The behavior of native English speakers and Japanese English as second language (ESL) learners on word association tasks was investigated. Research has shown that Japanese adults respond in Japanese in an identifiably different way than English speaking adults respond in English, and that native English speaking children demonstrate a…

Two experiments were conducted to determine the features of text to which skilled adult readers need to attend while reading and the features that either are of minimal importance or can be processed automatically without directed processing. In the first experiment, 12 college students attended to a timed picture naming task, in which a picture…

Describes a study which compared a traditional approach to second language vocabulary instruction with the semantic field approach, which is based on the association between five related words and a key word that could be mentally substituted in context. Findings lend support to the use of the semantic field approach. (SED)

Three experiments report additional evidence that it is a mistake to account for all interletter effects solely in terms of sensory variables. These experiments attest to the importance of structural variables such as retina location, array size, and ordinal position. (Author/PN)

Contextual facilitation appears to depend upon the mode of analysis of the prime. If the prime is analyzed as a meaningful unit, facilitation occurs. However, if it is subjected to a more discrete, letter-by-letter analysis, the priming effect vanishes. (Author/CP)

Schuberth and Eimas (EJ 159 939) reported that context and frequency effects added to determine reaction times in a lexical decision (word v nonword) task. The present reexamination shows that context and frequency do interact, with semantic context facilitating the processing of low-frequency words more than high-frequency words. (Author/CP)

An earlier study showed that responses are remembered better when subjects produce them from cues, than when subjects read cue-response pairs. The decided memory advantage for generated targets relative to read ones is known as the generation effect. The present research is designed to study the generation effect for cues, following a…

If Anglophone students are to read French at an adult level, they must not only acquire a selected small vocabulary but also be trained to interpret words creatively within a context in order to use their vocabulary. Instruction should include exercises to foster this creativity. (MSE)

The developmental course of children's automatic extraction of meaning from printed words is recharted by using a Stroop-type recall task. Results confirm that, after a year of practice with reading material, children do automatically extract meaning from a single printed word. (GK)

Two experiments investigated the effects of preceding sentence context on the naming times of sentence completion words in third-grade children and college students. In the first study subjects were shown incomplete sentences with four types of target words: best completions; semantically and syntactically appropriate, but less likely completions;…

Describes an experiment where 15 adults received a computer presented "Cognitive Styles Analysis" to assess their positions on two cognitive style dimensions: Wholist-Analytic and Verbal-Imagery. The subjects then completed word association and identification tasks while their electroencephalograph readings were monitored. The readings…

Compares strategies used to infer the meanings of unknown words by three NNS readers--a good reader, an average reader, and a poor reader--from a series of six readings. The good reader uses a wider range of strategies than the weaker ones; all readers "read in" meanings from their own specialized subject (in this case chemistry). (15…

The background of word association tests is described, their potential relevance to second language (L2) research considered, and the history of their use as L2 measuring instruments reviewed. A computer-controlled word association test is described. The test was not established as a valid indicator of language proficiency. (Author/LMO)