This study examines accent biases in hiring practices among educators in U.S. schools. Using quantitative methods, the research investigates whether bias levels and accent types influence hiring decisions. The study, involving 216 hiring managers from various school sectors, found no significant correlation between bias levels (audio versus video)…

The process of spoken word recognition is influenced by both bottom-up sensory information and top-down cognitive information. These cues are used to process the phonological and semantic representations of speech. Several studies have used EEG/ERPs to study the neural mechanisms of children's spoken word recognition, but less is known about the…

The present study sought to evaluate trial designs and training designs that are commonly used in popular commercially available computer-assisted language-learning (CALL) programs. The first two experiments (Experiment 1a and 1b) compared the effects of passive viewing and active student response methods in vocabulary learning. Contingencies on…

Noise is a common impedance to easy and accurate speech understanding. In the presence of noise, speech processing mechanisms proceed with partial or ambiguous inputs, and listeners will engage additional cognitive resources to make sense of what they hear. The extent to which this is situation is affected by diminished exposure to a language is…

Reading skills are widely recognized as fundamental abilities, crucial not only for academic success but also for participation in social activities and navigating interpersonal challenges. In the early formation of reading abilities, mastery of sight words is instrumental in effectively enhancing reading proficiency, particularly for individuals…

Six experiments were conducted with graduate students to assess resurgence of compound (i.e., multi-step) academic responding under free operant procedures. Participants learned two different interobserver agreement (IOA) methods -- compound behaviors -- through instructional phases before beginning the experimental phases. Each experiment…

Math anxiety impedes people from working to their fullest potential (Hyman et al., 2015; Retanel et al., 2021) and impacts people of all ages, including both children and adults (Oh et al., 2022; SzczygieL, 2020). The influence parents' math anxiety has on children is also impactful on the children's own development of math anxiety or negative…

To build an Artificial Intelligence system that can assist us in daily lives, the ability to understand the world around us through visual input is essential. Prior studies train visual perception models by defining concept vocabularies and annotate data against the fixed vocabulary. It is hard to define a comprehensive set of everything, and thus…

The present dissertation intends to investigate the syntactic nature and L2-acquisition of passive sentence structure in two Romance varieties, Italian and Spanish. First, I will present an analytic proposal couched within the Generative Approach (Chomsky, 1957, and subsequent work); from there, and following Perlmutter and Postal's (1977)…

Misinformation, or incorrect information, in all forms is a recent and widespread threat. While information literacy methods, such as the CRAAP method and the RADAR framework, more research is necessary to determine prevalence and effectiveness of these methods. In this mixed-methods survey, I evaluated Gen Z information seekers' experience with…

Given the inclusion of sensory reactivity as a diagnostic criterion for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and the theorized etiological role of sensory reactivity in the development of autism, adequate sensory measures of sensory reactivity in autism, including measures extending to use in infancy, are needed. Adequate sensory measurement relies on…

Previous research has shown a relationship between robust neural encoding of speech by the auditory brainstem and children's phonological abilities. Two areas of brainstem encoding this work has included are the ABR dimensions of consistency, or how similar responses are to a repeated stimulus, and differentiation, or the degree to which responses…

Language is a unique skill used by humans to communicate thoughts and feelings. For most individuals, language is understood through different sensory modalities--for instance, hearing auditory words relies on audition, while perceiving visual speech via lipreading and reading written text both utilize the visual system. Although these different…

This study compared the effects of listener training and tact training on the emergence of intraverbal responses in the form of foreign language equivalents of the native language. The study was based on Skinner's verbal operants with a focus on intraverbal responses. All participants received listener training and tact training after which a…

With the rise of bilinguals globally, extensive research has been conducted to understand how bilingualism affects cognitive functions differently from monolingualism, with significant implications for bilingual education, healthcare, and other fields. Specific to language processing, differences have been identified between second language (L2)…