[ Second language psycholinguistics ]

2024-11-21: First snow day!! :) And a rushed time-line on the move which required us to pack up and leave the complicated Sycamore building last week! This week was set-up. Everything went quite smoothly this time, and we are happy about our new lab space in Ballantine Hall 119! There will be still some setting up to do but overall, things are starting to look all squared away. Thank you to all the volunteers who agreed to help!
THREE other great pieces of news:

1. Franziska Kruger will defend her dissertation in December 2024 - Congratulations on submitting the doctoral thesis!
2. Brian Rocca, with Miquel Llompart and Isabelle Darcy just got their paper accepted in Bilingualism, Language and Cognition! The title is "Phonological neighbourhood density, phonetic categorization, and vocabulary size differentially affect the phonolexical encoding of easy and difficult L2 segmental contrasts" -- Congrats Brian!!
3. And just today, Hunter Brakovec and Isabelle submitted their manuscript "Awareness of orthographic transparency benefits the lexical encoding of L2 vowels" to a very good journal (top secret): Fingers crossed!!!

2024-10-11: We have beautiful Fall weather in Bloomington these days - but unfortunatly we just learned of yet another lab move on the (near) horizon. While we don't know yet where we'll land, we know we need to get out of Sycamore Hall by the end of December 2024. That's at least some weeks of notice, thankfully. Hang in there everyone and make sure to back up your and archive your projects.
IMPORTANT: Due to construction in Sycamore and recently discovered problems: The lab will be closed starting TODAY through October 21, 2024. No-one is allowed into the building until then.

2024-09-16: We're really excited to announce that after several years of work, FINALLY, Isabelle's new book is now published!
It's called "Second Language Speech Processing: A guide to conducting experimental research" - published by Routledge. Check it out!
It's conceived as a hands-on guide to develop and run a perception experiment in L2 speech processing. I review a number of experimental paradigms, but most importantly, I describe how to design, plan and execute a study from start to finish - including how to maximize the quality of your precious data, how to organize your files, and how to realize an archive and share the study following Open Science principles.
We also submitted several abstracts to the New Sounds conference, which will take place in Toronto (Canada) in April 2025. Hopefully we'll get to go to this wonderful conference!

2024-08-25: Due to website issues, this blog and the whole website have not been updated in a very long time! The last time was in November 2023. Thanks for your patience, everyone! This was due to issues with accessibility, which we were correcting., but it's been (is still) taking a long time. The website will still undergo more changes in the near future, and perhaps a complete remodel. It's time, because ever since the lab was created back in 2008, this website has NOT changed! it's still the same html based one. It's nice, but we feel it is time to update things a little bit. So - stay tuned for exciting updates!

In other news, we've had a very productive Spring semester 2024 - with several exciting successes: We obtained NSF funding for Bihua Chen's dissertation, and Language Learning funding for Brian Rocca's and Keiji Iwamoto's dissertation. Keiji also received funding to go to Waseda University (Japan) to collect data there. And Eric Chen received a prestigious "Talent" grant from the Taiwanese government for his research on language acquisition: Congratulations to all of you! Very, very well done!

And .... drumroll.... we also have a newly minted Doctor!! Congratulations to Matthew Ajibade for defending his PhD dissertation on Monday, AUgust 19th, 2024. It was a superb defense, with a superb dissertation on the processing of Labial-Velar complex sounds in L1 Yoruba listeners, in Heritage Yoruba learners and in naive listeners without Yoruba experience. Stay tuned for some more information and - as soon as we can - the dissertation for download. Matthew will stay at Indiana University as a lecturer in Yoruba, and hopefully continue researching this under-researched language. Congratulations Dr. Ajibade!

Finally: Welcome to the new semester, everyone! Our first lab meeting of the semester will be on August 30th, and we'll talk about good lab practices and Open Science!

2023-11-24: This day marks the 15th anniversary of the lab - congratulations! It was "born" on Nov 24, 2008, officially making its debut with this very website!
I feel very thankful for having such a vibrant group of researchers and for all the great research we've been able to do.
As a "birthday" gift to the lab, this website will get a serious refresh. There are some accessibility issues that will be taken care of, and it will also get reorganized, to get rid of outdated information.
In other news, the lab director is currently visiting an amazing group of new colleagues at the University of Grenoble, and will begin exciting new collaborations there. Stay tuned for updates! And thanks in advance for your patience with the website updates.

2023-09-04: Happy new semester everyone! New beginnings are always exciting and inspiring and this renewed energy was clear during our first lab meeting of the semester on September 1st.
Check out some updates to the people's tab (new websites added and new lab member profiles!)
Research-wise, we'll be very strongly represented this year at the 2023 PSLLT conference at Purdue University this week (Sep 6-8)! We will be giving at least 6 presentations - come and check us out!
Finally, some great news: Sadi Phillips won a travel award from the Indonesian Government for a conference, and Brian Rocca was awarded a Language Learning PhD research grants. Congratulations to both of them! We look forward to the research being done with the help of this funding.

Just in time for the end of the semester and everybody travelling over the summer, we now have access to the lab again (in theory at least)! ‾\_("/)_/‾
I will post more updates here as they get available.

In more exciting news: Today is the day of Ryan Lidster's doctoral defense! Congratulations Ryan for an outstanding dissertation, and thank you to his wonderful committee members: Sun-Young Shin; Nozomi Tanaka; Ken de Jong; Dubravka Svetina Valdivia.

No news about the lab - but I have heard we may get access soon!
Great news: Brian Rocca successfully defended his dissertation proposal today! Thanks to all his committee members and a great audience for awesome questions - way to go Brian!

A long overdue update to the People's page was finally completed, and several lab members were added. Please reach out if you notice errors or if you'd like your picture to be added, too. The publications page is still being updated with pdfs.
Research-wise, the lab is preparing to submit abstracts to the upcoming PSLLT conference at Purdue University - due date is March 31st!
Finally, some great news: Matthew Ajibade and Keiji Iwamoto were both awarded research grants from the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages. Congratulations to both of them! We look forward to the research being done with the help of this funding.

