Although the role of working memory in sentence comprehension has received substantial attention, the nature of this relationship remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine the interaction between general, nonverbal working memory (WM) and sentence parsing (SP) in normal English-speaking adults. Accuracy and reaction times were…

Verbal fluency is a widely used neuropsychological paradigm. In fMRI implementations, conventional unpaced (self-paced) versions are suboptimal due to uncontrolled timing of responses, and overt responses carry the risk of motion artifact. We investigated the behavioral and neurofunctional effects of response pacing and overt speech in semantic…

Historically, accounts of object representation and perceived similarity have focused on intrinsic features. Although more recent accounts have explored how objects, scenes, and situations containing common relational structures come to be perceived as similar, less is known about how the perceived similarity of parts or objects embedded within…

This article presents the authors' response to McVee, Dunsmore, and Gavelek's "Schema Theory Revisited." In "Schema Theory Revisited," McVee, Dunsmore, and Gavelek (2005) proposed a rearticulation of schema theory intended to encompass the ideas that schemata and other cognitive processes are embodied, that knowledge is situated in the transaction…

The issues involved in teaching English language learners mathematics while they are learning English pose many challenges for mathematics teachers and highlight the need to focus on language-processing issues related to teaching mathematical content. Two realistic-type problems from high-stakes tests are used to illustrate the complex…

This article presents three studies that investigate when syntactic constraints become available during the processing of long-distance backwards pronominal dependencies ("backwards anaphora" or "cataphora"). Earlier work demonstrated that in such structures the parser initiates an active search for an antecedent for a pronoun, leading to gender…

Grounded in state-of-the-art research, this book explores how English language learners develop both the oral language and literacy skills necessary for school success. Chapters examine the cognitive bases of English acquisition, and how the process is different for children from alphabetic (such as Spanish) and nonalphabetic (such as Chinese)…

Emerging evidence suggests that a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in childhood may disrupt the ability to abstract the central meaning or gist-based memory from connected language (discourse). The current study adopts a novel approach to elucidate the role of immediate and working memory processes in producing a cohesive and coherent gist-based text…

Previous cognitive science research demonstrates how the Agent-action-Objective (AaO) paradigm controls the cognitive processes of differentiation and integration. The present discussion advances the process to the fourth of five phases. Of the four dependent variables emerging at this stage, two are discussed: zero processing and variations in…

Determines the relation between recallability and recognizability in experiments presenting a study list, then giving a recall test for some items followed by a recognition test for all items. The results suggested that the set of recallable items were substantially, if not wholly, included within the set of recognizable items. (Author/EJS)

This study investigated the role of semantic variables, derivable from multidimensional scaling, in search and decision processes. (Author/RM)

Sentence comprehension and grammaticality judgment were studied in 10 healthy subjects and 10 agrammatic aphasic stroke patients. The latter were able to make grammaticality and comprehension judgments, but less accurately. Results indicated that such judgments are made using different processes and/or operate on different aspects of language…

Stating that the most pressing and puzzling scientific questions are questions about properties, not about change, the authors examine Piaget's and other theories of human development. Disputes the constructivist view that the initial cognitive state is one of emptiness, showing that from birth, humans react to certain stimuli in specific ways,…

Highlights ways in which standard information processing models of language, and specifically of reading, are deficient. Deficiencies are considered under four headings: (1) theoretical rigour, (2) the interaction of different levels of information during reading; (3) the parallel nature of much of human information processing, and (4) reading…

Surveys modern language and cognitive theories and their implications for the teaching of undergraduate composition. (JL)