Simone E. Pfenninger is Assistant Professor of Psycholinguistics and Language Acquisition at the University of Salzburg, Austria. Her research interests include multilingualism, psycholinguistics and the age factor in SLA and she is co-editor (with Judit Navracsics) of Future Research Directions for Applied Linguistics (2017, Multilingual Matters).David Singleton is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Pannonia, Hungary and Fellow Emeritus, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He has published widely on second language acquisition, multilingualism and lexicology and is co-author (with Vivian Cook) of Key Topics in Second Language Acquisition (2014, Multilingual Matters).

• AcknowledgmentsChapter 1: Mapping the TerrainChapter 2: The Current Empirical StudyChapter 3: Age and (Statistical) AnalysisChapter 4: Age and Rate of AcquisitionChapter 5: Age and AffectChapter 6: Age and Cross-Linguistic InfluenceChapter 7: Age and Impact of Differential InputChapter 8: Age and Educational ImplicationsChapter 9: Conclusion and Future PerspectivesReferencesIndex

This expansive, longitudinal study constitutes a major contribution to the ongoing debate over age in SLA. Through careful and sophisticated analyses, Pfenninger and Singleton present convincing evidence that late SLA confers specific linguistic, cognitive and affective advantages. Practitioners, policy makers and researchers alike will find many new insights here from which to question the ‘earlier is better’ mantra.