Beth A O’Brien
Biographic Data
| ID | 6528121 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Beth A O’Brien |
| GIVEN NAMES | Beth A |
| FAMILY NAME | O’Brien |
| SIGNATURE | O’BRIEN B A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Nanyang Technological University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1187-5908 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Relationship Between Reading and Working Memory in Children and Adolescents
Developmental shifts in the role of reading fluency
Phoneme identification in bilingual children in Singapore – a preregistered investigation using the CROWN game
Phoneme identification is critically involved in alphabetic reading, and weak skills in phoneme perception are known to correspond to the development of reading skills in children around the age of reading instruction. However, current models of phoneme perception have been established in monolingual populations, and these relationships may not hold for bilingual children. We developed a phoneme identification task, the CROWN Game, as part of a c…
Bilingual families and the home literacy environment
Background Accumulating evidence shows that the home literacy environment (HLE) has a potent and early influence on children's language and literacy development. However, there is a more limited understanding of HLE and its contribution to children's outcomes for simultaneous bilingual children exposed to two languages at home, particularly in the Asian context. Methods In this study with 801 six‐year‐old bilingual learners, HLE and language and …
Multisensory Interactive Digital Text for English Phonics Instruction with Bilingual Beginning Readers
We investigated a technology-based tool for teaching English letter-sound correspondences with bilingual children learning phonologically and typologically distant languages: English and Chinese. We expect that learning about print at the phoneme level may be particularly challenging, given children’s experience with the morphosyllabic language of Chinese. This randomized-controlled study with 90 kindergarteners examined the effects of an iPad-ba…
Promoting bilingualism and children’s co-participation in Singapore language classrooms
Show-and-Tell is one of many activities recommended for encouraging children’s oral language production in classrooms across the world, but there is little research on the topic. From existing studies, teacher facilitation is posited as key to shaping children’s oral language production. This paper explores teacher strategies for facilitating children’s oral language production during Show-and-Tell, in the case studies of four Singapore preschool…
Reading proficiency influences the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation
Child, family, and school factors in bilingual preschoolers’ vocabulary development in heritage languages
Child characteristics, family factors, and preschool factors are all found to affect the rate of bilingual children's vocabulary development in heritage language (HL). However, what remains unknown is the relative importance of these three sets of factors in HL vocabulary growth. The current study explored the complex issue with 457 Singaporean preschool children who are speaking either Mandarin, Malay, or Tamil as their HL. A series of internal …
Teacher's code-switching and bilingual children's heritage language learning and cognitive switching flexibility
To code-switch or not to code-switch? This is a dilemma for many bilingual language teachers. In this study, the influence of teachers’ CS on bilingual children's language and cognitive development is explored within heritage language (HL) classes in Singapore. Specifically, the relationship between children's language output, vocabulary development, and cognitive flexibility to teachers’ classroom CS behavior, is examined within 20 preschool HL …
Exploring characteristics of quality in language teaching & learning
The structure of home literacy environment and its relation to emergent English literacy skills in the multilingual context of Singapore
Aspectual interpretation and mass/count knowledge in Chinese-English bilinguals
Given recent interest in interface properties in bilingual acquisition, this study examined Chinese-English adolescent bilinguals' acquisition of English telicity – a property whose semantic interpretation (aspectual completion versus incompletion) is influenced by morphosyntax (mass/count distinction). Differences between Chinese and English exist in both mass/count ( Chierchia, 1998 ) and telicity ( Soh & Kuo, 2005 ). Despite existing L2 litera…
Orthographic processing efficiency in developmental dyslexia
Reading fluency
Evaluating the Dynamics of Unintended Interpersonal Coordination
Past research has shown that interpersonal interactions are characterized by a tacit coordination of motor movements of the participants and has suggested that the emergent synchrony might be explained by a coupled oscillator dynamic. This study investigates whether unintended between-person coordination can be demonstrated in a laboratory task that will allow an evaluation of whether such dynamical processes are involved. Ten pairs of participan…
