Second language acquisition has been observed to be variable in its outcome such that, unlike native speakers, all second language learners do not achieve total success. Second language acquisition is made of macro and micro processes. External and internal (e.g., age, individual differences) factors are assumed to affect language processing in…

Learning to use prepositions in English as a second language (L2) has been widely acknowledged to pose significant difficulties to learners, especially within metaphorical contexts. Difficulties relate to the complex distributional patterns of prepositions in discourse, namely, the variety of collocations requiring their use, as well as…

Purpose: The extant literature suggests that individual differences in speech perception can be linked to broad receptive language phenotype. For example, a recent study found that individuals with a smaller receptive vocabulary showed diminished lexically guided perceptual learning compared to individuals with a larger receptive vocabulary. Here,…

Research on what neural mechanisms facilitate word reading development in non-alphabetic scripts is relatively rare. The present study was among the first to adopt a multivariate pattern classification analysis to decode electroencephalographic signals recorded for primary school children (N = 236) while performing a Chinese character decision…

Preparing for the future during ongoing activities is an essential skill. Yet it is currently unclear to what extent we can prepare for the future in parallel with another task. In two experiments, we investigated how characteristics of a present task influenced whether and when participants prepared for the future, as well as its usefulness. We…

The involvement load hypothesis (ILH) was designed to predict the effectiveness of instructional tasks for incidental L2 vocabulary learning. In this meta-analysis we examined 398 effect sizes from 42 empirical studies (N = 4,628) to explore (a) the overall predictive ability of the ILH, (b) the relative effects of different components of the ILH…

This study focused on statistical investigation tasks designed by preservice teachers. Participants designed a statistical investigation task as a culminating summative assessment after completing modules on teaching and learning statistics. Our study examined the designed tasks to identify their strengths as well as areas of needed improvement.…

Purpose: This paper aims to compare two types of prompts, encouraging participants to think about real-world examples or engineering principles to show how these two approaches can result in vastly different design practices. Design/methodology/approach: Two studies (N = 20, N = 40) examine the impact of two different prompts. Non-expert students,…

As students learn how to program, both their programming code and their understanding of it evolves over time. In this work, we present a general data-driven approach, named "Temporal-ASTNN" for modeling student learning progression in open-ended programming domains. Temporal-ASTNN combines a novel neural network model based on abstract…

In this study we applied a discursive perspective of learning (Sfard, 2008) to a sequence of 21 geometry mini-lessons taught in a fourth grade classroom. From this perspective, learning is defined as changes in mathematical discourse. We first characterize and then compare discourse from the beginning and the end of the mini-lesson sequence. We…

This study explores the relationship between the experience of confusion and the outcomes of Chinese character learning by learners of Chinese as a heritage language (CHL). Based on the claim that impasses triggering confusion can lead to deeper learning of conceptually difficult material, the study employed three impasse-driven tasks. The tasks…

The acquisition of a new morphological rule can be influenced by numerous factors, including the type of feedback provided during learning. The present study aimed to test the effect of different feedback types on children's ability to learn and generalize an artificial morphological rule (AMR). Two groups of eight-year-olds learned to judge and…

This paper investigated how production task combined with teacher feedback (in the form of recasts) affects child second language development, and the effects of task complexity on their production performance. 92 child learners of English in three intact classes were assigned to three tasks of different complexity (simple, +complex, ++complex).…

Research consistently shows that adults engaged in tutored acquisition benefit from explicit instruction in several linguistic domains. For preschool children, it is often assumed that such explicit instruction does not make a difference. In the present study, we investigated whether explicit instruction affected young learners in acquiring a…

Adult first language (L1) English speakers who are advanced second language (L2) learners of Spanish demonstrate near-ceiling levels of accuracy for some features of Spanish, such as [Person] and [Number] for verbs (McCarthy, 2012; Rodgers, 2011). While for other features, such as [Aspect] for copulas (i.e. ser and estar), and [Person] and…