In order for a person to comprehend metaphoric expressions, do metaphor-irrelevant aspects of literal information need to be inhibited? Previous research using sentence-verification paradigms has found that literal associates take longer to process after reading metaphorical sentences; however, it is problematic to infer inhibition from this…

The purpose of this research was to examine the effects of instruction on students' generation of questions when reading multiple documents. Participants were 151 undergraduate students who were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: a treatment condition that received question generation instruction and a control condition that did not…

Metonymic words have multiple related meanings, such as "college", as in the building ("John walked into the college") or the educational institution ("John was promoted by the college"). Most researchers have found support for direct access models of metonymy but one recent study, Lowder and Gordon (2013), found…

Textbooks are experiencing a 21st century makeover. The author has created a web-based electronic textbook, Material and Energy Balances zyBook, that records students' interactions. Animations and question sets create interactive and scaffolded content. The interactive format is adopted successfully in other engineering disciplines and is now…

Reading is affected by both situational requirements and one's cognitive skills. The current study investigated how individual differences interacted with task requirements to determine reading behavior and outcome. We recorded the eye movements of college students, who differed in reading efficiency, while they completed a multiple-choice (MC)…

In the present study, we examine sentence reading in low-proficiency Spanish learners using an eye-tracking methodology. This method reveals the real-time, uninterrupted process of reading comprehension, and can therefore shed light on L2 learners' functional proficiency. We created sentence pairs that were identical except for one word. The…

In garden path (GP) jokes, a first dominant interpretation is detected as incoherent and subsequently substituted by a hidden joke interpretation. Two important factors for the processing of GP jokes are salience of the initial interpretation and accessibility of the hidden interpretation. Both factors are assumed to be affected by contextual…

The present study explored the perceptual span (i.e., the physical extent of an area from which useful visual information is extracted during a single fixation) during the reading of Chinese sentences in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, we tested whether the rightward span can go beyond 3 characters when visually similar masks were used. Results…

The present study assessed intra- and cross-lingual neighborhood effects, using both a generalized lexical decision task and an analysis of a large-scale bilingual eye-tracking corpus (Cop, Dirix, Drieghe, & Duyck, 2016). Using new neighborhood density and frequency measures, the general lexical decision task yielded an inhibitory…

Negated words take longer to recognize than non-negated words following sentences with negation, suggesting that negated concepts are less active. The present experiments tested the possibility that this reduced activation would not persist beyond immediate testing. Experiment 1 used a probe task and materials similar to those used in previous…

The majority of naturalistic reading occurs within passages. Therefore, it is important to understand how reading in context affects the division of labor between semantic and orthographic processing. However, it is difficult to compare the cognitive processes elicited by reading in context and lists because of the perceptual differences that…

In this study, we report the results of two self-paced reading experiments that investigated working memory capacity effects on the processing of globally ambiguous relative clauses by advanced Korean second language (L2) learners of English. Consistent with previous monolingual literature on the processing of temporary ambiguity, we found that…

There is a lack of research which examines the effects of online pop-up dictionaries in the context of less commonly taught languages including Japanese as a second and foreign language (JSL and JFL), despite the growing popularity of such tools. This qualitatively-oriented study is an attempt to fill this void. The study investigates differences…

In alphabetic languages, print consistently elicits enhanced, left-lateralized N170 responses in the event-related potential compared to control stimuli. In the current study, we adopted a cross-linguistic design to investigate N170 tuning to logographic Chinese and to "pinyin," an auxiliary phonetic system in Chinese. The results…

Scores of studies have established that when learning online, students must be equipped with different sets of strategies and skills than in a physical classroom setting (Anderson, 2003; Broadbent & Poon, 2015; Coiro, 2007; Leu et al., 2007; Michinov, Brunot, Le Bohec, Juhel, & Delaval, 2011; Salmon, 2013). The present study, by virtue of…