Background: The study aimed to explore to what extent variables associated with lexical and sublexical spelling processes predicted single word spelling ability and whether patterns of lexical and sublexical processes were different across ages. Methods: Beginning (mean age 7 years, N=144) and advanced (mean age 9 years, N=114) English-speaking…

To date, the vast majority of research in second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition has looked at reading, but relatively few studies have explored the potential for vocabulary acquisition through listening. As for participants involved, studies concerning first language (L1) acquisition have mainly focused on pre- and emergent-reading children,…

Traditional educational giants and natural language processing companies have launched several artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled digital learning applications to facilitate language learning. One typical application of AI in digital language education is the automatic scoring application that provides feedback on pronunciation repeat outcomes.…

We examined semantic processing in ASD children by presenting sentences with congruent or incongruent final words and visual narratives with congruent or incongruent final panels. An N400 effect to incongruent words appeared as compared to congruent ones, which was attenuated for the ASD children. We observed a negativity sustained to incongruous…

Twenty participants who were deaf and 20 chronological age-matched participants with typical hearing (TH) (mean age: 12 years) were asked to judge the correctness of written sentences with or without a grammatically incongruent word while their eye movements were registered. TH participants outperformed deaf participants in grammaticality judgment…

Finding the first full-time, major-related job is a challenge faced by most college students, particularly those who have not gained much working experience before entering the job market. This challenge is amplified for the students majoring in Information Technology (IT), and cybersecurity in particular, due to the constantly changing technology…

Native speakers understand familiar idioms (e.g., "over the moon") and conventional metaphors (e.g., describing time as a doctor) quickly and easily. In two eye-tracking studies we considered how native speakers are able to make sense of fundamentally "unfamiliar" figurative expressions. In Experiment 1 compared with literal…

When and how do infants learn color words? It is generally supposed that color words are learned late and with a great deal of difficulty. By examining infant language surveys in British English and 11 other languages, this study shows that color word learning occurs earlier than has been previously suggested and that the order of acquisition of…

Many studies investigated metaphors in news; however, few of them focused specifically on headlines. By investigating metaphors in 133 collected NBA news headlines written in Chinese, this paper analyzes the creativity in them. Conceptual Metaphor Theory, including conceptual metonymy, is adopted to discuss creative linguistic metaphors and their…

A large body of evidence shows an animacy effect on memory in that animate entities are better remembered than inanimate ones. Yet, the reason for this mnemonic prioritization remains unclear. In the survival processing literature, the assumption that richness of encoding is responsible for adaptive memory benefits has received substantial…

We investigated whether Tagalog-speaking children incrementally interpret the first noun as the agent, even if verbal and nominal markers for assigning thematic roles are given early in Tagalog sentences. We asked five- and seven-year-old children and adult controls to select which of two pictures of reversible actions matched the sentence they…

An intelligent textbook may be considered to be an interaction layer that lies between the text and the student, helping the student to master the content in the text. The Mobile Fact and Concept Training System (MoFaCTS) is an adaptive instructional system for simple content that has been developed into an interaction layer to mediate textbook…

Many phenomena in psycholinguistics have been studied using artificial paradigms due to laboratory limitations. Code-switching may be one of the phenomena experimentally studied with the most egregious disregard for the environment it appears in and purposes it serves. Our research group has emphasized the necessity of introducing these factors…

In light of the ever-increasing capability of computer technology and advancement in speech and natural language processing techniques, automated speech scoring of constructed responses is gaining popularity in many high-stakes assessment and low-stakes educational settings. Automated scoring is a highly interdisciplinary and complex subject, and…

This article reports on an experimental study on the acquisition of prepositional relative clauses in second language European Portuguese by Chinese native speakers. It focuses on the role of resumption, mandatory in prepositional relative clauses in Chinese (the native language of the learners) and non-conventional in European Portuguese (the…