Alexandra Bogoyavlenskaya

• Rodina, Yulia; Bogoyavlenskaya, Alexandra; Mitrofanova, Natalia & Westergaard, Marit Kristine Richardsen (2023). Russian heritage language development in narrative contexts: Evidence from pre- and primary-school children in Norway, Germany, and the UK. Frontiers in Psychology. 14. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1101995. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The present study aims at obtaining a comprehensive picture of language development in Russian heritage language (RHL) by bringing together evidence from previous investigations focusing on morphosyntax and global accent as well as from a newly conducted analysis of a less-studied domain–lexical development. Our investigation is based on a narrative sample of 143 pre- and primary-school bilinguals acquiring RHL in Norway, Germany, and the United Kingdom. We performed a multiple-way analysis of lexical production in RHL across the different national contexts, across both languages (heritage and societal), also comparing bilinguals and monolinguals. The results revealed a clear and steady increase with age in narrative length and lexical diversity for all bilingual groups in both of their languages. The variation in lexical productivity as well as the differences between the bilingual groups and between bilinguals and monolinguals were attributed to input factors with language exposure in the home and age of starting preschool as the major predictors. We conclude that, overall, the results from lexical, grammatical, and phonological acquisition in RHL support the view that having longer exclusive or uninterrupted exposure to a heritage language in early childhood is beneficial for its development across domains.

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• Bogoyavlenskaya, Alexandra; Onnis, Luca & Kartushina, Natalia (2026). Child Social Network and Lexical Development. doi: https:/psychologicalscience.confex.com/psychologicalscience/2026annual/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/61647. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The study investigates the relationship between infants’ social network diversity and lexical development in children aged 18, 24, and 36 months. Using parental reports and direct measure we examine how the diversity of social networks in early childhood influences expressive vocabulary size.

• Bogoyavlenskaya, Alexandra; Onnis, Luca & Kartushina, Natalia (2026). The Ecology of Human Vocal Learning: A Child Network Approach. doi: https:/bcccd.org/final-program.htm#51462abstext. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Vocal learning is a steppingstone in the development of language via the progressive acquisition and mastery of language-specific speech sounds from exposure to ambient speech. Children's language development is significantly influenced by their social environments, yet research primarily emphasizes the role of individual caregivers rather than broader social networks (Goldstein, King & West, 2003; Athari et al., 2021). Variability in a child's social network, such as the number of close relationships and the diversity of speakers, may impact their speech perception and production, hinting at a complex relationship between social interaction and vocal learning (Okocha et al., 2024, Casillas et al., 2020). Current evidence is inconclusive, indicating that while some studies suggest benefits from speaker variability, others show no correlation with language outcomes, highlighting the necessity for further investigations to clarify how diverse social networks contribute to infants' language acquisition (Estes & Lew-Williams, 2015; Bulgarelli & Bergelson, 2023). We hypothesize that individual differences in the social diversity of interactions of 11-month-old infants relate to their maturity of early vocalizations, i.e. proportion of canonical babbling, as measured during naturalistic parent-child play interactions. We thus predict that a larger speaker variability (different unique speakers regularly speaking to the child and in the presence of the child, weighted by their frequency of interactions) should be associated with more mature vocalizations at the same age. We recruit families with monolingual Norwegian infants. Data collection involves online parental interviews about the child's social network and audio recordings of play interactions, with analyses focusing on vocalization types and speaker diversity measured through Shannon's entropy, using mixed-effects regression models to assess the relationship between social network diversity and vocalization maturity. This study contributes to a better understanding of the role of the child social network in the emergence of human speech, and the trajectories of speech development.

• Rodina, Yulia; Bogoyavlenskaya, Alexandra; Mitrofanova, Natalia & Westergaard, Marit Kristine Richardsen (2023). Lexical development in Russian heritage language across different national contexts: Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom. Full text in Research Archive
• Rodina, Yulia; Bogoyavlenskaya, Alexandra; Kupisch, Tanja; Meir, Natalia; Mitrofanova, Natalia & Urek, Olga [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2023). Russian Heritage Language across Linguistic Domains and National Contexts. Full text in Research Archive
• Minor, Sergey & Bogoyavlenskaya, Alexandra (2023). Grammar interaction in multilingual processing – an eye-tracking study of grammatical case and verbal aspect in heritage Russian. Full text in Research Archive
• Mitrofanova, Natalia; Minor, Sergey & Bogoyavlenskaya, Alexandra (2023). Grammar interaction in multilingual processing – an eye-tracking study of grammatical case and verbal aspect in heritage Russian. Full text in Research Archive

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