Snow is expected in Bloomington these days. This gives me an excuse to update the photo and to give a brief (non-existent really) update on the Lab situation: The building is still undergoing major renovations, and we do know know really when we will have "normal" access to the labs again, but we know many people are working in the College to try and solve this problem. I will keep you updated of course. For now, I hope it will be more or less functional before Spring Break 2023.
In other news, one paper got published in December (Gordon & Darcy, JSLP) and January saw the final acceptance of two other papers: Scott & Darcy, in Laboratory Phonology, and Darcy & Rocca, in JSLP! Stay tuned - the publications page will be updated soon. The lab director's CV is also updated and can be found under "People", or here: Darcy_CV_Jan2023.pdf

Following delays on construction in the building where our lab was moved in June 2021, we are closed until further notice. As soon as we know more, it will be posted here.
The lab director is now back in Bloomington, getting ready for the new semester. Welcome back, everyone!

On May 3-4, 2022, we held an amazing workshop on second language lexical representations at IMéRA in Marseille. We have now gathered most of our presentations slides on a publicly accessible site with the Open Science Framework (osf.io). Check it out at this link: https://osf.io/hb9tv/
We are planning to also soon publish the videos of the talks that were given, and keep adding resources or papers of interest. Comments welcome!

On May 3-4, 2022, an exciting workshop will be happening at IMéRA, Marseille, (France), where Isabelle has been a resident fellow for the past 8 months. This workshop brings together leading figures in the research area of phonological representations in the L2 mental lexicon. A series of talks open to the public will give an overview of the most recent research advances on the topic.
More information can be found here.
Check out our exciting program here: Bilingual Lexical Representations Workshop_Program_final.pdf.
The talks by Isabelle Darcy, Miquel Llompart, Rachel Hayes-Harb, Mirjam Ernestus, Joan C. Mora and Miren Adrian, and by Svetlana Cook will be made available shortly after the event. Stay tuned!

For the past month, the lab director has been working from Marseille, France. In the context of her sabbatical, Isabelle will be spending time at Aix-Marseille University, in the Institute of Communication, Language and the Brain (ILCB), and at the IMeRA. The project is starting to take shape, and the goal is to examine bilinguals' phonolexical representations, including the different mechanisms they might be using to update them.
In her absence, the lab meetings are still ongoing (get in touch with Brian Rocca for info!), and our new lab is slowly getting set up! Information on office hours will be posted here as soon as it becomes clear.

Two moves have happened since last update. The lab was finally given a space, after being in storage for 8 months! We are now located in Sycamore 0005 (with 3 zeros, this is the bottom basement), and we are in the process of setting up all our equipment. It should be open for testing by the Fall! Stay tuned for more information here, and photos. The other main move is that Isabelle is now overseeing operations from afar, from France, to be exact. Brian Rocca and Sadi Phillips are the two precious lieutenants on the ground. For any questions you can turn to them. Information on office hours will be posted here as soon as it becomes clear. Take good care, everyone!

And now -- summer is here (well, almost)... it's still cold in Bloomington! There are changes to Isabelle's status on the people's tab. The major change is that Isabelle will be on sabbatical starting...this summer (does this mean now?!) until July 2022. Office hours can be accessed through a link to an external site. More information will be posted as it becomes available. Take good care, everyone!

Spring is here! And there are some updates on the people's page - with several dissertations done in the past few years now up and available. Make sure to check it out!
This week, March 15 2021, marks one year since we closed the lab for in-person testing. We've been slowed down a little bit because of this - especially recruitment is more difficult, because people are recruited via e-mail and social media. But - unfazed - we continue! Look at the crocus - they come back stronger every year...

For this first content post of 2021 (yep... it's been a long 8 months hiatus since the last post - other than the Jan 1 one...), let me just say that despite the Pandemic and the snowstorms and cold weather, we're still here, still working, and still doing research on L2 phonology! And even if it doesn't look like it in Bloomington today, Spring is just around the corner!
The Fall semester was very hard teaching-wise, but we have kept on advancing our research projects as much as possible. One of our projects on Pronunciation Instruction saw a successful submission, peer review, and acceptance, all during the summer (very quick!), and the paper was published in October. You'll find it here: A window into the Classroom: How teachers teach pronunciation.
In other news, I have updated the Research tab on this website, and will keep updating the People's tab in the next couple weeks. The lab is still closed, and in October 2020, there was yet another move. We still don't have an actual physical lab due to the complications of space and moves in a pandemic, but we've been actively developing our remote testing skills!
Take good care of yourself, and stay safe, everyone!

This is a long-awaited, long overdue update on the lab's publications and achievements! I had promised back in December to update the publications page: Today is the day! The updated publication list can be found here: publications In addition, lab member John Rothgerber just published a short article on pronunciation instruction in the TESOL Newsletter. Let us know if you can't access it!
In other news, here is an update on our activities since the lab closure back in March 2020. Our lab will remain closed for in-person interactions until further notice (also due to our impending move (again!!). Hopefully this will be the last move. We have met every other week since March to work on our options to keep testing remotely. We have now collectively written a Remote Testing Protocol, which we share here in the hope that others will find it helpful. We will follow these guidelines going forward.
Best wishes to all, and stay safe, everyone!

