To investigate whether similar control processes are used during single and dual language production, we compared register switching (formal and informal speech in the same language) vs. language switching (French and English). The results across two experiments showed a positive correlation of overall register- and language-switch costs and similar formal French switch costs across the two switching ...

Recent experimental and theoretical studies have shown that the assessment of students’ satisfaction of their basic psychological needs (BPN) can be a powerful resource to identify different areas to improve their well-being, engagement, or learning achievement in school contexts. However, currently, the number of validated tools to assess the satisfaction of the BPN is very low, hindering informed ...

The effects of cognate synonymy in L2 word learning are explored. Participants learned the names of well-known concrete concepts in a new fictional language following a picture-word association paradigm. Half of the concepts (set A) had two possible translations in the new language (i.e., both words were synonyms): one was a cognate in participants’ L1 and the other one was not. The other half ...

The current study examines how monolingual children and bilingual children with languages that are orthotactically similar and dissimilar learn novel words depending on their characteristics. We contrasted word learning for words that violate or respect the orthotactic legality of bilinguals’ languages investigating the impact of the similarity between those two languages. In Experiment 1, three ...

Vocabulary learning occurs throughout the lifespan, often implicitly. For foreign language learners, this is particularly challenging as they must acquire a large number of new words with little exposure. In the present study, we explore the effects of contextual diversity—namely, the number of texts a word appears in—on native and foreign language word learning. Participants read several texts that ...

The present study intended to investigate, first, the impact of semantic clustering on the recall and recognition of incidentally learned words in a new language, and second, how the interaction between semantic clustering and frequency of occurrence may modulate learning. To that end, Spanish university students watched an intentionally created video which contained Spanish target words that were ...

Previous research has shown that changes in the scenarios in which something is learned and recalled, respectively, may result in a subpar performance in memory recollection. The current study aimed to evaluate how changes in the visuo-perceptual environmental learning context impact incidental vocabulary learning. To this end, a highly immersive virtual reality setting was created, and participants ...

Cognitive functions are essential in human development in general, and they play a key role in language learning, as well as in reading and writing. A large body of evidence makes the relationship between executive functions and language acquisition and processing indisputable [Moser et al., 2007; Mazuka et al., 2009; Woodard et al., 2016; see also the meta-analysis by Swanson et al. (2009)]. ...

The present study is set to explore the way the orthographic distributional properties of novel written words and the number of exposures to these words affect their incidental learning in terms of recall and recognition. To that end, two experiments were conducted using videos with captions. These videos included written nonwords (orthographically marked language-specific items) and pseudowords ...

Research on the different components of fluid intelligence and how they relate to each other is quite extensive. Meanwhile, when it comes to crystallized intelligence, only vocabulary size has been somewhat thoroughly studied, while other key components, such as general knowledge, remain largely unexplored. This study aims to further our understanding of general knowledge as a key component of ...