The influence of domain knowledge on reading behavior has received limited investigation compared to the influence of, for example, context and/or word frequency. The current study tested participants with and without domain knowledge of the "Harry Potter" (HP) universe. Fans and non-fans read sentences containing HP, high-frequency…

In a masked priming word-naming task, a facilitation due to the initial-segmental sound overlap for 2-character kanji prime-target pairs was affected by certain orthographic properties (Yoshihara, Nakayama, Verdonschot, & Hino, 2017). That is, the facilitation that was due to the initial mora overlap occurred only when the mora was the whole…

Informally speaking, presuppositions are meaning components which are part of the common ground for speakers in a conversation, that is, background information which is taken for granted by interlocutors. The current literature suggests an immediate processing of presuppositions, starting directly on the word triggering the presupposition. In the…

Configurations of support include those that exhibit Support-From-Below (cup "on" table), as well as those involving Mechanical Support (e.g., stamp "on" envelope, coat "on" hook). Mature language users show a "division of labor" in the encoding of support, frequently using basic locative expressions (BE…

Purpose: Better performance for actions compared to objects has been reported in the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA). This study investigated the influence of the assessment task (naming, semantic picture matching) over the dissociation between objects and actions. Method: Ten individuals with svPPA and 17 matched controls…

In this paper, we extracted content-based and structure-based features of text to predict human annotations for claims and nonclaims in argumentative essays. We compared Logistic Regression, Bernoulli Naive Bayes, Gaussian Naive Bayes, Linear Support Vector Classification, Random Forest, and Neural Networks to train classification models. Random…

Peer assessment adds value when students provide "helpful" feedback to their peers. But, this begs the question of how we determine "helpfulness." One important aspect is whether the review detects problems in the submitted work. To recognize problem detection, researchers have employed NLP and machine-learning text…

The effect of first language transfer on second language acquisition and learning has been a major theoretical concept in second language research and pedagogy since the 1950s. In order to give a historical perspective, the authors offer a brief presentation of some of the major topics from the broad spectrum of issues that have been examined by…

Embodied models of language comprehension assume that words become associated with sensorimotor experiences during word learning. Novel word learning paradigms may provide insight into embodied effects, but studies in this domain have yet to account for how concepts and information known in first language (L1) might influence the sensorimotor…

This study investigated the effectiveness of using ChatGPT, a large language model (LLM), to enhance critical thinking and argumentation skills among undergraduate students studying international relations in a developing nation context. A total of 95 participants were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n = 48) and a control group (n =…

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of explicit information (EI) in the context of Processing Instruction (PI) as an alternative to traditional teaching methods. PI encompasses explicit information and structured input activity (SI). However, the effectiveness of EI has been a subject of debate. To address this question, grade-7…

Novice special education teachers often face challenges in developing high-quality Individualized Education Program (IEP) goals for children with autism. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT, has shown potential in supporting teachers in IEP development. This study aimed to investigate the impact of ChatGPT on the…

Upon hearing a novel label, listeners tend to assume that it refers to a novel, rather than a familiar object. While this disambiguation or mutual exclusivity (ME) effect has been robustly shown across development, it is unclear what it involves. Do listeners use their pragmatic and lexical knowledge to exclude the familiar object and thus select…

orInverse relations, or "trade-off effects," are a common outcome of interlanguage development: a learner may increase performance in one linguistic domain while simultaneously decreasing performance in another. In this study, we investigate the relationships between one aspect of fluency (pause usage) and two aspects of syntactic…

Young people use slang for identifying themselves with a particular social group, gaining social recognition and respect from that group, and expressing their emotional state. One feature of Internet slang is its active use by youth in online communication, which, under certain conditions, may cause problematic Internet use (PIU). We conducted two…