We are ending this very strange semester with some fabulous news: Congratulations to John Rothgerber and Danielle Daidone (the links show the zoom defense screenshots!) for successfully defending their wonderful Ph.D. dissertations! They both did a great job and the lab is very proud of them! It was done on Zoom - which was also strange, but still a happy event. You will be able to find their dissertation soon on this website under "Publications\Dissertations".
Another piece of great news is the successful defense of Suchada Sanonguthai's dissertation proposal! She is planning an exciting project on L2 Lexical Acquisition and Assessment in Thailand. Congratulations, Suchada!
In other news, after 2 years at our current location, the Department of Second Language Studies is again going to be moving! (last move: 2018) This time, we're heading back to Ballantine Hall. Even more relevant to this lab is that after 12 years in Weatherly (but, with 3 moves there), the lab will also now join the Department in Ballantine! This move is slated for August 2020.
Finally, let's end this post with some updates on the lab activities. Since all in-person testing is suspended for the foreseable future, we are all currently discussing our protocol for remote testing using platforms such as Psychopy-online and Pavlovia. As soon as we have a set of clear guidelines for high-quality remote testing, we will make them available here. Given our particular type of studies that involve speech perception, or production, sound stimuli and reaction times collection, this is not an easy affair. Stay tuned!
Best wishes to all, and stay safe, everyone!

Wow -- lots of things have happened in the first trimester of 2020! While January and February were relatively normal (and busy - stay tuned for news!), March has been everything but.
Indiana University has suspended all in-person teaching and meetings for the rest of the term; Spring Break has been extended for an additional week so everybody can get ready for the online switch. Two of the lab's students will defend their dissertations online - a first for us! Right now, the lab is also closed until further notice: We are not testing in person whenever possible. We are working to move lab operations online, so we can continue collecting data. For now, everyone is working from home, working on papers and on analyzing already collected data. It is important to start learning how to collect data remotely, because I believe we're in for the long run. We'll be sure to share what we learn about these techniques here as much as possible.
In the mean time, here is a copy of the lab's preventive measures implemented over a week ago, on March 13, 2020: notice_march13.pdf
Stay safe, everyone! and please stay home as much as possible. We're extremely lucky that so far, we can continue our work relatively normally. Best wishes to all!

Jan 1 Welcome 2020! Posted in Bloomington by Isabelle Darcy.

In just a few weeks from today, 2019 is coming to an end - and it's been quite a year! Aside of the lab director being promoted to full professor, two PhD students successfully defended their dissertations: John Scott and Chisato Kojima. We are very proud of their achievement! Check out some of the changes on our people page.
In terms of research, an ambitious project comparing pronunciation teaching methods in real classrooms was completed, and we are currently analyzing data and writing up the articles (stay tuned!). We have presented this research at PSLLT in Flagstaff (in September 2019), and also in Indiana at INTESOL in November. The publication and presentation page will soon be updated.
One of the highlights of 2019, for us, is the publication of our paper with Trisha Thomas (Darcy & Thomas, 2019) in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. Take a look here: link to article on Journal's website. This project about the lexical encoding of perceptual epenthetic vowels in L2 learners has also led the way to expand our research into an ERP investigation of this phenomenon. A lot of 2019 was spent learning, designing, testing and analyzing ERP data obtained with a similar population, which allowed us to submit an NSF proposal in the summer. We are very much looking forward to continuing this project in 2020!
Finally, another project conducted over several years came to a happy conclusion: The "Hoosier Vocal Emotions Collection" (or "corpus") is now up and running, and available to other researchers. An article about our work and the corpus was published in Behavior Research Methods in September 2019 and lots of information can be found here: Check it out!. And as always (most of the time, anyway), we have several reearch projects currently cookin' on the bilingual mental lexicon, and we will make every effort to update this website more often in 2020. Stay tuned!

The page The Hoosier Vocal Emotions Corpus has been updated with lots of new information and data. There is now a short paragraph about what the corpus is, and what it is useful for. In addition, we now provide access to the corpus itself (wav and textgrid files), as well as lots of information about each sound file. For example, we provide the database containing all the identification accuracy and confusion matrices for each stimulus, resulting from our validation study with 96 participants.
In addition, we provide access to the full results from that study, item by item. Check it out! and let us know if you use it. We'll be happy to post a link to your study or group from our website.

From the midst of summer, just a few words to report on the wonderful Barcelona workshop in early June. It was really well attended, and we all learned a lot! It's so nice to see that there's such a great community of scholars dedicated to bringing together pronunciation research and teaching - with lots of promising young scholars! Here is a link to the workshop: L2 Pronunciation Research Workshop: Bridging the Gap between Research and Practice (click to go to the website).
Another piece of great news: our paper with Trisha Thomas (Darcy & Thomas, 2019) was published in April in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition! Take a look here: link to article on Journal's website. We will make the pre-print available very soon on IUScholarWorks.
And last, but not least: two important updates on the lab members! Both Chisato Kojima and John H.G. Scott have successfully defended their doctoral defenses in March and April, respectively! Congratulations both - very well deserved indeed!! A link to their dissertations will be posted there as soon as we are allowed. Stay tuned!

Time flies! It's been 4 months already since the lab's Birthday in November! And yet, Bloomington is covered in snow this morning - so... time flies but not that fast (luckily!). I'm just sharing a couple of news: First, we will be in Barcelona in June 2019, presenting at the L2 Pronunciation Research Workshop: Bridging the Gap between Research and Practice (click to go to the website).
In other news, two of our lab members, John Scott and Ryan Lidster, competed last week along with 24 others in the Three Minutes Thesis competition! This is a great event, where doctoral students are given 3 minutes and one slide to talk about their work - very challenging! A jury evaluates the presentations and chooses a winner and a runner up. And our very own Ryan Lidster was selected as the runner up! Congratulations Ryan! (see here for details about this event.)

Happy new year 2019 everyone! Check out this really nice presentation made by John Scott, with help from many lab members who have gathered all these numbers about the lab's activities around the world. Enjoy! (and if you can't figure out the answers to the trivia questions, ask us :) ) Where in the World is IUSLPL.pptx

We're celebrating 10 years of the Second Language Psycholinguistics Lab this November! Ten years ago, in the Fall of 2008, the lab started its research and we haven't stopped since (nor are we planning to!). About 6 months later, on April 29, 2009, this website was launched. Check out our anniversary poster here: SLPL 10 Year Flyer.pdf
We'll be sharing memories and cool facts about the lab tomorrow evening, and I'll be sure to post them here too! Thanks everyone for the tremendous support over the years!

