Children acquire language more easily than adults, though it is controversial whether this faculty declines as a result of a critical period or something else. To address this question, we investigate the role of age of acquisition and proficiency on morphosyntactic processing in adult monolinguals and bilinguals. Spanish monolinguals and intermediate and advanced early and late bilinguals of Spanish read sentences with adjacent subject–verb number agreements and violations and chose one of four pictures. Eye-tracking data revealed that all groups were sensitive to the violations and attended more to more salient plural and preterit verbs than less obvious singular and present verbs, regardless of AoA and proficiency level. We conclude that the processing of adjacent SV agreement depends on perceptual salience and language use, rather than AoA or proficiency. These findings support usage-based theories of language acquisition.

Recent empirical studies have highlighted the large degree of analytic flexibility in data analysis that can lead to substantially different conclusions based on the same data set. Thus, researchers have expressed their concerns that these researcher degrees of freedom might facilitate bias and can lead to claims that do not stand the test of time. Even greater flexibility is to be expected in fields in which the primary data lend themselves to a variety of possible operationalizations. The multidimensional, temporally extended nature of speech constitutes an ideal testing ground for assessing the variability in analytic approaches, which derives not only from aspects of statistical modeling but also from decisions regarding the quantification of the measured behavior. In this study, we gave the same speech-production data set to 46 teams of researchers and asked them to answer the same research question, resulting in substantial variability in reported effect sizes and their interpretation. Using Bayesian meta-analytic tools, we further found little to no evidence that the observed variability can be explained by analysts’ prior beliefs, expertise, or the perceived quality of their analyses. In light of this idiosyncratic variability, we recommend that researchers more transparently share details of their analysis, strengthen the link between theoretical construct and quantitative system, and calibrate their (un)certainty in their conclusions.

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En este trabajo se evaluó la influencia sobre el esfuerzo de corte en soldaduras de filete longitudinales y transversales soldadas mediante GMAW-SC, de cuatro gases de protección que actualmente comercializa Indura S.A: Indurmig 20, Indurmig 8, Indurmig O2 y CO2. Para ello se ensayaron en tracción probetas para ensayo de corte fabricadas bajo la Norma AWS B4.0:2007. Se fabricaron, además, probetas de filetes en unión T para realizar pruebas de micrografía, microdureza y macrografía para dar así significado a los resultados del esfuerzo de corte, por medio del análisis de microestructuras, microdureza Vickers y penetración obtenida para cada gas evaluado. El metal base utilizado fue un acero ASTM A36 y el metal de aporte, ER70S-6. Los resultados muestran que el esfuerzo de corte es mayor al utilizar CO2, con 313 MPa de promedio, y menor en las juntas soldadas con Indurmig O2, con un promedio de 244 MPa, lo que se relaciona directamente con las dimensiones de las gargantas efectivas y, en consecuencia, con la penetración obtenida para cada gas, definiendo guarda relación con el esfuerzo de corte y a medida que el oxígeno aumenta en la composición química del gas, aumenta la dureza, ya que se favorece una mayor velocidad de soldeo y, con ello, una mayor velocidad de enfriamiento y un tamaño de cordón más pequeño. Palabras Clave: Soldadura; GMAW; Ensayo de corte; Gases de protección; Esfuerzo de corte.

Previous studies attest that early bilinguals can modify their perceptual identification according to the fine-grained phonetic detail of the language they believe they are hearing. Following Gonzales et al. (2019), we replicate the double phonemic boundary effect in late learners (LBs) using conceptual-based cueing. We administered a forced choice identification task to 169 native English adult learners of Spanish in two sessions. In both sessions, participants identified the same /b/-/p/ voicing continuum, but language context was cued conceptually using the instructions. The data were analyzed using Bayesian multilevel regression. Learners categorized the continuum in a similar manner when they believed they were hearing English. However, when they believed they were hearing Spanish, “voiceless” responses increased as a function of L2 proficiency. This research demonstrates the double phonemic boundary effect can be conceptually cued in LBs and supports accounts positing selective activation of independent perception grammars in L2 learning.