Discusses the possible use of automatic speech recognition (ASR) for training students to improve their accents in a foreign language. Principles of good language training as well as the limits of the use of ASR and how to deal with them are discussed, and an example from the Carnegie Mellon FLUENCY system is used to show how such a system may…

The definition of "orthographic neighbors" in word recognition research was analyzed in two experiments using a variety of the three-field technique. Only orthographically related pairs differing from the prime by the third or fourth letter showed inhibitory relatedness effects compared with unrelated word condition. Results suggest…

Elicited acceptability ratings from native-English-speaking adults for regular and irregular past tense forms and their stems, in sentence contexts, analyzing them for frequency and phonological neighborhood effects. Results indicate that irregular past tenses are retrieved from associative memory, whereas regular past tenses are produced by a…

Explored the effects of inherent task structure and processing load on narrative retelling task performance, analyzing task performance in terms of competition among fluency, complexity, and accuracy. Research with young adults found that degree of inherent task structure more strongly affected fluency of performance. Processing load influenced…

Investigated the effect of language on Chinese-speaking children's performance on false-belief tasks under three between-subjects conditions. Chinese-speaking adults and young children responded to false-belief tasks. Results revealed a rapid developmental pattern in the children's understanding of false beliefs and suggested the important role of…

Indicates a facilitation in undergraduate students' reading time for congruent text marking for both cohesion and textual structure that manifested itself at different points in the sentence. Suggests that readers are highly sensitive to coherence marking devices, and strictly local coherence models cannot completely account for what readers are…

Presents three mini-essays reviewing progress made on three problems in text comprehension (two traditional and one newer problem): their relationship between sentence processes and text processes; individual differences in discourse comprehension; and the representation of multiple-text information, which exposes fresh views of problems of…

Presents two questionnaire experiments that investigated the processing complexity of a variety of nested constructions in Japanese. The results are discussed in terms of the syntactic-prediction locality theory. (Author/VWL)

Studies the effectiveness of the keyword method of learning vocabulary employed by students with limited English proficiency (LEP). Finds this method appears to be effective in helping LEP students to recall word definitions rapidly and efficiently, to comprehend sentences, and to retain vocabulary learning over a one-week period. (NH)

Focuses on the structure/function relationship of the brain and language. Reviews the basic theories concerning cortical structures and language representation. Presents a call that highlights the need to examine the areas of listening, memory, and information retrieval for a more sophisticated analysis of the complex relationship between cortical…

Examines whether letter-name knowledge facilitates learning spellings in which the names of one or more letters can be heard in the pronunciation of the words. Results suggest preschool Portuguese children who know the names of the letters can learn to read by processing letter-sound relations in words; however, children may not use this mechanism…

Focuses on nonverbal and extralinguistic activities as an aide to learning. Body language, movement, and action, simultaneously simple and omnipresent, are useful at the level of comprehension. These activities suggest images or result from verbal instigation. This visual imagery fills in the gaps between one's mother tongue and a foreign…

Three experiments investigated the nature of productive forward linking (from semantics to syntax) and productive reverse linking (from syntax to semantics) in language-impaired children. Found that the normally developing control subjects showed a good use of productive forward and reverse linking, whereas the language-impaired subjects…

Argues that interviewers' communication with interviewees while conducting cross-cultural and bilingual research too often depersonalizes and disempowers their subjects. The authors describe a better approach that stresses the comprehensibility and accuracy of translation and the need to pay attention to cultural and linguistic identity of the…

Describes a connectionist model accounting for newborn infants' ability to finely discriminate almost all human speech contrasts and the fact that their phonemic category boundaries are identical, even for phonemes outside their target language. The model posits an innately guided learning in which an artificial neural network is stored in a…