Two experiments showed that French native speakers rely on sublexical and lexical cues to allocate gender during word recognition. Sublexical cues were based on whether the word ending was typical for a particular gender rather than neutral with regard to gender. Lexical cues were based on whether the associated definite article was informative…

Using Korean, we investigated how syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors influence the representation of a sentence, in particular, the relative accessibility of different components of a sentence representation. In six experiments, participants performed a probe recognition task after reading each of a series of sentences. We manipulated the…

Objective: Children with ADHD show attention-switching impairment. The present study assessed attention-switching ability in adults with ADHD, the extent to which this ability can be improved via targeted training, and the degree to which training extends to novel tasks of attention-switching. Method: Adults with ADHD (n = 16) and adults without…

In adolescence, externalized problems such as risk taking and antisocial behavior are more frequent in boys. This suggests that there are differences in the way boys and girls evaluate risk and make decisions during this period. To explore decision making and highlight possible gender differences, 124 adolescents at a junior secondary school…

Framed under a cognitive approach to task-based L2 learning, this study used a pedagogical approach to investigate the effects of three vocabulary lessons (one traditional and two task-based) on acquisition of basic meanings, forms and morphological aspects of Spanish words. Quantitative analysis performed on the data suggests that the type of…

The computer numerical control (CNC) flatbed router is a powerful tool and a must-have piece of equipment for any technology education program in which students will produce a product--whether it involves Manufacturing, Materials Processing, or any of the vast array of Project Lead the Way courses. This article describes an activity--producing a…

Creating activities that model engineering design as it appears in industry provides great experience for technology students. Design in general creates an element with special regard to its form and function. Engineering design involves doing that, and going beyond to produce an efficient product that addresses its intended purpose. In this…

The Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities test (ABLA) is a useful tool for choosing appropriate training tasks for persons with developmental disabilities. This test assesses the ease or difficulty with which persons are able to learn six hierarchically positioned discrimination tasks. A visual-visual nonidentity matching prototype task was…

Purpose: The present study investigated the extent of cortical activity during overt picture naming using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Method: Participants comprised 20 healthy, adult participants with ages ranging from 20 to 82 years. While undergoing fMRI, participants completed a picture-naming task consisting of 60…

Presents an investigation of the relationships among selected aspects of normal language development, emerging metalinguistic skills, and concepts about print in three-year-old children. Forty-three normally developing children were given 4 tests of language development: 12 metalinguistic tasks measuring phonological awareness, word awareness, and…

This study examined word identification skills between two groups of college students with different first language (L1) backgrounds (Chinese and Korean) learning to read English as a second language (ESL). Word identification skills were tested in a naming experiment and an auditory category judgment task. Both groups of ESL learners demonstrated…

In the Singlish-"Good" English debate, the use of Singlish (SCE) is viewed as an obstacle to the development of students' literacy skills in standard English (SSE) and so the practice of classroom codeswitching between the two varieties is strongly discouraged. Yet the presence of the vernacular in the classroom continues to be robust.…

Background: Social understanding is often thought to be relatively "protected" in children with Down's syndrome (DS) and to underlie the outgoing personality characteristically attributed to them. This paper draws together findings from our studies of behaviours during object concept testing, generally considered a theoretically "pure" measure of…

This study examined development of pragmatic comprehension ability across time. Twenty native speakers and 92 Japanese college students of English completed a computerized listening task measuring ability to comprehend two types of implied meaning in dialogues: indirect refusals (k = 24) and indirect opinions (k = 24). The participants'…

In general terms automaticity could be defined as the subconscious condition wherein "we perform a complex series of tasks very quickly and efficiently, without having to think about the various components and subcomponents of action involved" (DeKeyser 2001: 125). For language learning, Segalowitz (2003) characterised automaticity as a…