Although action experience has been shown to enhance the development of spatial cognition, the mechanism underlying the effects of action is still unclear. The present research examined the role of visual cues generated during action in promoting infants' mental rotation. We sought to clarify the underlying mechanism by decoupling different…

Purpose: The focus of this study was to examine the influence of fundamental frequency (F0) and vocal tract length (VTL) modifications on speaker gender recognition in cochlear implant (CI) recipients for different stimulus types. Method: Single words and sentences were manipulated using isolated or combined F0 and VTL cues. Using an 11-point…

This study investigates the influence of grammatical role and discourse-level cues on the interpretation of different pronominal forms in native speakers of French, native speakers of Turkish, and Turkish learners of French. In written questionnaires, we found that native speakers of French were influenced by discourse-level cues when interpreting…

One core question in studies of language processing is the extent to which interlocutors engage in real-time communicative perspective-taking. Current evidence suggests that both children and young adult listeners are able to draw on common ground (shared knowledge) to guide referential interpretation. However, less is known about older listeners,…

Aims: Since many Saudi ESL students studying abroad have limited vocabulary and grammar knowledge and poor reading comprehension skills, this article proposes the integration of linguistic landscapes (LLs) in teaching English to Saudi students studying abroad to supplement the English language courses and textbooks they study. Definition of LLs:…

This study aimed to investigate the effect of written cues on the second- language (L2) language perception, processing, and word learning, especially when the person's first language (L1) belongs to a different rhythmic type of language than L2. The first objective was to examine whether late bilinguals as L2 learners can benefit more from…

Drill and practice is a well-received approach to repeatedly train learners' skills through a series of exercises and to reward them with corrective feedback. However, drill-based training may not improve learners' performance if its exercises are badly designed (e.g., not fun, not relevant to the learning goal, and becoming too difficult or too…

Blended forms of learning have become increasingly popular. Learning activities within these environments are supported by a large variety of online and face-to-face interventions. However, it remains unclear whether these blended environments are successful, and if they are, what makes them successful. Studies suggest that blended learning…

The learned predictiveness effect or LPE is the finding that when people learn that certain cues are reliable predictors of an outcome in an initial stage of training (phase 1), they exhibit a learning bias in favor of these cues in a subsequent training involving new outcomes (phase 2) despite all cues being equally reliable in phase 2. In…

Difficulty in retrieving specific autobiographical memories is known as overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM). OGM has been related with clinical psychopathology (e.g., depression, schizophrenia, etc.). People presenting an OGM style usually recall more repetitive summary-type memories, so-called categoric memories, (e.g., "each time I…

Drugs of abuse cause changes in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and associated regions that impair inhibitory control over drug-seeking. Breaking the contingencies between drug-associated cues and the delivery of the reward during extinction learning reduces rates of relapse. Here we used vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) to induce targeted synaptic…

Linguistic and non-linguistic pattern learning have been studied separately, but we argue for a comparative approach. Analogous inductive problems arise in phonological and visual pattern learning. Evidence from three experiments shows that human learners can solve them in analogous ways, and that human performance in both cases can be captured by…

This paper investigates the difficulties adult second language (L2) users of English encounter with plosive consonants in the L2. It presents the results of a task examining the acquisition of plosive voicing contrasts by college students with Cypriot Greek (CG) linguistic background. The task focused on the types of errors involving plosive…

Non-native speakers' sensitivity to discourse-level cues in pronoun interpretation has not been widely researched. We carried out three antecedent-choice questionnaire experiments which investigate the impact of focus on within-sentence pronoun resolution in native and non-native speakers of German and native speakers of Russian. Focus was…

Contextualized items have been widely used in science testing. Despite common use of item contexts, how the influence of a chosen context on the reliability and validity of the score inferences remains unclear. We focused on sequential cues of contextual information, referring to the order of events or descriptions presented in item contexts. We…