It is with renewed appreciation for the size of the task that I come to writing the present
chapter. The number of special issues of journals dedicated to im/politeness these days …

This article reviews research on when acoustic‐phonetic variability facilitates, inhibits, or
does not impact perceptual development for spoken language, to illuminate mechanisms by …

Abstract Language use in conversational settings is tailored to the knowledge and beliefs of
specific conversational partners. We compare conversational partners in studies of …

How does one assess developmental change when the measures themselves change with
development? Most developmental studies of word learning use either looking (infants) or …

The seeming ease with which we usually understand each other belies the complexity of the
processes that underlie speech perception. One of the biggest computational challenges is …

Upon hearing a scalar adjective in a definite referring expression such as “the big…,”
listeners typically make anticipatory eye movements to an item in a contrast set, such as a …

Recent advances in understanding the functionality of the human hippocampus has led to a
number of proposals for how hippocampus may support a range of cognitive abilities …

Language comprehension is shaped by world knowledge. After hearing about “a farm
animal,” meanings of typical (“cow”) versus atypical exemplars (“ox”) are more accessible …

A critical indicator of spoken language knowledge is the ability to discern the finest possible
distinctions that exist between words in a language—minimal pairs, for example, the …

Prior research suggests that prediction supports language processing and learning.
However, the ecological validity of such findings is unclear because experiments usually …