The semester is over - congratulations everyone! Next stop: Lisbon for LabPhon, I can't wait! Oh -- but wait, there's another office move to get through first. That's number 2 in 3 years and number 3 is already on the horizon... Oh well. Stay tuned for updates as soon as we know where we're moving! In the mean time, we say "goodbye" to the labbies who'll be going on other adventures over the summer: Good luck and see you soon next time you visit Bloomington!

A paper by Jeff Holliday and Isabelle Darcy was accepted for LabPhon 2018 in Lisbon! We're very excited to be able to go! Jeff also has another paper accepted there - Congratulations, and see you in Lisbon!

The new semester is upon us, and welcome back everyone! I wish everyone a very productive and peaceful year. Stay tuned for updates on what's cooking for this year, and on the highlights of 2017!

PSLLT 2017 took place in Salt Lake City earlier this month - and it was great! It was also wonderful to see lab alumni and IU alumni there: Ala Simonchyk, Lauren Schmidt and Josh Gordon! For those who are interested, the slides of my keynote presentation can be found here (be careful, it's a large file...): A road-map for bridging research and practice.pptx
I am looking forward to the proceedings, which surely will be amazing. Check out the program here: http://speechlab.utah.edu/PSLLT2017.php
In other news, the lab was moved a THIRD time within a year, and we're almost back up and running (again). Sorry for the delays and interruptions, but the moves were beyond our control. Hopefully this one was the last - I will make sure to update the website contact info.
Finally, Franzi Krueger is going to leave us for a year, and starting Friday, she'll be doing field research in Germany for the next academic year, with the FU in Berlin! Congrats, but come back soon - we'll miss you!!

Classes are now in their second week - everybody is back, lab meetings have started again as well - wellcome back, everyone! And we are all so looking forward to PSLLT 2017, in Salt Lake City this weekend! The lab director and four students are going to be there this year. An exciting program, and so many former students who will be there too! Check out the program here: http://speechlab.utah.edu/PSLLT2017.php

Classes have ended, exams have been taken, grades have been posted, and Bloomington is back to calm and serene ...
Last Thursday, Ala Simonchyk defended her dissertation entitled "The relationships between perception, production, lexical encoding and orthography in the acquisition of palatalization in L2 Russian". It was a fabulous defense, congratulations Ala! And thanks to the other members of her committee: Ken De Jong (Linguistics), Georges Fowler and Steve Franks (Slavic).
The very next day, last Friday, was the graduate commencement ceremony, where Ala Simonchyk and Joshua Williams both walked to be hooded in recognition of their achievement! Congratulations both! What an excellent end to a rich semester!
However, we'll have to deal with another move of the lab --- not so much fun. Hopefully this time it will be smoother, faster, and not temporary!! This should be over by the end of the month, and we hope to be operational again by then. Stay tuned!

Bloomington is cold today... but here are a couple hot news! I'll start with Joshua Williams, who successfully defended his dissertation at the end of March, and is now moving to Boston for a new exciting customer research job with Bose. Congratulations, Josh! And good luck to you for this new exciting time!
Another piece of good news: The editorial for our Frontiers In Psychology Research Topic is now online! Here is the pdf: DarcyTremblaySimonet(2017)_Editorial. Check out the full issue, there are 12 excellent papers in there! http://journal.frontiersin.org/researchtopic/3924/phonology-in-the-bilingual-and-bidialectal-lexicon#overview.
Finally, another piece of good news: Ala Simonchyk will defend her dissertation next week, on May 4th! Stay tuned for updates!

Winter is now over, Spring has fully arrived in Bloomington. We've been very busy since November, in particular with dealing with an unexpected lab move! But we're up and running again (almost) and we also have completed a new testing protocol, which uses a new interface for stimulus presentation, called jspsych. After a long time preparing for the experiment, we're starting recruitment.
Also in the news section: Joshua Williams will defend his dissertation tomorrow, on the 31 of March! The title of his dissertation is : "The 'Modality Adaptation Hypothesis': Neurocognitive alterations to novel visuospatial components of sign language during initial acquisition in adulthood". Stay tuned for more news soon!

We're very honored to have the opportunity to speak at the plenary session of the next Pronunciation in Second Language Learning & Teaching (PSLLT) 9th Annual Conference. It will take place in Salt Lake City, on September 1-2, 2017. Check out the preliminary program! http://speechlab.utah.edu/PSLLT2017.php

The lab is very pleased to congratulate Dr. Miguel-Angel Marquez Martinez, who did a superb job at his doctoral defense on October 14th, 2016! Thanks also to all the other members of his committee: Barbara Vance, Julie Auger, and Laurent Dekydtspotter. We are all very happy for you, and good luck for your new position in Brasil!

As the Fall is (finally!) brightening the tree leaves around Bloomington, a new paper by Josh Williams, Isabelle Darcy and Sharlene Newman just came out in Studies in Second Language Acquisition! It is entitled "The Beneficial Role of L1 Spoken Language Skills on Initial L2 Sign Language Learning: Cognitive and Linguistic Predictors of M2L2 Acquisition." Follow this link to know more! (Published online: 22 September 2016)
Another piece of good news (and a lot of work!): the lab director, Isabelle Darcy, together with two colleagues, Miquel Simonet (Univ. of Arizona) and Annie Tremblay (Univ. of Kansas), recently edited a Research Topic for the online Journal Frontiers. The topic, entitled "Phonology in the bilingual and bidialectal lexicon" is a special issue containing 12 articles by 39 authors. Check it out! http://journal.frontiersin.org/researchtopic/3924/phonology-in-the-bilingual-and-bidialectal-lexicon#overview.
And last but not least, Miguel Marquez Martinez will defend his doctoral dissertation this Friday, October 14th, at 1:00 pm! The defense will take place at the Indiana Memorial Union. Good luck Miguel!!

