The main purpose of the current study was to examine the role of vocabulary knowledge (VK) and syntactic knowledge (SK) in L2 listening comprehension, as well as their relative significance. Unlike previous studies, the current project employed assessment tasks to measure aural and proceduralized VK and SK. In terms of VK, to avoid…

The relationship between working memory capacity and writing ability was examined via a linguistic analysis of student essays. Undergraduate students (n = 108) wrote timed, prompt-based essays and completed a battery of cognitive assessments. The surface- and discourse-level linguistic features of students' essays were then analyzed using natural…

This article reflects upon the development of Connections, a service-learning collaboration between a Research I university and an urban art museum that trains students to work with patient groups from the community using Visual Thinking Strategies. This method of art exploration helps people with Alzheimer's disease express memories and relieve…

This article studies three measures of phonological working memory as tools to identify SLI children: word repetition, nonce word repetition, and digit memory. We propose that a deficit in the phonological loop causes a delay in the acquisition of lexicon, morphosyntax, and discourse. In this research we try to find out whether the scores in these…

Progress in applied neuroscience and neuropsychology in the educational context has revealed efficient methodologies for preventing academic failure and developing the potential of students. The aim of this work is to adopt a neuropsychological perspective to study learning-related differences between students with learning difficulties (LD),…

Working memory (WM) deficiency is a primary reason for the poor academic performance of children with learning disabilities (LDs). Studies have shown that the WM of typical children could be improved through training, and WM training contributes to improving their fluid intelligence and academic achievement. However, few studies have investigated…

Gender differences in reading development are a global phenomenon, with girls typically performing better than boys. Some studies have reported gender differences favouring girls in reading comprehension in South Africa, but little systematic evidence exists about gender differences in the cognitive-linguistic abilities that underlie reading…

A mixed methodology study measuring the use of Augmented Reality (AR) information overlay mapping in online instructional design courses, and the impact on participant's working memory is presented. Novel AR technological expansions, and the rapid proliferation of powerful computing tools embodied by emerging mobile and wearable computing devices,…

Purpose: Reading requires the ability to decode and comprehend. Impairments in working memory (WM) are often implicated in students who are poor decoders. It is unclear whether this is a domain-specific issue or a task-specific issue. Therefore, this study examined how auditory-verbal (AV) WM, visual-spatial (VS) WM, and cognitive load affected…

Globally, the number of adults aged over 50 is increasing and this group is becoming more active in second language (L2) learning. Despite these demographic changes, little research has focused on the issues faced by older learners. They are either omitted from research studies or viewed as part of a homogenous group of adult learners. Several…

Using a novel emotional perspective-taking task, this study investigated 4-year-olds' (n = 97) use of a speaker's emotional prosody to make inferences about the speaker's emotional state and, correspondingly, their communicative intent. Eye gaze measures indicated preschoolers used emotional perspective inferences to guide their real-time…

We examined the Direct and Indirect Effects model of Writing (DIEW), using longitudinal data from Korean-speaking beginning writers. DIEW posits hierarchical structural relations among component skills (e.g., transcription skills, higher order cognitive skills, oral language, motivation/affect, background knowledge) where lower level skills are…

Despite the fact that the cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CB1R) plays a pivotal role in emotional memory processing in different regions of the brain, its function in the retrosplenial cortex (RSC) remains unknown. Here, using contextual fear conditioning in rats, we showed that a post-training intra-RSC infusion of the CB1R antagonist AM251…

Like language, semantic memory is productive: It extends itself through self-derivation of new information through logical processes such as analogy, deduction, and induction, for example. Though it is clear these productive processes occur, little is known about the time course over which newly self-derived information becomes incorporated into…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show atypicalities in episodic memory (Boucher et al. in Psychological Bulletin, 138 (3), 458-496, 2012). We asked participants to recall the colours of a set of studied line drawings (episodic judgement), or to recognize line drawings alone (semantic judgement). Cycowicz et al. ("Journal of…