Lexical inferencing is considered a listening strategy that is commonly employed by advanced EFL (English as a Foreign Language) listeners and a factor that contributes to successful listening comprehension. However, investigations of the factors that influence inferencing success in listening as well as how much each factor contributes to success…

Studies have shown that vocabulary can be acquired in second language reading, but researchers have not explicitly examined which vocabulary coping strategies lead to higher rates of vocabulary learning. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the effect of various strategies using eye tracking and navigation tracking. The strategies…

According to cognitive psychologists, consistent practice (i.e., tasks with a high degree of similarity) of a skill leads to the development of automaticity, with the degree of automatization being increased if the practice also involves exact repetition. Practice is skill specific, meaning that practicing one skill does not automatize related…

It is well documented that exercise plays a critical role in maintaining physical health. More recently, a growing body of research has begun to focus on the mental benefits of exercise ranging from reducing depression to enhancing various cognitive abilities like memory and attention. These abilities are paramount for learning to occur, and thus,…

In Asia, some children are taught a calculation technique known as the 'mental abacus'. Previous research indicated that mental abacus experts can perform extraordinary feats of mental arithmetic, but it disagrees as to whether the technique improves working memory. The present study extended and clarified these findings by contrasting performance…

Recent research has called for the use of fine-grained measures that distinguish implicit knowledge from automatized explicit knowledge. In the current study, such measures were used to determine how the two systems interact in a naturalistic second language (L2) acquisition context. One hundred advanced L2 speakers of Japanese living in Japan…

This study investigated the effect of consistent freewriting practice on written fluency development. Thirty-nine first-year university students completed 70 10-minute freewriting activities over the course of an academic semester. Written fluency, measured as words produced per minute (wpm), increased from a mean of 19.5 wpm to 30.1 wpm over a…

The present study investigated the impact of chunk reading training (CRT) on the online syntactic processing and verbal working memory (WM) of Japanese EFL (English as a foreign language) learners in secondary school. For four weeks, the treatment group (N = 31) underwent CRT, while the control group (N = 25) participated in reading training in…

This is the first edited volume dedicated to both teachers and learners of second/foreign language (L2) pragmatics. It comprises a collection of studies that explore how teachers background and practices, and individual learners differences contribute to the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics. Also included are chapters that present…

The Hebb repetition paradigm has recently attracted attention as a measure of serial order learning, which underlies word-form learning abilities. Although children are good vocabulary learners, it is surprising that previous Hebb learning studies with young children show rather weak Hebb effects. In this study, we conducted two experiments to…

The focus of the classroom karaoke study was to determine if singing could help Japanese EFL students improve their English pronunciation skills. Five students from a private English language school in Japan were the main participants. They ranged in age (from 20-50) as well as in English proficiency level (from beginning to advanced). After the…

The aim of the 2018 International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA) conference was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There have been advances in both cognitive…

Prior research showed that interleaved practice (studying multiple skills at once) is more effective than blocked practice (studying only one skill at a time). This study aims to replicate the benefits of interleaved practice on the proceduralization of second language (L2) syntax and further examines the role of working memory (WM) in different…

Listening has been widely characterised as a multifaceted process encompassing a range of linguistic and psycholinguistic components (see Rubin, 1994). However, for learners at different levels of L2 proficiency, there is uncertainty over the relative importance of the various sub-skills. To address this issue, a number of linguistic and…

The current 2-part study investigated the relative contributions of English language training (ELT) and computerized Cogmed working memory training (WMT) to improvements in English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) proficiency and working memory capacity. In Study 1, Japanese undergraduate EFL learners were randomly allocated to 1 of 3 experimental…