Even though temperatures are still very summerly hot, this is the beginning of the second week of classes at IU! Welcome back everyone!
Some news about the summer, to start with: First, May was moving month! The department of Second Language Studies along with several others moved into majestic Ballantine Hall. After a rough start, things are now back to almost normal and you can find us on the 8th floor :)
The rest of the summer has also been quite busy, but most of us were able to take a needed break - how lucky!
In June (10-12/06/2016), we were at the New Sounds 2016 conference in Aarhus (Denmark). It was really a great conference, which brought a lot of great feedback and new ideas.
Now to "house-keeping" items: We'll have our regular lab meetings as usual, starting tonight at 5:30, but this semester it will be in Room 864 in Ballantine Hall.
There is also a new schedule for the SLS Colloquium, every Friday, from 2:30 - 4:00 pm, in Ballantine 103.
And don't forget to check out the "people" page where there have been some changes.

Today is the last day of class and the semester is nicely wrapping up! Earlier this month, several lab members (Isabelle, Danielle, John, Ala, Chisato) went to Sound to Word 2016 at the University of Iowa. It was a fantastic and rich conference. Many people presented a lot of very interesting work on L2 acquisition of phonology, the mental lexicon, the role of orthography in L2 phonological development. Thank you to Christine Shea for organizing such a lovely group of people!
This summer, in June (10-12), several of us will also be at the New Sounds 2016 conference in Aarhus (Denmark)! We are very much looking forward to this. I am co-organizing, together with Joan C. Mora, from University of Barcelona, a special session for this conference, entitled : Individual Differences in Executive Function and Phonological Processing: Implications for L2 Speech Acquisition. If you are in Aarhus in early June, come and check it out! We will have a great line-up of speakers: Miriam Broersma, Jeff Holliday, Natalia Kartushina, Elena Safronova, Susanne Reiterer, and
Pavel Trofimovich. This promises to be an excellent session!
And don't forget to check out the "people" page, several of us have won awards: Congratulations to them!

Apologies for the long silence. Last semester was very busy, with several new projects to get going. Two good news: Vance Schaefer successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation "Influence of the first and second language on the perception of Thai tones". Ala Simonchyk also successfully defended her Ph.D. proposal. Congratulations to both!
I have also finally updated the publication area of this website, and I want to highlight the very recent online first publication of our work on the role of inhibition for second language phonological processing: The Role of Inhibitory Control in Second Language Phonological Processing (Isabelle Darcy, Joan C. Mora,and Danielle Daidone), published in Language Learning. Link to the article abstract on the journal website.
I have also updated the "people" tab, and added a link to John Scott's website.

After a very nice and busy summer, everyone is back at the lab for a new semester. Welcome back, everyone! Isabelle left Barcelona after an exciting sabbatical, and everyone is happy to be back. The lab meeting have started again (Mondays, 5.30 - 7.00 pm), every other week. We also were at MidPhon last weekend, here on the IU campus. It was a nice conference. And of course, we were at ICPhS in Glasgow, which was fantastic. All presentations went well, and it was also our last chance to say a heartfelt "goodbye" to Jeff Holliday, who got a job in Seoul, Korea! Over the summer, two other lab members also moved away for new jobs or related matters: Ala and Vance - But they will be back in October (see below!). And: Congratulations to both Jeff and Vance for their new jobs! Ala, Vance and Jeff: we miss you!
For now, some new projects are being launched, as we settle back in into the new semester. But most importantly: 2 pieces of good news! Vance Schaefer will defend his dissertation on October 5th, 2015, and Ala Simonchyk will defend her dissertation proposal on October 9th, 2015. And as always, stay tuned for updates! There will be some changes on the "people" tab, with new lab members to introduce!

The article that was recently accepted in the journal Learning and Individual Differences is now online! Individual differences in L2 acquisition of English phonology: the relation between cognitive abilities and phonological processing. Click on the following personal article link, which will provide free access to our article, and is valid for 30-something more days, until July 5, 2015: http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1R1p93irP3khLW . Comments are welcome, as always!
Aside of that, Congratulations to Dr. Aaron Albin who successfully defended his excellent dissertation on May 14th! Also, congratulations to Dr. Rob Bedinghaus and Dr. Megan Solon both successfully defended dissertations in the IU Department of Spanish and Portuguese, both related to L2 phonology of Spanish acquisition. Very intersting work!
The whole lab also sends hearty "hellos" to John Scott who is currently spending 6 weeks in Stuttgart (Germany), for a research exchange with the lab of Prof. Sabine Zerbian. He is presenting his doctoral research there, and will test German native speakers. For more information, see the "Activities" section of this page (at the bottom): http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/linguistik/sfb732/index.php?article_id=178
And in Bloomington, the semester is now over, but the lab keeps busy! We'll have exciting data collection going on this summer, and of course, we'll be at ICPhS in Glasgow, in August! We hope to see you there!

Two pieces of excellent news today! First, not 2 but 3 papers from the lab were accepted to ICPhS:

Last month, on March 10th, Chung-Lin Yang successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation! Congratulations to him, and thanks to his wonderful committee: Tessa Bent, Ken DeJong, and Bob Port! Other good news include at least two papers from the lab (Daidone, Krueger & Lidster + Darcy & Mora) accepted to the International Congress of Phonetics Sciences (ICPhS) which will take place in Glasgow (UK) this summer, and Chung-Lin's paper to be presented at the Chicago Linguistics Society this month. Congratulations also to Danielle Daidone for having received a GPSO (IU Graduate and Professional Student Organization) Research Award for the second time!
Finally, on the Spanish side, things are going well, two chapters were submitted last week and will soon be referenced here. Also, I have given a presentation of the Functional Pitch Hypothesis (Schaefer & Darcy, 2014) in the lab group of Pilar Prieto at the University Pompeu Fabra, and today I have given a seminar on research methods in L2 phonology. The slides are available as pdf slideshow here (4 MB... rather large). As always, comments are welcome!

