In three eye-movement monitoring experiments, participants' working memory capacity was assessed and they read sentences containing subject-extracted and object-extracted relative clauses. In Experiment 1, sentences lacked helpful semantic cues, object-relatives were harder to process than subject relatives, and working memory capacity did not…

Veridical and false memory were examined in lists that contained 12 words that all converged onto the same meaning of a critical nonpresented word (e.g., snooze, wake, bedroom, slumber..., for SLEEP) or lists that contained 6 words that converged onto one meaning and 6 words that converged onto a different meaning of a homograph (e.g., stumble,…

Participants semantically categorized target words that contain subsets (Experiment 1; e.g., target=hatch, subset=hat) or that are parts of supersets (Experiment 2; e.g., target=bee, superset=beer). In both experiments, the targets were categorized in a congruent condition (in which the subset-superset was associated with the same response, e.g.,…

We argue that the reading of words and text is fundamentally conditioned by the splitting of the fovea and the hemispheric division of the brain, and, furthermore, that the equitable division of labour between the hemispheres is a characteristic of normal visual word recognition. We report analyses of a representative corpus of the eye fixations…

Data from experiments with split-brain patients, who have had their left and right hemispheres disconnected, suggests a remarkable specialization of function within each hemisphere. At the same time, these patients conduct their daily lives with great proficiency. This ability suggests that some information integral to coordinated function between…

This study investigates the automatic-controlled nature of early semantic processing by means of the Recognition Potential (RP), an event-related potential response that reflects lexical selection processes. For this purpose tasks differing in their processing requirements were used. Half of the participants performed a physical task involving a…

The study explores the notion that some Chinese characters contain pictorial indications of meanings that can be used to help retrieve the referent. Thirty adults with no prior knowledge of Chinese guessed the meanings of twenty Chinese characters by choosing between one of two photographs. Half of the characters were considered to be iconic and…

The article is an exploration of online reading from the perspective of theories of reading and interpretation based on literary theory and the phenomenology of reading literary text. One of its aims is to show that such theories can make a contribution to our understanding of reading and to our design of online reading spaces. The precursor of…

Due to the role language and literature play in the construction of social, economic and cultural systems, reading comprehension has become a growing challenge. This study examined how the relationship between English as a foreign language reading comprehension and life experiences while using the "Sight Word Strategy" could prove…

The present study is based on the theoretical assumptions that frequency of characters and their structural components, as well as the frequency types of structural components, are important to enable learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) to discover the underlying structure of Chinese characters. In the CFL context, since reliable…

The educational experience related over the following pages is the result of several research projects undertaken after an evaluation of the vocabulary size of final year English philology students at the University of Granada (Spain), who were found to have a significant deficiency in their lexical competence. In view of the results obtained,…

We investigate how L1 phonology and semantics affect processing of interlingual homographs by manipulating language context before, and auditory input during, a visual experiment in the L2. Three experiments contained German-English homograph primes ("gift" = German "poison") in English sentences and was performed by German (L1) learners of…

This paper describes the cultural semantics of internet courses in American accent. Such courses are offered by corporate providers to specific groups of customers: people in search of success in the globalized business environment. The core of such courses is an order of indexicality which stresses uniformity and homogeneity, producing an…

This article reports on a study that examined the effects of integrating corpus and contextualized lexicogrammar in foreign and second language teaching. The study was conducted in English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL) courses at 1 Chinese university and 2 U.S. universities, involving 244 participants (236…

The article summarizes results from two experimental studies on reactivity. In the first experiment, 24 college-age participants received a computerized treatment that delivered a grammar lesson, practice, and feedback on assignment of semantic functions in Latin. Verbalizations did not induce reactivity on accuracy, but they slowed down posttest…