Speakers of a second language (L2), regardless of profciency level, communicate for specifc purposes. For example, an L2 speaker of English may wish to build rapport with a co-worker by chatting about the weather. The speaker will draw on various resources to accomplish her communicative purposes. For instance, the speaker may say "falling…

Stimuli that are fluently processed are more likely to be called "old" on a recognition memory test compared with less fluently processed stimuli. The goal of the current study was to investigate how the perceived diagnostic value of fluency is affected by a match between encoding and test conditions. During the encoding phase,…

Central auditory processing disorder (CAPD), as defined by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), refers to difficulties in the perceptual processing of auditory information in the central nervous system and the neurobiological activity that underlies that processing and gives rise to electrophysiologic auditory potentials (ASHA,…

The development of the ability to categorize speech sounds is often viewed as occurring primarily during infancy via perceptual learning mechanisms. However, a number of studies suggest that even after infancy, children's categories become more categorical and well defined through about age 12. We investigated the cognitive changes that may be…

Many assume that cognitive and linguistic processes, such as semantic knowledge (SK) and self-regulation (SR), subserve learned skills like reading. However, complex models of interacting and bootstrapping effects of SK, SR, instruction, and reading hypothesize reciprocal effects. Testing this "lattice" model with children (n = 852)…

The relationship between working memory capacity and writing ability was examined via a linguistic analysis of student essays. Undergraduate students (n = 108) wrote timed, prompt-based essays and completed a battery of cognitive assessments. The surface- and discourse-level linguistic features of students' essays were then analyzed using natural…

Discourse coherence is a common phenomenon in linguistic studies, and plays an important role in discourse analysis. As a common and extremely important type of language phenomena, discourse coherence has drawn more and more scholars' attention, but they emphasis on partial discourse coherence, paying a little attention to holistic coherence. The…

Quantifier expressions like "many" and "at least" are part of a rich repository of words in language representing magnitude information. The role of numerical processing in comprehending quantifiers was studied in a semantic truth value judgment task, asking adults to quickly verify sentences about visual displays using…

This study investigates representational code-switching (RCS) by considering three high school students' communications in the process of comparing and contrasting pairs of representations (e.g., equation and graph) in the context of rational functions. Supporting this study is research in the realms of students interacting with mathematical…

We take a multidimensional perspective on the development of second language (L2) speaking ability and examine how changes in the underlying cognitive variables of linguistic knowledge and processing speed interact with complexity, fluency, and accuracy over the course of a 3-month Spanish study abroad session. Study abroad provides a unique…

Cinema is in part a reflection of our society and, in these times of cultural mix, it is more and more common to find different language communities appearing on-screen together. Thus, it is not unusual to have to process (voluntarily or not) more than one language throughout the day. From a cognitive point of view, language switching is widely…

As children transition from the early to later grades of elementary school, they become increasingly skilled at employing a variety of techniques -- such as rehearsal and organizational strategies -- for remembering information. Developmental changes in strategy use have been well documented, but little is known about the extent to which these…

The current study addresses a discrepancy in the psycholinguistic literature about the chronology of information processing during the visual recognition of morphologically complex words. "Form-then-meaning" accounts of complex word recognition claim that morphemes are processed as units of form prior to any influence of their meanings,…

English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) textbooks and internet resources exhibit various formats and implementations of exercises on phrasal verbs. The experimental study reported here examines whether some of these might be more effective than others. EFL learners at a university in Japan were randomly assigned to 4 treatment groups. Two groups were…

The most distinctive feature of conundrum is the deliberate misinterpretation in the course of its application. The present paper attempts a new cognitive approach to the understanding of conundrums. Based on psychological laws of mankind, the conundrum begins with the questioner's leaving a certain linguistic item on purpose, which will…