Abstract

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that impacts many areas of a person’s life. So far little is known on how ADHD affects the learning and usage of additional languages. The present study investigates what potential challenges and benefits adults with ADHD experience in second language (L2) learning, and what strategies they have developed to offset ADHD-related differences in cognition and behaviour. As part of a larger questionnaire, 59 participants with ADHD provided written responses, answering questions on how ADHD has influenced their learning and use of multiple languages. After a multiple-step classification process, three overarching topics were identified: (1) the effects of cognition on language learning and use; (2) how different language components and language modalities are affected by ADHD; and (3) what language learning strategies adults with ADHD apply. In our analysis, we present authentic quotes from individuals with ADHD and place them into the larger context of research on neurodivergence and L2 acquisition. Our results highlight the great heterogeneity in learning experiences and pathways in adults with ADHD. Interestingly, many respondents embrace their neurodiversity and develop individual strategies to enhance L2 proficiency. Our research aims to contribute to a better understanding of multilingualism within neurodiverse populations.

Introduction

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder known to significantly impact various aspects of an individual’s life. ADHD affects approximately 5.3–7.2 percent of children and youth, and 2.5 to 6.8 percent of adults worldwide (cf. Polanczyk et al., 2014; Song et al., 2021), often co-occurring with speech and communication disorders such as language disorder, social pragmatic communication disorder, and dyslexia (Tannock, 2018; Willcutt and Pennington, 2000). While the impact of dyslexia on second language acquisition is well studied (e.g., Nijakowska, 2020; Schneider and Crombie, 2003), so far limited attention has been given to exploring the effects that ADHD has on acquiring and using additional languages. The present study aims to address this research gap by featuring the individual experiences and reflections of people diagnosed with ADHD on how their disorder affects the way they learn or use multiple languages. The findings from this study can lay the foundation for more individualized language learning strategies as well as more inclusive instructional programs that are better suited to the specific needs of adult second language learners with ADHD.

1.1. Diversity of ADHD
Despite ADHD being an acknowledged psychiatric diagnostic category (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), it is important to highlight the behavioural and cognitive heterogeneity of people diagnosed with ADHD. First, three different presentations of ADHD can be distinguished: (1) the inattentive presentation, characterized by for instance difficulties to maintain focus, easily getting distracted and making careless mistakes; (2) the hyperactive-impulsive presentation, marked by individuals showing high levels of physical restlessness and difficulties with impulse control; and (3) the combined presentation, where individuals exhibit a combination of inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive symptoms (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

Conclusions

The current study investigated how ADHD impacts foreign language learning and usage. The main aim was to present the experiences and reflections of adults with ADHD and situate them within the broader context of existing research on cognitive deficits and second language acquisition. Before we summarize the main findings and present conclusions, we would like to point out several limitations of the current study. First, the group of adults with ADHD consisted of more female than male respondents, mostly situated in Norway, and diagnosed in adulthood. Second, we cannot exclude that there is a sampling bias in the sense that more people with a specific interest in languages completed our survey. Furthermore, it is important to emphasize that the data reflect participants’ subjective experiences regarding how they believe ADHD impacts their L2 learning and use. It remains unclear whether these experiences are actually attributable to ADHD, aspects of their personality, or common challenges associated with L2 acquisition. Considering these biases in our sample as well as the qualitative nature of our analysis, it remains to be seen whether our findings are representative of the population of adults with ADHD at large.

While most previous research has focused on the language and communication abilities of children with ADHD (Carruthers et al., 2022; Korrel et al., 2017), our findings provide valuable insights into the inner workings of adults with ADHD. From our data, a diverse picture emerged with lots of individual variation. Depending on their individual cognitive and behavioural symptom profiles as well as personality traits, adults with ADHD experienced different effects of their condition on foreign language learning and use. Difficulties with inattention made it challenging for some respondents to focus during traditional classroom instruction and led them to making careless mistakes in written texts. On the flip side, many respondents with ADHD also experienced periods of hyperfocus, in which they were highly productive. Cognitive deficits related to working memory made it difficult for some adults with ADHD to memorize vocabulary and grammatical forms, and to retrieve already acquired lexical items on demand during real-time interactions. Following and participating in conversations in a second language can also be challenging as it requires paying attention and processing multiple verbal and non-verbal cues simultaneously and deriving correct interpretations on the fly. The linguistic domain that appeared to be most affected by ADHD was pragmatics. Some respondents mentioned impulsive or hyperactive behaviours in communication such as talking excessively, interrupting others, and speaking without thinking first. The latter might result in grammatical errors that are more difficult to recover from in a second language. People with ADHD also exhibited different preferences for written or spoken modality. A learning style mentioned by several respondents was characterized by association, leading to an intuition or gut feeling about correct language use. In sum, our findings provide evidence that for many adults with ADHD, their disorder fundamentally affects the way they learn or use a foreign language, supporting the far-reaching effect of ADHD on different domains of a person’s life.

