The past thirty years have shown a rise in models of language acquisition in which the state of the learner is characterized as a probability distribution over a set of non-stochastic grammars. In recent years, increasingly powerful models have been constructed as earlier models have failed to generalize well to increasingly complex and realistic…

Listening is a major challenge for many English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) learners. Decoding training, which helps learners develop the ability to recognize words from speech, is frequently used to assist EFL learners. Although recent empirical studies on decoding training have provided positive evidence on its effectiveness in improving EFL…

In this article, I argue that first language (L1), second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition are fundamentally the same process, based on learning by parsing. Both child and adult learners are sensitive to fine linguistic distinctions, and language development takes place in small steps. While the bulk of the article focuses on…

Most theories of learning would predict a gradual acquisition and refinement of skills as learning progresses, and while some highlight exponential growth, this fails to explain why natural cognitive development typically progresses in stages. Models that do span multiple developmental stages typically have parameters to "switch" between…

Nasals are cross-linguistically susceptible to change, especially in the syllable final position. Acoustic reports on Mandarin nasal production have recently shown that the syllable-final distinction is frequently dropped. Few studies, however, have addressed the issue of perceptual processing in Mandarin nasals for L1 and L2 speakers of Mandarin…

Multisensory Structured Language Instruction has been used for decades by clinicians and practitioners as an intervention for teaching students with dyslexia. Multisensory Structured Language Instruction uses the integration of multiple senses (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic/tactile) simultaneously to teach literacy. Although the anecdotal…

To learn a language, speakers must learn its words and rules from fluent speech; in particular, they must learn dependencies among linguistic classes. We show that when familiarized with a short artificial, subliminally bracketed stream, participants can learn relations about the structure of its words, which specify the classes of syllables…

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 10th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2017) is held under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society at the Optics Velley Kingdom Plaza Hotel, Wuhan, Hubei Province, in China. This years conference features two invited talks by: Dr. Jie Tang, Associate Professor with the Department of Computer…

This report summarizes computational investigations of language comprehension based on Marvin Minsky's theory of frames, a recent advance in artifical intelligence theories about the representation of knowledge. The investigations discussed explored frame theory as a basis for text comprehension by implementing models of the theory and developing…

Discusses prevailing ideas of how children learn language and addresses the argument of rules versus analogies in learning to form the past tense of verbs. Cites cases involving connectionist models. (ML)

Describes a connectionist model accounting for newborn infants' ability to finely discriminate almost all human speech contrasts and the fact that their phonemic category boundaries are identical, even for phonemes outside their target language. The model posits an innately guided learning in which an artificial neural network is stored in a…

Data and models about recognition and recall of words and nonwords are unified using a real-time network processing theory. Adaptive resonance theory arose from an analysis of how a language system self-organizes in real time in response to its complex input environment. (Author/LMO)

Discusses the production paradigm which views human cognition as a flexible system that continuously adapts to new situations and tasks in order to behave efficiently. Discusses the second language learning (English) of a German university student who had studied English for nine years, followed by a three-month stay in the U.S. (SED)

Research addressing development of mechanistic models capable of acquiring languages on the basis of exposure to linguistic data is reviewed. Research focuses on major issues in developmental psycholinguistics--in particular, nativism and empiricism, the role of semantics and pragmatics, cognitive development, and the importance of simplified…