The present study implemented a sign-repetition task at two points in time to hearing adult learners of British Sign Language and explored how each phonological parameter, sign complexity, and iconicity affected sign production over an 11-week (22-hour) instructional period. The results show that training improves articulation accuracy and that…

Arbitrary symbolism is a linguistic doctrine that predicts an orthogonal relationship between word forms and their corresponding meanings. Recent corpora analyses have demonstrated violations of arbitrary symbolism with respect to concreteness, a variable characterizing the sensorimotor salience of a word. In addition to qualitative semantic…

The use of external representations has the potential to facilitate inquiry learning, especially hypothesis generation and reasoning, which typically present difficulties for students. This study describes a novel three-dimensional cognitive mapping (3DCM) approach that supports inquiry learning by allowing learners to combine the information on a…

When hearing a novel name, children tend to select a novel object rather than a familiar one, a bias known as disambiguation. Using online processing measures with 18-, 24-, and 30-month-olds, we investigate how the development of this bias relates to word learning. Children's proportion of looking time to a novel object after hearing a novel name…

The present research examines whether adults who learn a second language (L2) mainly in a classroom setting can develop linguistic representations that are qualitatively similar to those of native speakers for linguistic content that is not explicitly taught in the classroom. It does so by focusing on the domains of speech processing and speech…

Kindergarteners have plenty of opportunities to discover and investigate cause and effect in their own lives and in all subject areas. If it rains, they may not be able to go outside for recess. If they pump harder on the swing, the swing will go faster and higher. In science, they may investigate pushes and pulls; discover how exposure to…

Pitch is often described metaphorically: for example, Farsi and Turkish speakers use a "thickness" metaphor (low sounds are "thick" and high sounds are "thin"), while German and English speakers use a height metaphor ("low", "high"). This study examines how child and adult speakers of Farsi,…

Teachers have many methods available to them for instructing students. This article presents a teacher's perspective on conducting a discussion with a group of children who were gifted and talented. I studied one teacher using participant observation and ethnographic interviewing as he taught in a special program. I used the concept of…

This study examined the time course of object naming in 21 individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) (8 agrammatic (PPA-G); 13 logopenic (PPA-L)) and healthy age-matched speakers (n=17) using a semantic interference paradigm with related and unrelated interfering stimuli presented at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of -1000, -500, -100…

The present study aimed to identify the effect of using electronic Mind Maps on the academic achievement of the fifth-grade primary female students in the English language curriculum compared to the traditional teaching method adopted in the teacher's guide. It also aimed to indicate the attitudes of the fifth-grade female students towards the use…

The challenges facing UK higher education are both well documented and controversial; however, pitted against this context is the requirement for psychology departments to provide an increasingly rich and diverse university experience for students, whilst ensuring progression and retention remain central to undergraduate provision. Despite the…

In this commentary on the "Multiple Meanings of Peer Groups in Social Cognitive Mapping," Thomas W. Farmer and Hongling Xie discuss core issues in the identification of peer social groups in natural settings using the social cognitive mapping (SCM) procedures. Farmer and Xie applaud the authors for their efforts to advance the study of…

To test general and specific processes of symbol learning, 4- and 5-year-old children learned three kinds of abstract associates for novel objects: words, facts, and pictograms. To test fast mapping (i.e., one-trial learning) and subsequent learning, comprehension was tested after each of four exposures. Production was also tested, as was…

This dissertation concerns the acquisition of the interaction between lexicosemantic properties of verbs and syntax, focusing on symmetrical and asymmetrical verbs in different syntactic structures. Based on linguistic evidence, it is shown that two conceptual categories, Mutuality and Number, interact to give rise to four event-types: Single…

Numbers are ubiquitous in life. At the same time, the symbols for numbers are highly abstract and their visual appearance does not carry any direct relation to their magnitude. This poses an important question for researchers interested in how numbers are mentally processed. Whereas research on numeric cognition suggests that culturally based…