For about 3 weeks now, the lab director is on sabbatical, far away from the lab members! (but only physically, of course). So, the lab is split on both sides of the ocean! Everything is going well, on this side at least, and I trust on both sides too! We have a few great successes to report: first, John Scott was awarded a Language Learning Doctoral Grant! Congratulations!
Second, John Scott (again!) is teaching a course on Constructed Languages at the prestigious IU Collins Learning and Living center. Check out this article!.
Also, Chung-Lin Yang has announced his dissertation defense: Congratulations! It will be on March 10th, in Bloomington. Details will be posted very soon.
Finally, on the Spanish side, things are going well, work is being organized, papers revised and chapters written. Also, I will be teaching a course next week on the bilingual mental lexicon. The site is password protected, but if you have it, the link is here! Seminar UB. Keep up the good work, all!

After a very busy November, and overall a rich and travel-intense semester, we are finally close to this semester's end! All conferences went well, including a very nice visit to Germany at the end of November to the workshop 'Linguistic and psycholinguistic studies in L2 phonology' in beautiful Stuttgart; it was fabulous to see so many great colleagues again. The presentation I gave there is posted here:Darcy_L2 mental lexicon[Stuttgart].pdf We also submitted two papers to the PSLLT proceedings, one with Vance Schaefer, and one with Ala Simonchyk! Hopefully we will soon be able to post them on this website. Finally, another bit of great news: one new paper was just published online in Laboratory Phonology! The title is "Lexical function of pitch in the first language shapes cross-linguistic perception of Thai tones", by Vance Schaefer, and Isabelle Darcy. As always, comments and questions are most welcome! Happy end of semester to you all!

Kudos to Ryan Lidster who received the 2014 Householder Outstanding Graduate Paper in Linguistics Award in the Department of Linguistics!
And today, on October 11th, he gave an excellent Householder Outstanding Graduate Paper in Linguistics Lecture at the Alumni reception of the Linguistics Departments. His presentation, entitled The loandword "jilemma": Explaining differential importation of novel phonotactic sequences in Japanese loanwords, was enthusiastically received. At the same reception, Aaron Albin (with Wil Rankinen) presented a poster entitled Hierarchical Bayesian modeling of vowel formant data.

Now that the Fall semester is in full swing, we are preparing for some upcoming conferences. Chung-Lin Yang is currently at the Mental Lexicon Conference in Niagara Falls (Canada), and Ala Simonchyk and Vance Schaefer went to an excellent PSLLT conference in Santa Barbara in early September. Congratulations to all! We also had to say "goodbye" and "come back soon" to Dr. Nadia Bouchhioua, from Tunisia. She went back home, but her stay here was a full success!
We look forward to the publication of her pronunciation textbook!

Welcome back everyone! We just started a new semester again, and here are some news: we are delighted to have a visiting professor from Tunisia with us until the end of September: Dr. Nadia Bouchhioua, from Université La Manouba in Tunis! She is working on a pronunciation course for Arabic L2 learners of English. And as always, everyone is excited to get their new projects off the ground. There is a new project on fuzzy lexical representations in L2 learners; we are also starting a new longitudinal individual differences study with brain imaging; we will also start a new series of experiments on phonotactic knowledge with L2 learners of German, and with Korean learners of English. Also, we are preparing data collection for a project on the role of inhibitory control in L2 learning (with Joan Carles Mora). In addition to data being collected for Vance's, John's and Miguel's dissertations, Josh (Gordon), Chung-Lin, Aaron and Chisato will all soon turn in their completed drafts! I have updated a few things on the Resources page. And as you can see here, we'll have a busy conference Fall -- come meet us if you can! And as always, check back soon for updates!

Now that the semester is over, it's time to update this website again! There has been a lot of movement on the publication side! There are six publications that came out in 2014, and 2 in 2013. Now some of us are taking a well-deserved summer break, but the lab is still buzzing with activity! Testing, data analysis, dissertation chapter writing, we will surely have lots of news when we'll be back in August!

Right on our return from Spring Break, it's time for a little "spring maintenance" on this website! I have updated the "people" tab, and will update the "papers" tab soon too. The end of this semester will bring several events: First, Elena Safronova will (sadly) return to Barcelona, so we will have a little celebration in her honor this Friday evening (March 28). Next week, Aaron Albin will defend his Ph.D. Proposal, and at the end of the month, John Scott will do the same. And in the summer, we will likely have at least two dissertation defenses: Josh and Chisato!
Also: check out the online schedule for the SLS Colloquium, there have been several changes: Click here.

After a four months break on this page (sorry about that!), finally an update! The lab has been very busy since the last posting! We have worked very hard, testing new participants for the individual differences project, among others. Joan Carles Mora's visit in November 2013 was a glowing success and his visit brought us a lot of new things to think about and new exciting ideas to work on. Currently, one of his student, Elena Safronova, is visiting our lab for 3 months!
There has been a lot of activity for lab members in the Fall, with several conference presentations and some movement on the publication page as well as on the projects page. I will update this very soon.
Also: the new online schedule for the SLS Colloquium is now online! Click here.

The lab has resumed the biweekly lab meetings, with a very interesting guest lecture this week by Janet Scott on the topic of "Evaluating Neuroscience Methods for Linguistics Research". It was a really useful session. I have also updated the presentations page, and soon the publications section. I'm also delighted to announce the visit of my colleague Joan Carles Mora, from the University of Barcelona! He will be visiting our lab from November 12 through November 20, 2013, and will be giving 2 lectures. Stay tuned for the details and announcements! There will be more ways to interact with him!

