Aims: Although IDS is typically described as slower than adult-directed speech (ADS), potential impacts of slower speech on language development have not been examined. We explored whether IDS speech rates in 42 mother-infant dyads at four time periods predicted children's language outcomes at two years. Method: We correlated IDS speech rate with…

This activity extends the rich pedagogical scholarship on impromptu speaking by integrating visual imagery into the impromptu speaking exercise. The goal of this semester-long series of exercises is to provide students with the opportunity to apply effective delivery skills across general purposes of speaking, receive feedback, and thus develop…

Online search involves multitasking and may demand better working-memory capacities (WMC) and additional cognitive aids. Given the constraints of human cognition, we tested the effectiveness of note-taking strategies on university students' online search performance. Also examined were the profile configurations of WMC tests in silence and in…

Time and space have been shown to be interlinked in people's minds. To what extent can co-speech gestures influence thinking about time, over and above spoken language? In this study, we use the ambiguous question "Next Wednesday's meeting has been moved forward two days, what day is it on now?" to show that people either respond…

As a host of published books, journal articles and opinion pieces attest, the university lecture is now distinctly out of step with contemporary Higher Education discourse. Academics across university disciplines confidently proclaim the format's obsolescence, arguing that only inertia and familiarity could satisfactorily account for the lecture's…

Several studies have demonstrated the role of narrative competence in predicting later academic achievement, but only a few authors tried to highlight exact relationships between the different aspects of these two complex domains. The main aim of the present work was to investigate this association considering the micro- and macrostructural levels…

This paper addresses current issues in deaf education including poor academic progress and employment outcomes of individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH) as well as provides suggestions for improving overall academic achievement of this population. Specifically, three instructional strategies are recommended for teachers: choral…

Purpose: The current study investigates how individual differences in cochlear implant (CI) users' sensitivity to word-nonword differences, reflecting lexical uncertainty, relate to their reliance on sentential context for lexical access in processing continuous speech. Method: Fifteen CI users and 14 normal-hearing (NH) controls participated in…

With the increased adoption and use of smart home speakers in households, many young children have learned to use listening and speaking to interact with the voice assistants (VAs) for a variety of daily activities (e.g., asking questions, listening to music). Despite the proliferation of VAs, due to the technical limitations such as automatic…

Adults struggle to learn non-native speech contrasts even after years of exposure. While laboratory-based training approaches yield learning, the optimal training conditions for maximizing speech learning in adulthood are currently unknown. Vagus nerve stimulation has been shown to prime adult sensory-perceptual systems towards plasticity in…

The current study examined the extent to which first language (L1) utterance fluency measures can predict second language (L2) fluency and how L2 proficiency moderates the relationship between L1 and L2 fluency. A total of 104 Japanese-speaking learners of English completed different argumentative speech tasks in their L1 and L2. Their speaking…

Presenting posters at scientific conferences is often viewed as a valuable way for professionals, researchers, and students to cultivate presentation skills. Furthermore, the exchange of ideas between presenters and attendees frequently stimulates new perspectives. Coupled with in-person poster discussion, our recent poster presentation at the…

Dutch and German employ voicing contrasts, but Dutch lacks the 'voiced' dorsal plosive /g/. We exploited this accidental phonological gap, measuring the presence of prevoicing and voice onset time durations during speech production to determine (1) whether preliterate bilingual Dutch-German and monolingual Dutch-speaking children aged 3;6-6;0…

After countless petitions and complaints from end users, live subtitling quality is slowly attracting the attention of broadcasters, regulators, the subtitling industry and scholars working in Media Accessibility. These stakeholders share an interest in providing better live subtitles, but their quality assessment is a thorny issue. Although…

This paper reports from a case study which explores kindergarten children's mathematical abstraction in a teaching--learning activity about reflection symmetry. From a dialectical perspective, abstraction is here conceived as a process, as a genuine part of human activity, where the learner establishes "a point of view from which the concrete…