Question answering forums in online learning environments provide a valuable opportunity to gain insights as to what students are asking. Understanding frequently asked questions and topics on which questions are asked can help instructors in focusing on specific areas in the course content and correct students' confusions or misconceptions. An…

The article is devoted to the problem of the development of skills connected with the acquisition of foreign lexis (Lexis = all possible words or phrases in a language) on the basis of semantic fields (Semantic field = a lexical set of related items, e.g., colour, red, green, blue). This becomes possible due to grouping well-known and unknown to…

Recent studies of semantic memory have investigated two theories of optimal search adopted from the animal foraging literature: Lévy flights and marginal value theorem. Each theory makes different simplifying assumptions and addresses different findings in search behaviors. In this study, an experiment is conducted to test whether clustering in…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine whether deficits in executive function and lexical-semantic memory compromise the linguistic performance of young adults with specific learning disabilities (LD) enrolled in postsecondary studies. Method: One hundred eighty-five students with LD (n = 53) or normal language development (ND, n =…

Vocabulary learning is a crucial factor in second language acquisition (SLA), yet there is no consensus as to how to present vocabulary in a way that facilitates learning. Little theory and scant empirical evidence support the claim that presenting words in semantic clusters facilitates vocabulary acquisition, yet most text books present SL…

The objective of our study is to introduce a fully automated, computational linguistic technique to quantify semantic relations between words generated on a standard semantic verbal fluency test and to determine its cognitive and clinical correlates. Cognitive differences between patients with Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment are…

To investigate the effects of semantic mapping, thematic clustering, and notebook keeping on L2 vocabulary recognition and production, four groups of intermediate level learners in an EFL institute in Zanjan, Iran participated in the study. Three experimental groups consisted of semantic mapping, semantic feature analysis, and vocabulary notebook…

Starting in the late eighties, with a growing discontent with analytical methods in science and the growing power of computers, researchers began to study complex systems such as living organisms, evolution of genes, biological systems, brain neural networks, epidemics, ecology, economy, social networks, etc. In the early nineties, the research…

Provides a portrait of the structure of the categories and tests the correlation between family resemblance and prototypicality of items. (Author)

An automatic classification technique has been developed, based on the character structure of words. (Author)

Argues that the account of coordination of unlike categories ought to be unified with the account of feature neutralization under phonological identity. Further argues that this unified account ought not be couched in terms of string of features, but rather in terms of the logic of categories. Study concludes with a discussion of the interactions…

We present statistical analyses of the large-scale structure of 3 types of semantic networks: word associations, WordNet, and Roget's Thesaurus. We show that they have a small-world structure, characterized by sparse connectivity, short average path lengths between words, and strong local clustering. In addition, the distributions of the number of…

It was concluded that pictures are encoded differently depending on task expectation. Parallel access of visual and semantic memory codes occurs; but when recognition is expected, a visual cue provides faster access, and when expecting recall, verbal access is more efficient. (Author)

This paper focuses on clustering a World Wide Web site (i.e., the 1998 World Cup Soccer site) into groups of documents that are predictive of future user accesses. Two approaches were developed and tested. The first approach uses semantic information inherent in the documents to facilitate the clustering process. User access history is then used…