In two visual world experiments we disentangled the influence of order of mention (first vs. second mention), grammatical role (subject vs object), and semantic role (proto-agent vs proto-patient) on 7- to 10-year-olds' real-time interpretation of German pronouns. Children listened to "SVO" or "OVS" sentences containing active…

Previous research has uncovered that, despite the omnipresence of focus in utterances, children typically do not compute the exhaustivity inference associated with cleft(-like) syntactic focus constructions at adult-like levels before 7 years of age. Children's comparable limitations with lexically triggered scalar implicatures, inferences with an…

This study seeks to delve into the potential role of divergent thinking, a component of creativity, in second language learning. Specifically, we compare the use of lexical organization and production strategies of two groups of more and less creative EFL learners in year 12 through an automatic vectorial semantic analysis of their retrieval in…

Metaphors are a common way to express creative language, yet the cognitive basis of figurative language production remains poorly understood. Previous studies found that higher creative individuals can better comprehend novel metaphors, potentially due to a more flexible semantic memory network structure conducive to remote conceptual combination.…

Reading comprehension is key to knowledge acquisition and to reinforcing memory for previous information. While reading, a mental representation is constructed in the reader's mind. The mental model comprises the words in the text, the relations between the words, and inferences linking to concepts in prior knowledge. The automated model of…

Reading comprehension can be analyzed from three points of view: Semantics, Assessment, and Cognition. Here, Semantics refers to the task of identifying discourse relations in text. Assessment involves utilizing these relations to obtain meaningful question-answer pairs. Cognition means categorizing questions according to their difficulty or…

While acquiring a second language, learners may encounter challenges and difficulties in effectively carrying out verbal communication in the second language. Mastering the apology speech act is a challenge for L2 learners. The objective of this study is to identify the apology strategies utilized by individuals learning the Japanese language, as…

It remains unclear whether late second language learners (L2ers) can acquire sufficient knowledge about unique-to-L2 constructions through implicit learning to build anticipations during real-time processing. To tackle this question, we conducted a visual world paradigm experiment to investigate high-proficiency late first-language Dutch…

The creation of a process model is primarily a formalization task that faces the challenge of constructing a syntactically correct entity, which accurately reflects the semantics of reality, and is understandable to the model reader. This article proposes a framework called "Model Judge," focused toward the two main actors in the process…

It is well known that the semantic features of gender associated with peoples' names are represented in the conceptual semantic system. However, there is scant evidence that such knowledge plays a role in name comprehension, and if so, in which processing stage this occurs. The aim of this study was to provide evidence concerning the time course…

The role of morphology in bilingual lexical access is an under-investigated topic. Due to the overrepresentation of concatenative-based languages which inherently cannot adequately isolate effects of morphology from those of orthography and semantics, morphological processing had been relegated to a secondary role in lexical access. The present…

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the time course of meaning activation of the 2nd morpheme processing of compound words during Chinese spoken word recognition using eye tracking technique with the printed-word paradigm. Method: In the printed-word paradigm, participants were instructed to listen to a spoken target word (e.g., [Chinese…

The present study investigates the processing of presupposition accommodation. In particular, it concerns the processing costs and the time-course of accommodation as compared to presupposition satisfaction. Data collected in a self-paced word-by-word reading times experiment support three results. First, independently on the presupposition…

Human word learning is remarkable: We not only learn thousands of words but also form organized semantic networks in which words are interconnected according to meaningful links, such as those between "apple," "juicy," and "pear." These links play key roles in our abilities to use language. How do words become…

Substantial research among bilingual adults indicates that exposure to words primes other semantically related words within and across languages, as well as the direct translation equivalents [e.g. Chen and Ng 1989. "Semantic Facilitation and Translation Priming Effects in Chinese-English Bilinguals." "Memory & Cognition"…