Language Learning Cognitive Neuroscience Series – serie

Every teacher knows that learners are notoriously variable in how successful they are at acquiring a new language. This interdisciplinary volume questions what it is that makes each of us good or bad at learning a second language. Offers a broad overview of current theories, key findings, and methodological approaches in the fieldBrings together research from language teaching and assessment, psycholinguistics, and the neurobiology of languageProvides a sound empirical basis for the development of assessment tools and teaching strategies, and sheds new light on the language learning processInvestigates how people differ from each other in how they approach language learning, and in doing so goes beyond other studies which focus primarily on the behavior of groups of learners

The contributions to this special issue were selected from a wealth of studies presented at the first Workshop on Infant Language Development held in Europe (Donostia, Spain) including keynote talks by such prominent infant researchers as Jenny Saffran, Marilyn Vihman, Krista Byers-Heinlin, and Dick Aslin. One of the many goals of this meeting was to bring together researchers who work on the acquisition of various languages. For this reason, research reported in this special issue includes experimental data from German, Japanese, Basque, Spanish, Italian, French, British, English, and American English infants. By investigating various abilities of infants from all these linguistic backgrounds, the articles published within this volume cover the research fields of speech perception development, cognitive development, and the development of word comprehension and production.

This volume explores the cognitive neuroscience of second language acquisition from the perspectives of critical/sensitive periods, maturational effects, individual differences, neural regions involved, and processing characteristics. The research methods used include functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET), and event related potentials (ERP). The studies in this volume provide initial answers to core questions including: which brain areas are reliably activated in second language processing? Are they the same or different from those activated in first language acquisition and use? And what are the behavioral consequences of individual differences among brains?

Time is a fundamental aspect of human cognition and action.All languages have developed rich means to express various facets of time, such as bare time spans, their position on the time line, or their duration. This volume explores what we know about the neural and cognitive representations of time that speakers can draw on in language. Considers the role time plays as an essential element of human cognition and action, providing important insights to inform and extend current studies of time in language and in language acquisitionExamines the main devices used to encode time in natural language, such as lexical elements, tense, and aspect, and draws on the latest psychological and neurobiological findings

Explores a new approach to studying language as a complex adaptive system, illustrating its commonalities across many areas of language researchBrings together a team of leading researchers in linguistics, psychology, and complex systems to discuss the groundbreaking significance of this perspective for their workIllustrates its application across a variety of subfields, including languages usage, language evolution, language structure, and first and second language acquisition"What a breath of fresh air! As interesting a collection of papers as you are likely to find on the evolution, learning, and use of language from the point of view of both cognitive underpinnings and communicative functions."  Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology