Adults and children 'promiscuously' endorse teleological answers to 'why' questions--a tendency linked to arguments that humans are intuitively theistic and naturally unscientific. But how do people arrive at an endorsement of a teleological answer? Here, we show that the endorsement of teleological answers need not imply unscientific reasoning (n…

Meaning in language emerges from multiple words, and children are sensitive to multi-word frequency from infancy. While children successfully use cues from single words to generate linguistic predictions, it is less clear whether and how they use multi-word sequences to guide real-time language processing and whether they form predictions on the…

The meanings of natural language utterances depend heavily on context. Yet, what counts as context is often only implicit in conversation. The utterance "it's warm outside" signals that the temperature outside is relatively high, but the temperature could be high relative to a number of different "comparison classes": other…

Background and aims: Humans communicate primarily through spoken language and speech perception is a core function of the human auditory system. Among the autistic community, atypical sensory reactivity and social communication difficulties are pervasive, yet the research literature lacks in-depth self-report data on speech perception in this…

Purpose: This article aimed at investigating the neural underpinnings of music-to-language transfer effects at the pre-attentive level of processing. Method: We conducted a longitudinal experiment with a test-training-retest procedure. Non-musician adults were trained either on frequency (experimental group) or on intensity (control group) of…

Some theories of sentence processing make a distinction between two kinds of meaning: a linguistic meaning encoded at the lexicon (i.e., selectional restrictions), and an extralinguistic knowledge derived from our everyday experiences (i.e., world knowledge). According to such theories, the former meaning is privileged over the latter in terms of…

There is currently much interest in the role of prediction in language processing, both in L1 and L2. For language acquisition researchers, this has prompted debate on the role that predictive processing may play in both L1 and L2 language learning, if any. In this conceptual review, we explore the role of prediction and prediction error as a…

The goal of this dissertation was to find converging evidence from behavioral and neuroimaging analyses of the mechanisms of orthographic integration with general language processes. By examining orthography effects, covert influences of orthography on non-written tasks, in participants with aphasia, we attempt to elucidate the nature of…

This dissertation investigates the neural bases and development of displacement, which is a language property that allows us to communicate about situations outside the "here-and-now." One way to displace from our immediate environment is to project ourselves into the here-and-now point of an alternative actuality. Another form of…

To reveal the formation process of speech processing with early hearing experiences, we tracked the development of functional connectivity in the auditory and language-related cortical areas of 84 (36 female) congenitally deafened toddlers using repeated functional near-infrared spectroscopy for up to 36 months post cochlear implantation (CI).…

Enhancing student academic success and career readiness is important in the rapidly evolving educational field. This study investigates the influence of ChatGPT, an AI tool, on these outcomes using the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) theory and constructs from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The aim is to explore how ChatGPT impacts…

Intelligent Voice Assistants (IVAs) have become integral to many users' daily lives, using advanced algorithms to automate various tasks. Nevertheless, many users do not understand the underlying algorithms and how they work, posing potential risks to the competent and self-determined use of IVAs. This work develops three online training modules…

German-speaking children between ages 2 and 3 mostly use the preposition ohne ('without') in an adult-like way, to express the absence of something. In this article we present surprising results from a corpus study suggesting that in this age group, absence can also be expressed using the sequence mit ohne 'with without'. We argue that this…

The article is an exploratory study assessing the stance selected higher education institutes (HEIs) have adopted regarding the usage of generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications in academic research. The HEIs are selected based on purposive sampling in order to showcase different stances they have adopted to curb plagiarism and uphold…

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the education landscape and has been widely applied to language teaching and learning. This study investigates the transformative potential of AI-driven Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools in enhancing writing proficiency, focusing on language precision, content summarization, and creative writing…