Highlights

Abstract

Keywords

1. Introduction

2. Linguistic reflections of cognitive animacy

3. Discussion

4. Conclusion

Declaration of competing interest

Acknowledgements

Appendix.

References

Abstract

Animacy, commonly defined as the distinction between living and non-living entities, is a useful notion in cognitive science and linguistics employed to describe and predict variation in psychological and linguistic behaviour. In the (psycho)linguistics literature we find linguistic animacy dichotomies which are (implicitly) assumed to correspond to biological dichotomies. We argue this is problematic, as it leaves us without a cognitively grounded, universal description for non-prototypical cases. We show that ‘animacy’ in language can be better understood as universally emerging from a gradual, cognitive property by collecting animacy ratings for a great range of nouns from Japanese and Persian. We used these cognitive ratings in turn to predict linguistic variation in these languages traditionally explained through dichotomous distinctions. We show that whilst (speakers of) languages may subtly differ in their conceptualisation of animacy, universality may be found in the process of mapping conceptual animacy to linguistic variation.

1. Introduction

Few cognitive distinctions are as salient as that based on animacy. Classifying an entity in the world as either living or non-living has direct consequences for the way we conceptualise it, and in turn its behavioural entailments and affordances – the way we predict it to act and the way we are expected or able to act upon it. A cognitive classification of animacy has been widely attested in a great number of studies in varying psychological and developmental domains. Perhaps not surprisingly, given its apparent cognitive relevance, a great number of the world’s languages exhibit some effect of animacy (Dahl and Fraurud, 1996; Yamamoto, 1999; Vihman and Nelson, 2019).

But is animacy universal? The answer is contingent on the level of animacy examined. Linguistics has identified at least three relevant levels (de Swart and de Hoop, 2018; Bayanati and Toivonen, 2019) easily conflated as in our paragraph above: 1) biological, ontological or ‘actual’ animacy, the extent to which an entity is living or non-living according to certain biological criteria; 2) cognitive, semantic or construed animacy, the way we conceptualise the entity based on some notion of attributed ‘animate’ morphology or behaviour, and 3) linguistic or formal animacy, the ultimate grammatical reflection of the assumed cognitive animacy classification process.

These three levels are crucially different in kind. Whilst a definition of biological animacy is no trivial matter (cf. e.g. Bedau and Cleland, 2010; Machery, 2012), the eventual outcome is presumably universal. As a physical property of entities in the world, biological animacy is universally fixed; that is, culturally and cognitively independent. Furthermore, biological animacy is traditionally dichotomous: a two-way distinction between living and non-living entities. Cognitive and linguistic animacy allow for considerably more variation, both in universality as in granularity. Cross-linguistic comparison has shown that linguistic animacy is not dichotomous, but follows an implicational hierarchy. Even in its most basic form, this hierarchy distinguishes at least three categories (e.g. Aissen, 2003; Croft, 2003; cf. Gardelle and Sorlin, 2018 for an overview):

