Although the size of a child's vocabulary associates with language-processing skills, little is understood regarding how this relation emerges. This investigation asks whether and how the structure of vocabulary knowledge affects language processing in English-learning 24-month-old children (N = 32; 18 F, 14 M). Parental vocabulary report was used…

How do children infer the meaning of a word? Current accounts of word learning assume that children expect a word to map onto exactly one concept whose members form a coherent category. If this assumption was strictly true, children should infer that a homophone, such as "bat," refers to a single superordinate category that encompasses…

This study investigates preverbal structural and semantic processing in Japanese, a head-final language, using the maze task. Two sentence types were tested--simple scrambled sentences (Experiment 1) and control sentences (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 showed that even for simple, mono-clausal Japanese sentences, (1) there are online processing…

Purpose: The study examined whether semantic and phonological encoding processes were capacity demanding, involving the central cognitive mechanism, in adults who do and do not stutter (AWS and NS) to better understand the role of cognitive demand in linguistic processing and stuttering. We asked (a) whether the two linguistic processes in AWS are…

Disagreements arise on the differences of semantic processing of different ambiguous words in the perspective of psycholinguistics. This paper compares the differences of the semantic processing of different types of ambiguous words of Chinese English learners by using a multiple semantic priming experiment with short. The results demonstrate the…

Metaphor development in conjunction with verbal intelligence and linguistic competence in middle childhood and at the transition to early adolescence was investigated. 298 individuals between seven and ten years (chronological age) who attended grades two-four (mental age) were tested for metaphor processing by the Metaphoric Triads Task, for…

We introduce a novel measure of abstractness based on the amount of information of a concept computed from its position in a semantic taxonomy. We refer to this measure as "precision". We propose two alternative ways to measure precision, one based on the path length from a concept to the root of the taxonomic tree, and another one based…

Following a review of contemporary models of word-level processing for reading and their limitations, we propose a new hypothetical model of Chinese character reading, namely, the graded lexical space mapping model that characterizes how sublexical radicals and lexical information are involved in Chinese character reading development. The…

Reconstructing memory for sequences is a complex process, likely involving multiple sources of information. In 3 experiments, we examined the source(s) of information that might underlie the ability to accurately place an event within a temporal context. The task was to estimate, after studying each list, the temporal position of a single test…

This study aimed to examine how second language (L2) readers process and comprehend paired sentences based on the causal and semantic relatedness of the sentences. Causal relatedness refers to the cause-and-effect relations between the events described, whereas semantic relatedness refers to the similarity of meaning conveyed by the sentences. In…

Semantic transparency effects during compound word recognition provide critical insight into the organization of semantic knowledge and the nature of semantic processing. The past 25 years of psycholinguistic research on compound semantic transparency has produced discrepant effects, leaving the existence and nature of its influence unresolved. In…

Previous research has shown that explicit cues specific to the encoding process (endogenous) or characteristic of the stimuli themselves (exogenous) can be used to direct a reader's attentional resources towards either relational or item-specific information. By directing attention to relational information (and therefore away from item-specific…

Purpose: When learning novel word forms, preschoolers with developmental language disorder (DLD; also known as "specific language impairment") produce speech targets inaccurately and with a high degree of intraword variability. The aim of the current study is to specify whether and how layering lexical-semantic information onto novel…

This study compared the effectiveness of deductive instruction and guided inductive instruction for developing semantic radical knowledge of Chinese characters. The evaluation was conducted through a quasi-experimental 3-week intervention involving 46 intermediate learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). The results indicated that guided…

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative condition characterized by language and cognitive decline. Word-retrieval deficits are the most common PPA symptom and contribute to impaired spoken expression. Intense semantic interventions show promise for improving word retrieval in people with PPA. In addition, people with PPA may learn…