Purpose: Word learning requires the creation of phonological and semantic representations and links in long-term memory. Phonological distance of a given word from the spoken language affects children's lexical-phonological representations and processing. The study investigates the role of the phonological distance of Modern Standard Arabic (StA)…

Although the idea of translation psychology dates from the 1970s, it is still a rather neglected branch of translation studies. The purpose of this study is to describe the relations of translators' implicit theories of translation to goal orientation, self-efficacy and self-regulation. The sample consisted of 125 adults (of at least 18 years old)…

A short form of the 60-item computer-based orthographic processing assessment (long-form COPA or COPA-LF) was developed. The COPA-LF consists of five skills, including rapid perception, access, differentiation, correction, and arrangement. Thirty items from the COPA-LF were selected for the short-form COPA (COPA-SF) based on cognitive diagnostic…

Technological Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have Brought forth the Potential for Models to Assist in Academic Writing. However, Concerns Regarding the Accuracy, Reliability, and Impact of AI in Academic Writing have been Raised. This Study Examined the Capabilities of GPT-4, a state-of-the-art AI Language Model, in Writing an American…

Dyslexia is a learning disability that significantly hinders students' abilities to read and comprehend educational materials, posing a substantial challenge within educational environments. This paper introduces an innovative educational system, ReadSmart, that integrates both Augmented Reality (AR) and Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI)…

Transformer architectures contribute to managing long-term dependencies for natural language processing, representing one of the most recent changes in the field. These architectures are the basis of the innovative, cutting-edge large language models (LLMs) that have produced a huge buzz in several fields and industrial sectors, among the ones…

This study presents a comprehensive examination of the applications, challenges, and strategies associated with the integration of natural language processing (NLP) technologies in university teaching. By employing qualitative analyses, including interviews, classroom observations, and document review, the study explores the diverse applications…

Integration of ChatGPT into higher education requires assessing university educators' perspectives regarding this novel technology. This study aimed to validate a survey instrument specifically tailored to assess ChatGPT usability and acceptability among university educators based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The survey instrument…

In this study we asked whether nonwords created by transposing two phonemes (/biks[open-mid back rounded vowel]t/) are perceived as being more similar to their base words (/bisk[open-mid back rounded vowel]t/) than nonwords created by substituting two phonemes (/bipf[open-mid back rounded vowel]t/). Using the short-term phonological priming and a…

Multi-angle question answering models have recently been proposed that promise to perform related tasks like question generation. However, performance on related tasks has not been thoroughly studied. We investigate a leading model called Macaw on the task of multiple choice question generation and evaluate its performance on three angles that…

Purpose: Emotional stimuli have been shown to influence language processing (both language comprehension and production) in people with aphasia (PWA); however, this finding is not universally reported. Effects of emotional stimuli on language performance in PWA could have clinical and theoretical implications, yet the sparsity of studies and…

Biomimicry has been proposed as an important tool to reach key skills for the new century. It has taken its place as an essential resource for critical and creative thinking in design disciplines. However, as emphasized in many studies, bio-informed research requires interdisciplinary collaboration and systematic knowledge transfer. This article…

Purpose: Persons with unilateral brain damage in the right hemisphere (RH) or left hemisphere (LH) show limitations in processing linguistic prosody, with yet inconclusive results on their ability to process prosodically marked structural boundaries for syntactic ambiguity resolution. We aimed at systematically investigating production and…

Idiomatic expressions (IEs) play an essential role in natural language. In this paper, we study the task of idiomatic sentence paraphrasing (ISP), which aims to paraphrase a sentence with an IE by replacing the IE with its literal paraphrase. The lack of large scale corpora with idiomatic-literal parallel sentences is a primary challenge for this…

As humans, we use language with ease and speed, solving the complex computational problem of processing form and meaning seemingly without effort. This dissertation studies how the properties of language enable us to achieve this, by investigating what is computationally difficult about language, and what is easy. We first investigate the…