This issue of "Bilingualism: Language and Cognition" is about convergence, a type of language change that is contact-induced and results in greater similarity between two languages that are in contact with each other. In Backus (forthcoming), I have attempted an overview of contact-induced language change, focusing on causal factors, on mechanisms…

Simultaneous interpreting is a complex task where the interpreter is routinely involved in comprehending, translating and producing language at the same time. This study assessed two components that are likely to be major sources of complexity in SI: The simultaneity of comprehension and production, and transformation of the input. Furthermore,…

Tests of inter-lingual homographs that have different meanings across two languages support models postulating initial non-selective access to competing language representations, e.g. Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA) model. Most such research assessed inter-lingual homographs in the absence of connected text. Here a letter detection paradigm…

The findings from a number of recent studies indicate that, even in cases of successful bilingual first language acquisition, the possibility remains of a certain degree of crosslinguistic influence when the choice between syntactic options is affected by discourse pragmatics. In this study we focussed on the use of referring expressions, prime…

Guion, Clark, Harada and Wayland (2003) found that three factors affect English speakers' stress placement on bisyllabic non-words: syllabic structure, lexical class and stress patterns of phonologically similar real words. The current replication and extension included three groups (N = 30): native English speakers, early Spanish-English…

In this study, we examined why observational learning positively affects learning outcomes of new writing tasks. In this study, we focused on the effects of observational learning on the temporal organization (i.e., orchestration) of writing processes and on the subsequent influence on text quality. An experiment was set up in which participants…

In this article, I present a study in which 12 pairs of 8th-grade students solved problems about a physical device with algebra. The device, called a winch, instantiates motions that can be modeled by pairs of simultaneous linear functions. The following question motivated the study: How can students generate algebraic models without direct…

This study investigated the developmental paths of Japanese Grade 1 students' understanding of quantities through the examination of their addition solution methods over the school year period. The individual students exhibited a wide range of experiences with and knowledge of addition from the beginning to the end of the school year. Students…

The study examined children's understanding of scientific inquiry, through the lens of their conceptualization of uncertainty in investigations they had designed and implemented with a partner. These largely student-regulated investigations followed a unit about animal behavior that emphasized the scaffolding of independent inquiry. Participants…

The premise of this article is that the study of representation is valuable and important for mathematics and science students. Learning about representation should go beyond learning specific, sanctioned representations emphasized in standard curricula (graphs, tables, etc.) to include principles and design strategies that apply to any scientific…

Summary Street is educational software based on latent semantic analysis (LSA), a computer method for representing the content of texts. The classroom trial described here demonstrates the power of LSA to support an educational goal by providing automatic feedback on the content of students' summaries. Summary Street provides this feedback in an…

Students learn more and gain greater understanding from one-to-one tutoring. The preferred explanation has been that the tutors' pedagogical skills are responsible for the learning gains. Pedagogical skills involve skillful execution of tactics, such as giving explanations and feedback, or selecting the appropriate problems or questions to ask the…

In this article, we examine the role that different participant structures can play in supporting inquiry-based science learning. We frame mastering scientific inquiry as mastering the "what," "why," and "how" of the cultural tools that scientists employ. We present a participant structure we call the teacher as partner and show how it renders the…

Activity structures such as classroom lessons and initiation-reply-evaluation sequences are important cultural tools that help students and teachers accomplish everyday activity, but they are not well adapted to open-ended inquiry conducted by students in small groups with teacher guidance. In this research, I identified alternative activity…

Changes in participant structures in classroom environments are often examined in terms of their effects on student learning. In this study, we proposed a way of examining participant structures in terms of power. According to Wertsch (1998) "the emergence of new cultural tools transforms power and authority" (p. 65). When researchers or teachers…