Purpose: The study examined whether semantic and phonological encoding processes were capacity demanding, involving the central cognitive mechanism, in adults who do and do not stutter (AWS and NS) to better understand the role of cognitive demand in linguistic processing and stuttering. We asked (a) whether the two linguistic processes in AWS are…

Reconstructing memory for sequences is a complex process, likely involving multiple sources of information. In 3 experiments, we examined the source(s) of information that might underlie the ability to accurately place an event within a temporal context. The task was to estimate, after studying each list, the temporal position of a single test…

Background: The gender gap in reading literacy is repeatedly found in large-scale assessments. This study compared girls' and boys' text responses in a reading test applying natural language processing. For this, a theoretical framework was compiled that allows mapping of response features to the preceding cognitive components such as micro- and…

Infants rapidly learn language in their home environments. Between 6 and 12 months of age, infants' ability to process the building blocks of speech (i.e., phonetic information) develops quickly, and this ability predicts later language development. Typically, developing infants in a monolingual language environment rapidly tune in to the phonetic…

Previous studies have shown a robust bias to express the goal path over the source path when describing events ("the bird flew into the pitcher," rather than "… out of the bucket into the pitcher"). Motivated by linguistic theory, this study manipulated the causal structure of events (specifically, making the source cause the…

This study investigated whether the effect of exposure to code-switching on bilingual children's language performance varied depending on verbal working memory (WM). A large sample of school-aged Spanish-English bilingual children (N = 174, Mage = 7.78) was recruited, and children were administered language measures in English and Spanish. The…

The human sentence processor is able to make rapid predictions about upcoming linguistic input. For example, upon hearing the verb eat, anticipatory eye-movements are launched toward edible objects in a visual scene (Altmann & Kamide, 1999). However, the cognitive mechanisms that underlie anticipation remain to be elucidated in ecologically…

Four tasks (N = 191, 3- to 6-year-olds) examined the effect of instrumental versus conventional language cues on children's imitative fidelity of a necklace-making activity, their memory and transmission of the activity, and their perceptions of functional fixedness. Children in the conventional condition imitated with higher fidelity, transmitted…

Cognitive linguists claim that verb-particle constructions are compositional and analyzable, and that the particles contribute to the overall meaning in the form of image schemas. This article examined this claim with a behavioral experiment, in which participants were asked to judge the sensibility of short sentences primed by image-schematic…

Open-ended, short-answer questions, referred to as constructed responses (CR), allow students to express knowledge and skills through their own words. While CRs can reduce the likelihood of guessing correct answers, they also enable students to provide errant responses due to a lack of knowledge or a misunderstanding of the question.…

Purpose: Cognitive effort is a clinically important facet of linguistic processing that is often overlooked in the assessment and treatment of people with aphasia (PWA). Furthermore, there is a paucity of valid ways to index cognitive effort in PWA. The construct of cognitive effort has been indexed for decades via pupillometry (measurement of…

The purpose of intelligent tutoring systems is to provide students with personalized instruction and feedback. The focus of these systems typically rests in the adaptability of the feedback provided to students, which relies on automated assessments of performance in the system. A large focus of my previous work has been to determine how natural…

Research in adults has shown that novel words are encoded rather swiftly but that their semantic integration occurs more slowly and that studying definitions presented in a written modality may benefit integration. It is unclear, however, how semantic integration proceeds in children, who (compared to adults) have more malleable brains and less…

Background: Word learning is an important component of language development that influences child outcomes across multiple domains. Despite the importance of word knowledge, word-learning mechanisms are poorly understood in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study examined…

The development of effective second and foreign (L2) language learning materials needs to be grounded in two types of theories: (a) a theory of language and language use and (b) a theory of language learning. Both are equally important, insofar as an effective learning environment requires an understanding of the knowledge, skills, and abilities…