010; Stelzel et al., 2010). Additionally, researchers have found that these genetic variants may also predict second language learning (Mamiya et al., 2016), although this relationship may change across the lifespan (Sugiura et al., 2011). The cur...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research

Effects of regiolects on the perception of developmental foreign accent syndrome
Publication date: May 2018Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics, Volume 46Author(s): W. Tops, S. Neimeijer, P. MariënAbstractForeign accent syndrome (FAS) is a relatively rare speech motor disorder in which the pronunciation of an affected speaker is perceived as distinctly foreign by listeners of the same language community. Because of various close semiological resemblances with apraxia of speech, FAS has been hypothesized to be an apraxia subtype. In 2009 two cases of developmental FAS (dFAS) were described in whom the disorder was detected in an early stage of their speech-language development in the absence of brain da...
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research