Subjective age of acquisition norms for 1604 English words by Spanish L2 speakers of English and their relationship with lexico-semantic, affective, sociolinguistic and proficiency variables.

Psycholinguistic studies have shown that there are many variables implicated in language comprehension and production. At the lexical level, subjective age of acquisition (AoA), the estimate of the age at which a word is acquired, is key for stimuli selection in psycholinguistic studies. AoA databases in English are often used when testing a variety of phenomena in second language (L2) speakers of English. However, these have limitations, as the norms are not provided by the target population (L2 speakers of English) but by native English speakers. In this study, we asked native Spanish L2 speakers of English to provide subjective AoA ratings for 1604 English words, and investigated whether factors related to 14 lexico-semantic and affective variables, both in Spanish and English, and to the speakers' profile (i.e., sociolinguistic variables and L2 proficiency), were related to the L2 AoA ratings. We used boosted regression trees, an advanced form of regression analysis based on machine learning and boosting algorithms, to analyse the data. Our results showed that the model accounted for a relevant proportion of deviance (58.56%), with the English AoA provided by native English speakers being the strongest predictor for L2 AoA. Additionally, L2 AoA correlated with L2 reaction times. Our database is a useful tool for the research community running psycholinguistic studies in L2 speakers of English. It adds knowledge about which factors-linked to the characteristics of both the linguistic stimuli and the speakers-affect L2 subjective AoA. The database and the data can be downloaded from: https://osf.io/gr8xd/?view_only=73b01dccbedb4d7897c8d104d3d68c46 .

Limits of a Second Language: Native and Second Languages in Management Team Communication.

Cultural differences in speech acts are common challenges in management involving Chinese and Western managers. Comparing four groups - Native-speaking Chinese, English-speaking Chinese, Chinese-speaking Westerners, and non-Chinese- speaking Westerners, we assessed the effects of language and ethnicity on the ability to predict communication obstacles in a management team scenario. Bilingual subjects were less likely to be influenced by ethnic biases. Still, bilinguals were not more likely to adjust their metacognitions about communication toward those of the native speakers. The study creates a link between management, cognition and linguistics, as well as having consequences for the study of metacognition in cross-cultural management.

Speech cues to deception in bilinguals.

Acoustic cues to deception on a picture naming task were analyzed in three groups of English speakers: monolinguals, bilinguals with English as their first language (English-L1), and bilinguals with English as a second language (English-L2). Results revealed that all participants had longer reaction times when generating falsehoods than when producing truths, and that the effect was more robust for English-L2 bilinguals than for the other two groups. Articulation rate was higher for all groups when producing lies. Mean fundamental frequency and intensity cues were not reliable cues to deception, but there was lower variance in both of these parameters when generating false vs. true labels for all participants. Results suggest that naming latency was the only cue to deception that differed by language background. These findings broadly support the cognitive-load theory of deception, suggesting that a combination of producing deceptive speech and using a second language puts an extra load on the speaker.

How Age and Linguistic Competence Affect Memory for Heard Information.

The short-term memory performance of a group of younger adults, for whom English was a second language (young EL2 listeners), was compared to that of younger and older adults for whom English was their first language (EL1 listeners). To-be-remembered words were presented in noise and in quiet. When presented in noise, the listening situation was adjusted to ensure that the likelihood of recognizing the individual words was comparable for all groups. Previous studies which used the same paradigm found memory performance of older EL1 adults on this paired-associate task to be poorer than that of their younger EL1 counterparts both in quiet and in a background of babble. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether the less well-established semantic and linguistic skills of EL2 listeners would also lead to memory deficits even after equating for word recognition as was done for the younger and older EL1 listeners. No significant differences in memory performance were found between young EL1 and EL2 listeners after equating for word recognition, indicating that the EL2 listeners' poorer semantic and linguistic skills had little effect on their ability to memorize and recall paired associates. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that age-related declines in memory are primarily due to age-related declines in higher-order processes supporting stream segregation and episodic memory. Such declines are likely to increase the load on higher-order (possibly limited) cognitive processes supporting memory. The problems that these results pose for the comprehension of spoken language in these three groups are discussed.