Five groups of subjects (n=54, ages 15-43) were assigned a repair strategy to use after misperceiving a sentence through lipreading. Strategies included asking the talker to repeat a sentence, rephrasing it, simplifying it, saying an important keyword, and speaking two sentences. Compared to controls, subjects demonstrated significantly greater…

Explores factors affecting the ease or difficulty with which new words are learned in a second language, focusing on such intralexical factors as pronuncability, length, parts of speech, inflexional complexity, derivational complexity, semantic features, abstractedness, specificity, idomaticity, register restrictions, and multiple meaning. (52…

Describes a study that concluded that children generally treat the spatial locatives "in front of" and "behind" in a nondeictic way when a referent object with an obvious front is involved. Tasks that emphasized the viewpoint of the observer, however, caused a deictic response. (GLR)

Assesses whether 30 children aged three-five years had a preferred direction in responding to "when"-questions and whether this preference could be influenced by story structure. Results indicated that children showed a preference for "after"-type responses and that productions of "before" were more likely to be…

An investigation looks at complex English sentences that are used to represent two ordered events and containing "before" or "after" subordinate clauses. It is concluded that text evidence is directly relevant to an understanding of language processing. (25 references) (Author/VWL)

Whether 10- to 14-year olds infer implied instruments when reading isolated instrument-implicit sentences as well as they do when instructed to generate such instruments was studied with 177 subjects in 2 experiments. Results indicate that spontaneous instrumental inference is less certain than previously suggested. (SLD)

Three studies examined children's learning of second labels for objects. Found that, at 24 months, subjects learned both labels equally well but had difficulty with the second label if a third word was introduced. Results suggest that, from six months on, mutual exclusivity helps children interpret novel words. (WP)

Argues that Jerome Bruner's "Acts of Meaning" (1990), which calls for a "renewed cognitive revolution" for the direction of cognitive psychology research and study, does not sufficiently identify the direction of that journey or the obstacles that need to be removed for a successful journey. (31 references) (CB)

Responds to criticisms about the author's call for a new direction in cognitive psychology research and study and defends the need for new perspectives. (one reference) (CB)

Proposes an alternative model of language comprehension regarding how people understand idioms in which literal meanings are systematically used to constrain the use and variation of conventional idioms and to generate novel idiom variance. Presents three experiments on how people process variant idioms. (SR)

Three experiments investigating the use of temporal information in a reduced relative clause to interpret verb tense of the main clause found that subjects rapidly assessed temporal information to resolve tense ambiguity, demonstrating an incremental approach to comprehension that uses previous discourse to continuously update comprehension and…

Discusses the importance, validity, and implications of the identity thesis that the P600 component of the scalp-recorded event-related potential is identical with the P3b, a domain-general component elicited by improbable task-related events. Explores epistemological complexities of the issue and discusses what the identity thesis does and does…

Describes 11 common dogmas of understanding (convictions that are impervious to evidence) that have led researchers to ignore or dismiss many features of everyday language. Discusses evidence against them, and some of the dangers they pose for the study of understanding. Argues that using language is fundamentally social, and that social features…

Concludes that, whereas inference processing may be impeded by the relative lack of familiarity of the content of expository text, it is not strictly precluded. Indicates rather that inference processing in the comprehension of expository text is regulated by the information-processing constraints of the reading task and by the discourse and…

Tests two views of how relevant global information becomes readily available to readers. Demonstrates that backgrounded information became readily available if it shared features in common with the current contents of working memory. Shows that this occurred independently of whether the information was relevant or thematically related;…