Lots of European action these days! Last weekend, Jeff Holliday presented a talk at the PPLC 13 (Phonetics, phonology and languages in contact) conference in Paris. This week, we are in Amsterdam where we're enjoying a very successful EUROSLA conference so far! Lots of exciting talks and lots of great people around! My colleague J.C. Mora and I presented a talk yesterday on Inhibition and phonological processing (check out the presentation here!), and Cate will present new data on the effects of orthography this afternoon (check out this website soon for the presentation!). Stay tuned for more! [picture: The Lens Trees, www.arttown.me]

We're in the "deep" of summer, and you can hear bees buzzing and birds singing on campus, so still and empty... for now! The lab is undergoing a serious revision and update, too, with the reinstallation of computers and reorganization of data. Everything will soon be ready for experiments to start again! But of course, even when the director is on vacation, lab members continue to test and polish their experiments - and so hopefully we'll have a bunch of exciting new data soon!!
Oh, and we will be at EUROSLA in Amsterdam at the end of this month, too!

For a long time during this spring semester, we were waiting impatiently for New Sounds and now it's already over! It was fantastic, as expected, and you can download our presentation slides with the presenter notes here: "Phonological Attention Control, Inhibition, and Second Language Speech Learning". The handout, together with examples of audiofiles used in the Attention Control task are available in a zipped folder under Publications (scroll down to get to the conference presentations). There, you'll find as well the handout for the other presentation with Vance Schaefer on Thai tones perception. We welcome all the feedback you might have on our work!

Spring is not quite there but almost! Everybody is busy wrapping up the semester, and we are also preparing for the coming conferences! We will be at New Sounds, in Montreal, in May. We will also be at EUROSLA in Amsterdam in August, and in Provo, Utah, in October for SLRF! Lots of exciting work in preparation! (picture credit for this entry: www.gindeko.com)

It's ICY in Bloomington! But starting Studay, we will be happy to welcome Amanda Rabideau, from Rachel Hayes-Harb's Lab at the University of Utah, who will spend 2 weeks in our lab learning a new testing method, and discovering many great things at Indiana University! Don't miss lab meeting on Monday to meet Amanda! We'll have many various activities for all of us to interact.

I'm in Sevilla collecting a lot of great data for the project with Joan Carles Mora, on the role of attention control and inhibition in acquisition of new contrasts. In January, we have submitted 3 papers to the SLRF proceedings, and hopefully there will be many great publications coming out this year! Stay tuned for new exciting developments!

Happy New Year 2013 everyone! I hope this will be an excellent and inspiring year! Many projects are underway, so stay tuned for updates on the Projects page!

The 8th Mental Lexicon, which was taking place in Montreal this week, just ended yesterday night with a wonderful banquet. It was a very inspiring conference! You can find the poster we presented there by clicking here. It's also under publications, scrolling down to Conference Presentations. If you have any feedback, we'll be happy to receive it!

We just came back from SLRF, held at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh last weekend. We had a great time! Our slides can be found under publications, scrolling down to Conference Presentations.
We will be at the 8th Mental Lexicon Conference from tomorrow through Sunday. Check back soon for updates!

Well, summer is over! Welcome back, everyone! Classes in Bloomington started early this year, already on the 20th of August. We have a big lab this semester! And we will be meeting regularly on Monday, 5.30 - 7.00 pm, to discuss new data, rehearse talks and investigate other interesting L2 phonology things!
On the good news side, a paper just came out in the Proceedings of the Third Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching (PSLLT), you can find it here; We also presented a poster at the 4th PSLLT meeting in Vancouver last weekend. I'll upload the poster very soon! We will be at SLRF in Pittsburgh, as well as at the 8th Mental Lexicon Conference in October. So a busy Fall on the horizon...

Summer is in full swing, and the lab is busy. Pilot projects are being developed, data are being collected, and I am preparing my tenure dossier, as well as a grant submission coming soon. It is a busy time, very demanding! I have added many new useful resources for experiment design, stimuli preparation, data analysis, etc. If you would like to see something that is missing, please let us know! Also, for lab members, I have updated the resources available on the intranet, check it out!

After a crazy month of April, the semester is now over, and the lab is in "summer mood". But lots of things have happened! In particular, the publications page has been updated.
Congratulations also to Dr. Lorenzo Garcia-Amaya, who defended his Ph.D. on April 23, 2012! He is currently employed at the University of Alamaba in Birmingham.
Cheers also for Vance Schaefer! He successfully defended his Ph.D. Proposal at the beginning of this month. We have also given a presentation at the 18th Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference (GLAC), which was held here at Indiana University. Here is a pdf of our slides: "Asymmetric development in lexical encoding of L1-English L2-German front rounded vowels": Darcy_etal(2012)_GLAC-18.pdf . And finally, we will be at LabPhon 13 this summer in Stuttgart!

AAAL was wonderful and so inspiring! Here is the pdf of our slides: GordonDarcy.pdf.

We will be in Boston this weekend. We will talk about "The development of comprehensible speech in L2 learners. Effects of explicit pronunciation instruction on segmentals and suprasegmentals". I will post a pdf of the slides very soon afterwards. Spring is in full speed in Bloomington! Check back soon for updates!

We will be in Ottawa this weekend. You can find the poster we're presenting there here: DarcyParkYangGleiser2012.pdf

Everything good takes time to ripe, just like for the vineyards of Burdungy. Happy new year, everyone! 2011 has been extremely work-intensive, and saw many papers submitted. Hopefully some of them will come through in 2012. The first "cuvée" for 2012 is our paper that is just out in Second Language Research, after 4 (!) years of hard work. Here is the link to the Journal.
We also started a new semester last week, and here is the preliminary schedule for the Second Language Colloquium, which you can find here: Spring 2012. Check back for updates regularly, as the schedule will fill up.

We came back from Iowa (twice!). SLRF was very good this year, lots of L2 Phonology! I am posting the handout of our presentation, entitled "Suppression of L1 influence in L2 phonological processing: Cognitive abilities and individual variation", here: DarcyParkYang_SLRF2011_Handout.
We also just submitted a new short paper to the Proceedings of the Pronunciation Conference, in September (PSLLT). Here is the submitted version: DarcyEwertLidster_2011ProceedingsPSLLT. As usual, comments are welcome!

We will be at SLRF in Ames, Iowa, in about 2 weeks, where we will present work about individual differences in the development of the L2 phonological system. Check back soon for the slides and a manuscript!

