The brain has an extraordinary ability to functionally and physically change or reconfigure its
structure in response to environmental stimulus, cognitive demand, or behavioral …

A contentious issue in contemporary psycholinguistics is whether bilingualism enhances
executive functions. Here, we report a meta-analysis of 80 studies (253 effect sizes) …

Meaning is a fundamental component of nearly all aspects of human cognition, but formal
models of semantic memory have classically lagged behind many other areas of cognition …

Studies examining factors that influence when words are learned typically investigate one
lexical category or a small set of words. We provide the first evaluation of the relation …

In 2005, Science magazine designated the problem of accounting for difficulties in L2
(second language) learning as one of the 125 outstanding challenges facing scientific …

Interlanguage pragmatics, unlike other areas treated in this Handbook, can be related to
second language acquisition (SLA), but also exists apart from SLA research. This chapter …

The acquisition of new skills over a life span is a remarkable human ability. This ability,
however, is constrained by age of acquisition (AoA); that is, the age at which learning occurs …

Word learning is a “chicken and egg” problem. If a child could understand speakers'
utterances, it would be easy to learn the meanings of individual words, and once a child …

There are three obvious differences between first and second language learners. First,
infants who are learning language are also engaged in learning about how the world works …

In SLA, it has been often assumed that the effect of the first language (L1) is not very strong
in the acquisition of grammatical morphemes (eg, Ellis, 1994; Mitchell & Myles, 2004) …