Recent accounts of social difficulties in autism suggest that autistic and non-autistic individuals mutually misunderstand each other. This assumption aligns with findings that mixed-neurotype interactions are less efficient than same-neurotype interactions. However, it remains unclear whether different outcomes between mixed- and same-neurotype…

This study investigated perceptual differences between Japanese language instructors with different ethnolinguistic and professional backgrounds in respect to "kanji" (i.e., Chinese characters used in Japanese) instruction. A total of 199 teachers of Japanese across the United States completed a 62-item questionnaire eliciting their…

We present an annotation scheme for classifying differences in the outputs of syntactic constituency parsers when a gold standard is unavailable or undesired, as in the case of texts written by nonnative speakers of English. We discuss its automated implementation and the results of a case study that uses the scheme to choose a parser best suited…

Letter names are stressed in informal and formal literacy instruction with young children in the US, whereas letters sounds are stressed in England. We examined the impact of these differences on English children of about 5 and 6 years of age (in reception year and Year 1, respectively) and US 6 year olds (in kindergarten). Children in both…

Purpose: To examine neural response to spoken and printed language in children with speech sound errors (SSE). Method: Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to compare processing of auditorily and visually presented words and pseudowords in 17 children with SSE, ages 8;6[years;months] through 10;10, with 17 matched controls. Results: When…

This study investigated the use of text-message abbreviations (textisms) in Australian adolescents and young adults, and relations between textism use and literacy abilities. Fifty-two high school students aged 13-15 years, and 53 undergraduates aged 18-24 years, all users of predictive texting, translated conventional English sentences into…

A sharp increase in the proportion of informational text with the corresponding expansion of cognitive demands and conceptual structures is a widely held explanation for the decline in reading achievement at the fourth-grade level. In this study, differences in the proportion of informational text across the second, third, and fourth grades were…

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to examine how children with isolated speech sound disorders (SSDs; n = 20), children with combined SSDs and language impairment (LI; n = 20), and typically developing children (n = 20), ages 3;3 (years;months) to 6;6, differ in narrative ability. The second purpose was to determine if early narrative…

We examined the importance of children's classroom activity, defined as task-focused versus task-avoidance behavior, on different literacy outcomes in an orthographically consistent language. Greek children (n=95) were tested in kindergarten, grade 1, and grade 2 on measures of general cognitive ability, phonological awareness, RAN, and short-term…

Argues that the standards for formulating comprehension questions do not take into account the differences between written and spoken language. Introduces mutuality-enhancing devices as a way to improve oral comprehension questioning. (FL)