"Little" words often carry complex meanings. Pronoun resolution is an essential component of comprehension. Skilled readers work to maintain text cohesion (i.e., they resolve the pronouns as needed.) Less proficient readers often are not as proficient in resolving pronouns. Limited pronoun resolution limits comprehension. This article…

We performed three experiments to investigate whether adjectives can modulate the sensorimotor activation elicited by nouns. In Experiment 1, nouns of graspable objects were used as stimuli. Participants had to decide if each noun referred to a natural or artifact, by performing either a precision or a power reach-to-grasp movement. Response grasp…

The disambiguation of a syntactically ambiguous sentence in favor of a less preferred parse can lead to slower reading at the disambiguation point. This phenomenon, referred to as a garden-path effect, has motivated models in which readers initially maintain only a subset of the possible parses of the sentence, and subsequently require…

Reduced forms such as the pronoun "he" provide little information about their intended meaning compared to more elaborate descriptions such as "the lead singer of Coldplay." Listeners must therefore use contextual information to recover their meaning. Across languages, there appears to be a trade-off between the informativity…

In this study, we use temporally aligned word embeddings and a large diachronic corpus of English to quantify language change in a data-driven, scalable way, which is grounded in language use. We show a unique and reliable relation between measures of language change and age of acquisition ("AoA") while controlling for frequency,…

This article explores the relationship between low- and high-level aspects of reading by studying the interplay between word processing, as measured with eye tracking, and narrative absorption and liking, as measured with questionnaires. Specifically, we focused on how individual differences in sensitivity to lexical word characteristics--measured…

This article introduces a novel, holistic framework--named Dr. Mosaik--that encompasses explanations of the entire tense-aspect system, while highlighting eight comprehensive rules that explain the main workings of the system. In turn, this provides a limited number of "anchor points" on which to time-efficiently address instruction and…

In six experiments, we tested whether immediate serial recall is influenced by a word's degree centrality, an index of lexical connectivity. Words of high degree centrality are associated with more words in free association norms than those of low degree centrality. Experiment 1 analyzed secondary data to explore the effect of degree centrality in…

A Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) application, TextMix, was developed as a proof-of-concept for applying Natural Language Processing (NLP) sentence chunking techniques to creating 'sentence scramble' learning tasks. TextMix addresses limitations of existing applications for creating sentence scrambles by using NLP to parse and scramble…

When a subject NP has a singular head noun and a plural noun in some lower syntactic phrase (i.e. local noun), occasionally a plural verb will be produced in a sentence (i.e., agreement attraction) (Bock 1991,Bock et al. 2001). Evidence from production (Eberhard 2005) and comprehension (Badecker 2007, Wagers 2009) studies have conflicting accounts…

One feature of Spanish that presents some difficulties to second language (L2) learners whose first language (L1) is English concerns lexical stress. This study explores one aspect of the obstacle these learners face, weak phonological processing routines concerning stress inherited from their native language. Participants were L1 English L2…

In two visual priming experiments, we investigated the relation of form-identical word forms with different grammatical functions in L1 and L2 German. Four different grammatical types (inflected verbs, infinitives, deverbal conversion forms, and countable nouns) were used as primes and their influence on the processing of form-identical inflected…

A newly emerged micro learning service offers a flexible formal, informal, or non-formal online learning opportunity to worldwide users with different backgrounds in real-time. With the assist of big data technology and cloud computing service, online learners can access tremendous fine-grained learning resources through micro learning service.…

Representing the base-10 structure of numbers is a challenging cognitive ability, unique to humans, but it is yet unknown how precisely this is done. Here, we examined whether and how literate adults represent a number's full syntactic structure. In 5 experiments, participants repeated number-word sequences and we systematically varied the order…

This article introduces Xiao-Shih, the first intelligent question answering bot on Chinese-based massive open online courses (MOOCs). Question answering is critical for solving individual problems. However, instructors on MOOCs must respond to many questions, and learners must wait a long time for answers. To address this issue, Xiao-Shih…