Highlights

Abstract

Keywords

1. Introduction

2. Core vocabulary

3. Data and method

4. A single-word vs multi-word approach

5. Discourse functions

6. Differences and similarities across the L1 groups

7. Discussion and conclusion

Author statement

References

Vitae

Abstract

Core vocabulary items (e.g. thing, way) are often viewed as the enemy of effective academic writing, and style guides and textbooks often advise against using them. However, their bad reputation seems to stem from a single-word perspective that ignores the rich phraseological units that such items tend to figure in. In this study, we focus on the core vocabulary lemma thing to investigate the extent to which a phraseological approach can redeem its reputation. We look at learner essays from ten different first-language backgrounds from the International Corpus of Learner English and compare these to reference corpora from the endpoints of the informal-formal continuum: the Spoken BNC2014 and the Corpus of Academic Journal Articles. The results show that a phraseological approach indeed provides a more nuanced view of the core lemma thing: it is used in a wide variety of multi-word units, many of which common in academic writing. Although some signs of novice production are evident in the learners’ writing, their use is closest to that of the expert academic writers. The paper concludes with a discussion of the role of phraseology in vocabulary lists used in teaching and assessment.

1. Introduction

The notion of core (or basic) vocabulary is widely used in applied language studies. The first core vocabulary list, West’s General Service List (GSL), was compiled as early as 1953 and has since proved its usefulness for both teaching and testing purposes. The rationale that underpinned the GSL was that a lexical repertoire consisting of the most basic 2,000 words of English would be a good basis for learning English as a foreign language. Although the list is now dated, interest in core vocabulary has continued unabated and several new core vocabulary lists have been compiled, among them the New General Service List (NGSL) (Brezina & Gablasova 2015), which relies on the frequency of words in large electronic corpora of speech and writing. However, while lists of core words have proved their worth, they suffer from one major weakness: they include only single words. They thus disregard the wide range of productive multi-word units that these high-frequency words tend to generate, many of which “are as frequent as or more frequent than single items which everyone would agree must be taught” (O’Keeffe et al., 2007: 46).

Although core vocabulary is seen in a very positive light for general language purposes, it is commonly regarded as the enemy of effective academic writing. The acquisition of academic writing skills is seen as involving a major “vocabulary shift” (Swales & Feak 2004: 18), i.e. the replacement of high-frequency, informal words by less frequent, formal alternatives. Most academic vocabulary lists purposely exclude the 2,000 core words of the GSL. The bad reputation of core vocabulary in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) seems to relate to the single-word-based approach to core words and may not be justified in the case of an approach that takes multiword units into account.

Abstract

Keywords

1. Introduction

2. Research question

3. L1 and L2 speech

4. Method

5. Results

6. Discussion

7. Conclusion

Author statement

Acknowledgements

References

Vitae

Abstract

This paper investigates how the language of instruction in Dutch higher education (Dutch versus English) affects speech production by L1 Dutch-speaking lecturers. In a pairwise design, three young lecturers that were highly proficient in English gave two comparable lectures each (L1 Dutch and L2 English). Results show that the L1 Dutch lectures were consistently given at slightly higher syllabic speech and articulation rates and that filled pauses were shorter and occurred less often in Dutch than in English lectures. In addition, L1 Dutch lectures contained a more diverse vocabulary and showed pitch patterns which have been shown to be associated with greater liveliness and higher perceived charisma of the speakers. We discuss possible reasons for the observed acoustic differences and the potential impact of our findings in the light of the ongoing transition from Dutch-medium instruction to English-medium instruction in Dutch higher education.

1. Introduction

The number of English-medium instruction programmes is increasing rapidly all over the world. In Europe, the Netherlands is among the countries with the highest proportion of EMI programmes (Maiworm & Wächter, 2002; Wächter & Maiworm 2008, 2014). In many cases, this means that the number of Dutch-medium instruction (DMI) programmes is decreasing as the continuation of entirely mirrored programmes is considered inefficient and financially unprofitable (Wilkinson, 2013, p. 10). In practice, this does not only mean that many students have fewer programmes to choose from if they wish to study in their native language, but also that higher education (HE) lecturers increasingly teach in a language that is not their native language. What are the implications of this for the lectures that students attend in this setting?

Previous research into the nature of EMI lectures suggests that EMI speech is slower (Hincks, 2010; Thøgersen & Airey, 2011; Vinke, 1995; Vinke, Snippe, & Jochems, 1998) and more formal (Thøgersen & Airey, 2011) than lecturers’ native-language speech. Some investigations report more disfluencies in EMI speech (Thøgersen & Airey, 2011), others fewer (Vinke et al., 1998).

