Children seem able to efficiently interpret a variety of linguistic cues during speech comprehension, yet have difficulty interpreting sources of nonlinguistic and paralinguistic information that accompany speech. The current study asked whether (paralinguistic) voice-activated role knowledge is rapidly interpreted in coordination with a…

During conversation, partners develop representations of jointly known information--the common ground--and use this knowledge to guide subsequent linguistic exchanges. Extensive research on 2-party conversation has offered key insights into this process, in particular, its partner-specificity: Common ground that is shared with 1 partner is not…

Biochemistry is a visual discipline that requires students to develop an understanding of numerous representations. However, there is very little known about what students actually understand about the representations that are used to communicate ideas in biochemistry. This study investigated biochemistry students' understanding of multiple…

Purpose: Following recent attempts to quantify articulatory impairment in speech, the present study evaluates the usefulness of a novel measure of motor stability to characterize dysarthria. Method: The study included 8 speakers with ataxic dysarthria (AD), 16 speakers with hypokinetic dysarthria (HD) as a result of Parkinson's disease, and…

Previous text comprehension studies using the contradiction paradigm primarily tested assumptions of the activation mechanism involved in reading. However, the nature of the contradiction in such studies relied on validation of information in readers' general world knowledge. We directly tested this validation process by varying the strength of…

Research in the field of students' understandings of models and their use in science describes different frameworks concerning these understandings. Currently, there is no conjoint framework that combines these structures and so far, no investigation has focused on whether it reflects students' understandings sufficiently (empirical evaluation).…

Many studies show a developmental advantage for transitive sentences with familiar verbs over those with novel verbs. It might be that once familiar verbs become entrenched in particular constructions, they would be more difficult to understand (than would novel verbs) in non-prototypical constructions. We provide support for this hypothesis…

This manuscript presents a systematic review of the research on how students conceptualise matter. Understanding the structure and properties of matter is an essential part of science literacy. Over the last decades the number of studies on students' conceptions of matter published in peer-reviewed journals has increased significantly. These…

Background: Previous studies have suggested that when reading texts, lower achievers are more sensitive than their stronger counterparts to surface-level cues, such as graphic illustrations, and that even when uninformative, such concrete supplements tend to raise the text's subjective comprehensibility. Aims: We examined how being led astray…

Resilient readers are those who, despite their poor phonological decoding skills, have good comprehension abilities (Jackson & Doellinger, 2002). Thus far, these readers have been identified in college settings. The purpose of this study was to a) determine if this reader profile was present in a sample taken from an Adult Basic Education…

In the Simple View of Reading proposed by Hoover and Gough (1990), reading comprehension is conceived as the product of word decoding and listening comprehension. It is claimed that listening comprehension or the linguistic processes involved in the comprehension of oral language strongly constrain the process of reading comprehension. In several…

Among different types of metaphors, lexical metaphors are special in that they have been highly lexicalized and often suggested to be processed like non-metaphorical words. The present study examined two types of Chinese metaphorical words which are conceptualized through body parts. One has both a metaphorical meaning and a literal meaning…

Vocabulary instruction is a key component of reading comprehension but is often not addressed sufficiently in classrooms. The authors worked with a team of fifth-grade teachers in professional development targeted to learning instructional strategies for developing students' vocabularies. In this article, the authors share two strategies that the…

This study investigates children's acquisition of the distinction between direct speech (Elephant said, "I get the football") and indirect speech ("Elephant said that he gets the football"), by measuring children's interpretation of first, second, and third person pronouns. Based on evidence from various linguistic sources, we…

Using the first language (L1) to solve problems in understanding the second language (L2) may be beneficial for L2 learning. However, the overuse of L1 may deprive L2 learners of exposure to the L2. It appears that the question is not whether to use L1 or L2; it is when and how each language can be used to support L2 learning. This study focuses…