This is the preliminary schedule for the SLS Colloquium! It's going to be a great semester! Fall2011.html

The new students are here! Check out the developments on our people page! Welcome, everyone! and stay tuned for announcements about lab meetings and other activities. And one good piece of news to start the semester: the manuscript we submitted for the category learning project was accepted to Second Language Research!

These last weeks always appear to me like "the lull before the storm"...Excitement is growing... But the new semester will be upon us in no time, and until then, there is lots to do... 2 Ph.D. defenses and conference preparation, and of course, welcoming our new students! Check out some updates in the Category Learning Project

Summer means calm for writing and for thinking. A lot of new data were collected in April and May, and are being analyzed (see Category formation and lexical encoding of new contrasts). We will need advanced learners and native speakers of German for testing next month, so spread the word if you know some! See "contacts" for more information; our contact e-mail is : L2psyling@gmail.com

On June 16, I gave a talk at IDEA Zentrum (Link to Project Mila)at the University of Frankfurt/Main. I presented our recent findings that 10 year-old early L2 learners of German (Turkish L1) categorize German vowels differently from age-matched German monolinguals. Their production of these vowels, however, is target-like. A pdf of the presentation (in German) is available here

Today is the start of a new testing series. A new group of learners of German, about 130 people, will be tested in the lab during the next two weeks... busy end of the semester! Check back soon for updates on this project (see Category formation and lexical encoding of new contrasts)

I finished writing a manuscript with Franziska Krüger about early Turkish-German learners' acquisition of L2 German vowels. You can find the manuscript here Darcy & Krueger Vowel perception and production in Turkish children acquiring L2 German. Please do not quote - this document is to be submitted shortly, so it's not yet accepted. The other paper is written with Ingo Feldhausen (Hamburg University) in German, it's a paper that describes the challenges encountered by french-speaking German learners, and targeting German school teachers. Here is the link: Darcy & Feldhausen (submitted) Französisch. Again, please do not quote. However, comments are always appreciated!

On February 11, I presented the latest results of the project about "individual differences in the acquisition of L2 Phonology - with co-authors Hanyong Park and Chung-Lin Yang. You can find a pdf version of the presentation here: Darcy Park Yang (2011) Individual Differences. Comments are always appreciated! There is an additional document containing different graphs that you may want to consult as well: correlation_data_notes.pdf

Now Bloomington is literally frozen... IU has cancelled classes today until 1 pm. Our lab meeting will take place next monday, on Feb. 7 at 4.30 pm. Here is a link to our last meetings' presentation by Terrin Tamati. You can find it here.

Happy New Year 2011! Bloomington is still frozen and white. We have started a new year and a new semester full of new energy! The lab meetings are starting again: Every other monday, at 4.30 pm in the lab. The next one will be on February 7th. I'll post announcements on this website. The lab website is also hosting a new website: the Overview of our Second Language Studies Colloquium. You can find it here.

Bloomington's frozen and white, the semester is ending and everyone will enjoy a well-deserved break. The lab just celebrated its second birthday on Nov. 24; I wish you all very happy holidays, and look forward to starting 2011 with new energy!

Indiana may be having a sever drought, but that's not the case of the semester! There's a flurry of activity going on, analyzing and writing-up data. The lab meetings will also resume this Monday, at 4 pm, with a tutorial on E-prime.
Next month will also see the first issue of a new Journal: Laboratory Phonology. Check out www.labphon.org for details. Everyone is encouraged to join the association!

Check out the poster we presented at the 12th Conference on Laboratory Phonology in Albuquerque, last week! Here: LabPhon2010_DarcyKrueger.pdf
The 12th LabPhon conference in Albuquerque also saw the launch of the new Association for Laboratory Phonology www.labphon.org and of the new journal "Laboratory Phonology"! Everyone is encouraged to join the association and check out the journal!

Summer break is here! The lab has been very active - almost like the bees around the flowers - in testing a group of learners for a new study about individual differences in phonological acquisition.(see projects). The results are being analyzed and hopefully will be written up soon!
We will also be present at the upcoming Conference on Laboratory Phonology in Albuquerque, next week!

Spring has arrived and Bloomington is beautiful! But that's also the time of madness with lots of work to finish before semester-end-deadlines. Just hang in there, we're almost done!
We are currently working on a pilot study that will target individual differences in the acquisition of second language phonology (see projects). Check back soon for new developments and updates!

Congratulations to our Lab member Lorenzo Garcia-Amaya, who received a research prize for his planned dissertation project from Indiana University's GPSO! He has received the biggest award among this semester's six prizes! Well done!

New in 2010: lab meetings! Since January, the members of the lab meet bi-weekly to talk about current work, new papers, exchange ideas about work in progress and project ideas.

It's the Lab's first birthday today! Last year around that time, the lab was officially put into operation and we successfully ran our first experiments. Hopefully there will be many birthdays to come!

With the Fall conferences now over, we are next looking at the Spring/Summer conferences! Laboratory Phonology 12 will be in Albuquerque in July.

We were at SLRF in East Lansing this past weekend, and will be at BUCLD 34 in Boston this coming weekend. Our presentation about Category Learning and Lexical Encoding is now posted under projects, as well as the poster we present at BUCLD.

It's that time of the year again! The Second Language Research Forum (SLRF 2009)and the Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD 34) are around the corner.
The Lab will be represented at both: two presentations at SLRF and a poster at BU. Check back soon for the pdf versions of our presentations!

Everybody is now back to Bloomington and ready for the new semester! The new meeting time of the research group on Category Acquisition will be Friday, 1.25 - 2.15 pm in Room BH 664.
Our first meeting this semester will be Friday, Sept. 11.

Isabelle Darcy is now working on the project Learnability factors in category acquisition at the beautiful University of Seville until the end of June.

Launch of the new website on April 29, 2009! Second Language Psycholinguistics Lab at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN.

Check back soon for updates!!!