Melisa Dracos

Biographic Data

ID3531373
NAMEMelisa Dracos
GIVEN NAMESMelisa
FAMILY NAMEDracos
SIGNATUREDRACOS M
AFFILIATIONSBaylor University
ORCID0000-0002-6074-4672
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS5
TOTAL CITATIONS1
AUTHOR COUNT5
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2018
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX1

  • How children shape heritage morphosyntax: Acquisition of the Spanish subjunctive in sentential complements

    Open AccessPablo E Requena, Melisa DracosARTICLEBilingualism Language and Cognition2026

    This study investigated the origins of mood vulnerability in heritage language (HL) grammar. Prior research on adult heritage speakers (HSs) shows that subjunctive use with sentential complements is highly vulnerable, hypothesized to stem from language-internal (type of selection, modality) and language-external (HL experience) factors. We examined Spanish subjunctive use in complements to factive emotive predicates (Presupposition) and nonassert…

  • Child heritage speakers’ acquisition of the Spanish subjunctive in volitional and adverbial clauses

    Melisa Dracos, Pablo E RequenaARTICLELanguage Acquisition2023

    The Spanish subjunctive mood (SUBJ) is said to be highly vulnerable in heritage language (HL) acquisition. However, there is little controlled research on HL-speaking children acquiring the various Spanish SUBJ contexts, so we do not have a clear picture of when, how, or why heritage speakers (HSs) develop in the SUBJ as they do. This study tests the development of the SUBJ in two of the earliest acquired contexts by monolingual children—SUBJ wit…

  • Spanish copula selection with adjectives in school-aged bilingual children

    Open AccessPablo E Requena, Melisa DracosARTICLEInternational Journal of…2021

    Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This study examined whether school-aged second-generation heritage speakers exhibit knowledge of the semantic and pragmatic constraints on Spanish copula selection with adjectives, and whether experiential factors affect copula interpretation. Design/methodology/approach: Following a between-subjects design, we administered 2 Picture Selection Tasks to 50 second-generation bilingual children (ages 5…

  • The Role of Task-Essential Training and Working Memory in Offline and Online Morphological Processing

    Open AccessMelisa Dracos, Nick HenryARTICLELanguages2021References: 67

    This study investigates the effects of task-essential training on offline and online processing of verbal morphology and explores how working memory (WM) modulates the effects of training. We compare a no-training control group to two training groups who completed a multisession task-essential training focused on Spanish verbal inflections related to person-number agreement and tense. Effects of training were evaluated using an offline aural inte…

  • The effects of task‐essential training on L2 processing strategies and the development of Spanish verbal morphology

    Open AccessMelisa Dracos, Nick HenryARTICLEForeign Language Annals2018Cited by: 1References: 38

    The acquisition of verbal morphology presents challenges for many second language (L2) learners, in part because they do not readily process those forms during sentence comprehension. Instead, L2 learners rely on lexical‐semantic cues (e.g., temporal adverbs and explicit subjects). This study investigated the role of task‐essential training in changing learners’ processing tendencies and tested whether such changes were related to increased perfo…