Adults reason by exclusivity to identify the meanings of novel words. However, it is debated whether, like children, they extend this strategy to disambiguate other referential expressions (e.g., facts about objects). To further inform this debate, this study tested 41 adults on four conditions of a disambiguation task: label/label, fact/fact,…

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…

Americans produce approximately 250 million tons of trash every year, and almost 35 percent of those are of recyclable materials. There are over 1,200 landfills in the United States, and many have caused and will potentially cause significant damage to the environment. It is important for the next generation to know that what is perceived as…

Receptive identification is usually taught in matching-to-sample format, which entails the presentation of an auditory sample stimulus and several visual comparison stimuli in each trial. Conflicting recommendations exist regarding the order of stimulus presentation in matching-to-sample trials. The purpose of this study was to compare acquisition…

The language-based analogical reasoning abilities of Deaf children are a controversial topic. Researchers lack agreement about whether Deaf children possess the ability to reason using language-based analogies, or whether this ability is limited by a lack of access to vocabulary, both written and signed. This dissertation examines factors that…

With online education comes large amounts of data that can reveal in ways able to be examined quantitatively only sparingly in the past, the physics problem-solving profiles of students. This project uses fundamental research to analyze physics problem-solving behavior of students enrolled in the Massive Open Online Course 8.MReVx offered on the…

A common approach for introducing students to a new science concept is to present them with multiple cases of the phenomenon and ask them to explore. The expectation is that students will naturally take advantage of the multiple cases to support their learning and seek an underlying principle for the phenomenon. However, the success of such tasks…

By the end of primary school, students are confronted with expository texts known for their high proportion of domain-specific academic vocabulary words. These words usually comprise Greek or Latin roots in their internal structure. Recent findings showed that knowledge of Greek and Latin roots is related to reading comprehension. However, no…

The role of working memory (WM) in language acquisition has been widely reported in the developmental literature, but few studies have explored the role of sentence recall in the way WM and related linguistic abilities evolve. This study seeks to explore the organization and development of the memory architecture underlying language using a…

Purpose: The goal of this study was to examine online and off-line sentence processing using Korean language relative clause sentences between children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with typical development (TD). Method: Twenty-four children with TD and 19 children with SLI participated in this study. Children completed…

This study investigates two models of L2 vocabulary acquisition at an advanced L2 level: L1 lemma mediation and the revised hierarchical models. Proponents of the L1 lemma mediation model postulate that advanced L2 learners map L2 words to L1 meanings or concepts, whereas proponents of the revised hierarchical model argue that the increasing…

By adopting a usage-based approach to language acquisition, this study investigated the emergence and development of L2 constructional knowledge. A total of 19 English verb-argument constructions (VACs) and their associated verbs were extracted from a learner corpus and three verbal fluency tasks, each conducted in L1 and L2 English and L1 Korean.…

Less-advantaged students are under-represented at prestigious universities, but can we infer that they actively avoid them? This research measured university applicants' knowledge of 115 UK universities. Using card-sort tasks within an interview format, 56 Year 13 students from different types of 16-19 education described how they chose five…

Integrating Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) and learning technologies can be the potential framework in designing language instruction to enhance learners' listening comprehension and speaking performance. However, not many past studies have explored how technology enhanced TBLT can enhance both listening comprehension and speaking performance…

The Interface Hypothesis (Sorace, 2000) developed in line with the Minimalist theory of grammar (Chomsky, 1995 et seq.) supports the view of L2 acquisition that syntactic properties are acquired early while the acquisition of interface properties is delayed. One of the interface properties is inflectional morphology on English verbs, which…