Cognitive control is a mental construct thought to be important in most cognitive tasks, including second language learning. Its functions are believed by many scholars to be mainly domain-general, with some transferability across linguistic and non-linguistic domains. Our study aims to investigate to what extent the domain-generality claim of…

This study first validates a survey on self-regulated vocabulary learning strategies. It then examines the effects on the acquisition of new second language (L2) words from a reading text of three word-focused exercise conditions: reading + marginal glosses, reading + gap-fill and reading + sentence writing. It also evaluates the extent to which…

Background: Immersive virtual reality (IVR) is a new technology that could motivate learners, but also could contain distracting elements that increase cognitive demands on learners. In contrast, learning with conventional media, such as a narrated slideshow could be less motivating, but also less distracting. Objectives: This experiment…

In multimedia learning, there is a lot of new information that learners are exposed to, making it a cognitively intensive process. Poorly-designed multimedia lessons can introduce distractions that must be dealt with by the learner. However, learners do not all share the same skill at managing incoming information or holding capacity, which could…

It is acknowledged the need for interventions to improve reading comprehension and its cognitive underpinnings, such as executive functions. The present study implemented a computerized cognitive training for enhancing reading comprehension in primary school children through EF activities embedded in text comprehension exercises. 263 third and…

How working memory supports dual-task performance is the focus of a long-standing debate. Most previous research on this topic has focused on participant performance data. In three experiments, we investigated whether changes in participant-reported strategies across single- and dual-task conditions might help resolve this debate by offering new…

Open-ended problem-solving skills have been identified as employable skills, which undergraduate students will need to have in order to cope with real-life problems in their workplaces after graduation. However, the development and assessment of these skills have been inconsistent across courses offered in universities. This research examined…

The research on interpreting aptitude has focused on the abilities, skills and personal traits of individuals in order to predict their future interpreting performance. However, an important variable between the personal characteristics and success of trainee interpreters in interpreter training, which is instructional practices, is overlooked.…

The study investigated the effect of task complexity (TC) on second language (L2) learners' affective responses and writing performance and how these were modulated by cognitive and affective individual difference (ID) factors. A total of 412 Chinese 8th-grade English-as-a-foreign-language learners completed a working memory (WM) test, a scale…

There have been many studies exploring the advantages that bilingualism confers to individuals' working memory and metacognition (see Ransdell, 2006; Del Missier et al., 2010). The hypothesis of language critical period states that if no language learning and teaching happen during the critical period, an individual will never be able to fully…

We examined the role of visuo-spatial working memory in different types of arithmetic ability in children. Previous research had suggested that arithmetic is not a single entity (Dowker, 2005, 2015), and also that visuo-spatial working memory is specifically involved in mathematical cognition (McKenzie et al., 2003) There has, however, been little…

Although collaborative learning is becoming a widely popular instructional method, little research has been undertaken considering human cognitive structures and their influence on the design of collaborative learning tasks. Using cognitive load theory as a theoretical framework in this study, forty-five undergraduate students were assigned to…

Few studies have explored the learning opportunities different audiovisual genres may create for vocabulary learning. Even fewer have looked at how learners' viewing experience is affected by individual differences (IDs) in vocabulary size, attention, inhibition, or working memory. Such IDs have been shown to mediate early and long-term vocabulary…

Relatively late mastery of scalar implicatures has been suggested to correlate with children's immature processing capacities, such as their limited working memory. Yet, many studies that tested for a link between children's working memory and their computation of scalar implicatures have failed to find any correlation. One possible reason is that…

The aim of the present study was to test environmental and cognitive variables as possible cross-domain predictors of early literacy and numeracy skills. One hundred forty-eight preschool children (mean age = 64.36 months ± 3.33) were enrolled in the study. The battery included a home literacy and home numeracy questionnaire, measures and…