Auditory speech appears to be linked to visual articulatory gestures and orthography through different mechanisms. Yet, both types of visual information have a strong influence on speech processing. The present study directly compared their contributions to speech processing using a novel word learning paradigm. Native speakers of French, who were…

To expand our understanding of script-general and script-specific principles in the learning of letter names, we examined how three characteristics of alphabet letters -- their frequency in printed materials, order in the alphabet, and visual similarity to other letters -- relate to children's letter-name knowledge in four languages with three…

Dickinson and Szeligo ("Can J Exp Psychol" 62(4):211--222, 2008) found that processing time for simple visual stimuli was affected by the visual action participants had been instructed to perform on these stimuli (e.g., see, distinguish). It was concluded that these effects reflected the differences in the durations of these various…

The present studies examined the role of linguistic experience in directing English and Mandarin learners' attention to aspects of a visual scene. Specifically, they asked whether young language learners in these 2 cultures attend to differential aspects of a word-learning situation. Two groups of English and Mandarin learners, 6-8-month-olds (n =…

We employ a linear mixed-effects model to estimate the effects of visual form and the linguistic properties of Chinese characters on M100 and M170 MEG responses from single-trial data of Chinese and English speakers in a Chinese lexical decision task. Cortically constrained minimum-norm estimation is used to compute the activation of M100 and M170…

In this study, metacognition refers to performing visual analysis and discrimination of real life events and situations in naïve psychology, naïve physics, and naïve biology domains. It is used, along with measuring reaction time, to examine differences in the ability of four groups of students to select appropriate pictures that correspond with…

A 2-layer symbolic network model based on the equilibrium equations of the Rescorla-Wagner model (Danks, 2003) is proposed. The study first presents 2 experiments in Serbian, which reveal for sentential reading the inflectional paradigmatic effects previously observed by Milin, Filipovic Durdevic, and Moscoso del Prado Martin (2009) for unprimed…

Categorical perception (CP) is said to occur when a continuum of equally spaced physical changes is perceived as unequally spaced as a function of category membership (Harnad, S. (Ed.) (1987). Psychophysical and cognitive aspects of categorical perception: A critical overview. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). A common suggestion is that CP…

This study explores the extent to which a bilingual advantage can be observed for executive function tasks in children of varying levels of language dominance, and examines the contributions of general cognitive knowledge, linguistic abilities, language use and socio-economic level to performance. Welsh-English bilingual and English monolingual…

Groups of Grade 3 children were tested on measures of word-level literacy and undertook tasks that required the ability to associate sounds with letter sequences and that involved visual, auditory and phonological-processing skills. These groups came from different language backgrounds in which the language of instruction was Arabic, Chinese,…

Bilingual reading can require more than knowing two languages. Learners must acquire also the writing conventions of their second language, which can differ in its deep mapping principles (writing system) and its visual configurations (script). We review ERP (event-related potential) and fMRI studies of both Chinese-English bilingualism and…

Two experiments were designed to study the relative importance of various letter segments in letter recognition. One experiment was conducted with 24 subjects and the English alphabet, the other with 15 subjects and the Hebrew alphabet. In each experiment a letter was presented for identification, but was preceded by a brief presentation of either…

Investigates the influence of linguistic structure on non-linguistic cognition by comparing Russian and English behavior on tasks involving the color blue. Russians, who differentiate this region into "dark blue" and "light blue," were expected to separate blues more often than English subjects for whom the colors belong to one lexical category.…