Evaluating the Dynamics of Unintended Interpersonal Coordination
Past research has shown that interpersonal interactions are characterized by a tacit coordination of motor movements of the participants and has suggested that the emergent synchrony might be explained by a coupled oscillator dynamic. This study investigates whether unintended between-person coordination can be demonstrated in a laboratory task that will allow an evaluation of whether such dynamical processes are involved. Ten pairs of participan…
Reading fluency
Orthographic processing efficiency in developmental dyslexia
Aspectual interpretation and mass/count knowledge in Chinese-English bilinguals
Given recent interest in interface properties in bilingual acquisition, this study examined Chinese-English adolescent bilinguals' acquisition of English telicity – a property whose semantic interpretation (aspectual completion versus incompletion) is influenced by morphosyntax (mass/count distinction). Differences between Chinese and English exist in both mass/count ( Chierchia, 1998 ) and telicity ( Soh & Kuo, 2005 ). Despite existing L2 litera…
Reading proficiency influences the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation
Child, family, and school factors in bilingual preschoolers’ vocabulary development in heritage languages
Child characteristics, family factors, and preschool factors are all found to affect the rate of bilingual children's vocabulary development in heritage language (HL). However, what remains unknown is the relative importance of these three sets of factors in HL vocabulary growth. The current study explored the complex issue with 457 Singaporean preschool children who are speaking either Mandarin, Malay, or Tamil as their HL. A series of internal …
Teacher's code-switching and bilingual children's heritage language learning and cognitive switching flexibility
To code-switch or not to code-switch? This is a dilemma for many bilingual language teachers. In this study, the influence of teachers’ CS on bilingual children's language and cognitive development is explored within heritage language (HL) classes in Singapore. Specifically, the relationship between children's language output, vocabulary development, and cognitive flexibility to teachers’ classroom CS behavior, is examined within 20 preschool HL …
Exploring characteristics of quality in language teaching & learning
The structure of home literacy environment and its relation to emergent English literacy skills in the multilingual context of Singapore
Promoting bilingualism and children’s co-participation in Singapore language classrooms
Show-and-Tell is one of many activities recommended for encouraging children’s oral language production in classrooms across the world, but there is little research on the topic. From existing studies, teacher facilitation is posited as key to shaping children’s oral language production. This paper explores teacher strategies for facilitating children’s oral language production during Show-and-Tell, in the case studies of four Singapore preschool…
Multisensory Interactive Digital Text for English Phonics Instruction with Bilingual Beginning Readers
We investigated a technology-based tool for teaching English letter-sound correspondences with bilingual children learning phonologically and typologically distant languages: English and Chinese. We expect that learning about print at the phoneme level may be particularly challenging, given children’s experience with the morphosyllabic language of Chinese. This randomized-controlled study with 90 kindergarteners examined the effects of an iPad-ba…
Bilingual families and the home literacy environment
Background Accumulating evidence shows that the home literacy environment (HLE) has a potent and early influence on children's language and literacy development. However, there is a more limited understanding of HLE and its contribution to children's outcomes for simultaneous bilingual children exposed to two languages at home, particularly in the Asian context. Methods In this study with 801 six‐year‐old bilingual learners, HLE and language and …
Phoneme identification in bilingual children in Singapore – a preregistered investigation using the CROWN game
Phoneme identification is critically involved in alphabetic reading, and weak skills in phoneme perception are known to correspond to the development of reading skills in children around the age of reading instruction. However, current models of phoneme perception have been established in monolingual populations, and these relationships may not hold for bilingual children. We developed a phoneme identification task, the CROWN Game, as part of a c…
Relationship Between Reading and Working Memory in Children and Adolescents
Developmental shifts in the role of reading fluency
Psychology (12 works) · Linguistics (11 works) · Reading and Literacy Development (8 works) · Language Development and Disorders (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Mathematics education (5 works) · Cognitive psychology (4 works) · Developmental psychology (4 works) · Artificial Intelligence (3 works) · Child Development and Digital Technology (3 works)