This study explores using transfer learning in machine learning for natural language processing (NLP) to create generic automated essay scoring (AES) models, providing instant online scoring for statewide writing assessments in K-12 education. The goal is to develop an instant online scorer that is generalizable to any prompt, addressing the…

This study seeks to clarify whether teachers are able to distinguish between essays written by English L2 students or generated by ChatGPT. 47 instructors who hold experience teaching English to native speakers of Japanese in universities or other higher education institutions were tested on whether they could identify between human written essays…

In four experiments, we investigated the impact of letter case (lower case vs. UPPER CASE) on the processing of sequences of written words. Experiment 1 used the rapid parallel visual presentation (RPVP) paradigm with postcued identification of one word in a five-word sequence. The sequence could be grammatically correct (e.g., "the boy likes…

While research has repeatedly found evidence that readers infer characters' emotions, we investigate three outstanding questions about the content and time course of such inferences. We ask whether even simple narratives give rise to emotion inferences, in what form such inferences are encoded into long-term memory, and whether they are uniquely…

Background: Disruptions of reading processes due to text substitutions can measure how readers use lexical information. Methods: With eye-movement recording, children and adults viewed sentences with either identical, orthographically similar, homophonic or unrelated substitutions of the first characters in target words. To the extent that readers…

Background: Poor mathematics performance in South Africa is well known. The COVID-19 pandemic was expected to exacerbate the situation. Aim: To investigate Grade 7 learners' mathematical knowledge at the end of primary school and to compare mathematical performance of Grade 7 and 8 learners in the context of the pandemic. Setting: Data were…

Automatic essay scoring (AES) refers to the process of scoring free text responses to given prompts, considering human grader scores as the gold standard. Writing such essays is an essential component of many language and aptitude exams. Hence, AES became an active and established area of research, and there are many proprietary systems used in…

Purpose: With Aim 1, we compared the comprehension of and sensitivity to canonical and noncanonical word order structures in school-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) and same-age typically developing (TD) children. Aim 2 centered on the developmental improvement of sentence comprehension in the groups. With Aim 3, we compared…

The processing of morphological information during Chinese word memorization was investigated in the present study. Participants were asked to study words presented to them on a computer screen in the studying phase and then judge whether presented words were old or new in the test phase. In addition to parent words (i.e. the words studied in the…

This study explored the feasibility of training school teaching assistants to provide the treatment, Dynamic Temporal and Tactile Cueing to treat childhood apraxia of speech (CAS, also known as developmental verbal dyspraxia). The study used a single case experimental design across behaviours and a qualitative evaluation of teaching assistant…

Background: The more a novel word conforms to the phonotactics of the language, the more wordlike it is and the easier it is to learn. It is unknown to what extent children with hearing loss (CHL) take advantage of phonotactic cues to support word learning. Aims: This study investigated whether CHL had similar sensitivities to wordlikeness during…

The aim of the study was to compare approaches highlighting either semantic or phonological features to treat naming deficits in aphasia. Treatment focused on improving picture naming. An alternating treatments design was used with a multiple baseline design across stimuli to examine effects of both approaches in two participants with varying…

Prospective memory (PM) research typically examines the ability to remember to execute delayed intentions but often ignores the ability to forget finished intentions. We had participants perform (or not perform; control group) a PM task and then instructed them that the PM task was finished. We later (re)presented the PM cue. Approximately 25% of…

This study investigated differences in the phonological knowledge and reading skill of deaf adults using three experimental conditions that tested sensitivity to syllables, rhyme, and phonemes. Analysis of response latencies and accuracy in the three awareness tasks demonstrated that skilled deaf readers had superior phonological awareness skill…

Discourse connectives are important indicators of textual coherence, and mastering them is an essential part of acquiring a language. In this article, we compare advanced learners' sensitivity to the meaning conveyed by connectives in an off-line grammaticality judgment task and an on-line reading experiment using eye-tracking. We also assess the…