Cued American English (CAE) is a visual variety of English derived from a mode of communication called Cued Speech (CS). CS, or cueing, is a system of communication for use with the deaf, which consists of hand shapes, hand placements, and mouth shapes that signify the phonemic information conventionally conveyed through speech in spoken…

Hierarchical models of agrammatism propose that sentence production deficits can be accounted for in terms of clausal syntactic structure [Friedmann, N., & Grodzinsky, Y. (1997). "Tense and agreement in agrammatic production: Pruning the syntactic tree." "Brain and Language, 56", 397-425; Hagiwara, H. (1995). "The breakdown of functional…

Whereas most research in SLA assumes the relationship between the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) to be unidirectional, this study investigates the possibility of a bidirectional relationship. We examine the domain of manner of motion, in which monolingual Japanese and English speakers differ both in speech and gesture. Parallel…

This paper addresses the comprehension of relative clauses in audio prompts using online listening exercises implemented in a classroom. Reaction time to short and long sentences containing subject and object relative clauses was assessed in subjects attending an intensive ESL course for graduate students. The results indicate the possibility that…

Six experiments explored how native and non-native Spanish speakers process article-noun sequences in real time, using eye movements as a response measure. Can listeners use gender-marked articles ("la" and "el", the feminine and masculine forms of "the") to rapidly identify familiar and novel nouns? In Experiment 1, adults who learned Spanish as…

The purpose of this paper is to describe a variety of teaching and learning strategies that were used within a classroom of Deaf adults participating in a high school English course as part of an upgrading program. The class was conducted in a bilingual manner; that is, being Deaf and communicating with American Sign Language (ASL) was not…

Recent data suggest recovery of language systems but persistent structural abnormalities in the prematurely born. We tested the hypothesis that subjects who were born prematurely develop alternative networks for processing language. Subjects who were born prematurely (n = 22; 600-1250 g birth weight), without neonatal brain injury on neonatal…

Conventionality can be defined as discourse used in its dominant or most familiar sense. In nonliteral language, the intended message is different from the overt message. It has been demonstrated that nonliteral language can be comprehended as rapidly as literal language if both are placed in linguistic context. A study examined whether this held…

Two experiments tested a theory of information processing in metaphoric comprehension and appreciation. According to this theory, certain kinds of metaphors are based upon underlying analogies, and the processing components used to interpret these metaphors are highly similar to those used in the interpretation of analogies. A critical difference…

The research reported here examines the influence of knowledge of two languages on the organization of semantic information in long-term memory. Eight English-French bilingual adults were presented pairs of letter strings and had to decide whether both strings were words. Half of the trials contained English-French word pairs which required a…

This paper explores the relationship between the structure of orthographies and the way they are laid out spatially. In most written systems, consonantal alphabets have been written right to left, while vocalic ones have been written left to right, suggesting directional properties are the consequences of different processing strategies.…

Sixth graders and undergraduates were tested in two experiments to investigate the salience imbalance hypothesis, one aspect of the similarity theory of metaphorical processing data indicate that salience imbalance generally enhances metaphorical interpretation but is not a necessity. (Author/BS)

Reports on four experiments on how differences in utterance relations influence understanding anaphors, that is, devices that refer back to previously mentioned words or concepts in a discourse. Findings suggest that readers may selectively keep information available if it is likely to be needed for interpreting subsequent input. (SED)

Reports on experiments that address the question of whether pictures and the words that name them access a common conceptual representation. Results suggest that the major component in a lexical or objective decision is a form-specific memory representation of the work or visual object. (EKN)

Points out the need for audience consideration in technical writing. Discusses how memory divides information into chunks for processing, and how this affects the readability of technical text. (HTH)