Highlights

Abstract

Keywords

1. Introduction

2. The meaning of spatiality and temporality

3. The origin of spatiality and temporality

4. Sentential representation of spatiality in Chinese and temporality in English

5. Textual representation of spatiality in Chinese and temporality in English

6. Conclusion

References anonymously quoted in the manuscript

Conflicts of interest

Acknowledgements

References

Abstract

A language represents the unique medium of how people of a nation perceive and understand the world. This study takes a diachronic perspective to trace the evolution of Chinese and English, respectively, and examines the synchronic features of the two languages that most typically demonstrate the underlying principles of linguistic encoding. It attempts to argue that in dissecting the world and in ways of thinking, Chinese seems to focus more on space and English more on time. Therefore, this study proposes that Chinese is a spatiality-dominant language, whereas English a temporality-dominant one. This fundamental difference underlies many particularities in Chinese and English in terms of their syntactic and textual structures. It is proposed that spatiality and temporality be used as overarching typological parameters to account for the enormous differences between Chinese and English. The findings of this study can provide significant insights into the nature of the distinction between the two languages.

1. Introduction

As a mirror of cultural thoughts, language reflects the particular way the world is observed, understood, and presented (Humboldt, 1999: 81–87). There is extensive literature on the differences between Chinese and English, which are typical of the Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European language family respectively (e.g. Gu, 2005; Link, 2013). In addition, contrastive linguistic perspectives on structural particularities show that Chinese is analytical and English synthetic (Huang, 2010; Lian, 1993), or Chinese is paratactic and English hypotactic (Lian, 1993; Nida, 1982; Wang, 1954). According to the parataxis/hypotaxis account, clauses in Chinese are placed one after another without any connectives to specify their relationships, whereas in English, connectives are typically used to spell out the relationships between different clauses (Tse, 2010). The analytical/synthetic account argues that Chinese uses very few bound morphemes, with most of its words being either free morphemes or compounds of free morphemes. However, as a synthetic language, English has a large number of bound morphemes, which are often combined to form a word (Barber et al., 2009).

Introduction

Experiment 1

Experiment 2

Experiment 3

General discussion

Conclusion

References

Abstract

What are the phonological representations that listeners use to map information about the segmental content of speech onto the mental lexicon during spoken-word recognition? Recent evidence from perceptual-learning paradigms seems to support (context-dependent) allophones as the basic representational units in spoken-word recognition. But recent evidence from a selective-adaptation paradigm seems to suggest that context-independent phonemes also play a role. We present three experiments using selective adaptation that constitute strong tests of these representational hypotheses. In Experiment 1, we tested generalization of selective adaptation using different allophones of Dutch /r/ and /l/ – a case where generalization has not been found with perceptual learning. In Experiments 2 and 3, we tested generalization of selective adaptation using German back fricatives in which allophonic and phonemic identity were varied orthogonally. In all three experiments, selective adaptation was observed only if adaptors and test stimuli shared allophones. Phonemic identity, in contrast, was neither necessary nor sufficient for generalization of selective adaptation to occur. These findings and other recent data using the perceptual-learning paradigm suggest that pre-lexical processing during spoken-word recognition is based on allophones, and not on context-independent phonemes.

Introduction

One of the fundamental questions in cognitive science regards the nature of the mental representations that underlie cognitive functioning. In spoken-word recognition, the question is which code we use to map the highly variable speech signal onto knowledge stored in the mental lexicon – knowledge about the phonological form of words. What, in short, are the pre-lexical units of speech perception? Theories answer this question in many different ways. Some theories claim that there are no phonologically abstract prelexical representations (Goldinger, 1998) and others that there are, but disagree about the grain-size of the units, which could be abstract phonological features (Lahiri & Reetz, 2010), contextdependent allophones (Luce, Goldinger, Auer, & Vitevitch, 2000), context-independent phonemes (McClelland & Elman, 1986; Norris, 1994), or syllables (Mehler, Dommergues, Frauenfelder, & Segui, 1981), or could be a combination of units of different size (Wickelgren, 1969). One recurring issue in this long-running debate has been that evidence in favour of one or the other type of unit often turned out to be paradigm-specific. Evidence for many different units can therefore be found (for a review, see Goldinger & Azuma, 2003).