This study examines whether lexical features and textual properties along with individual differences on the part of readers influence word processing times during second language (L2) reading comprehension. Forty-eight Spanish-speaking adolescent and adult learners of English read nine English passages in a self-paced word-by-word reading…

Purpose: Our goal is to present the relationships between working memory (WM) and auditory processing abilities in school-age children. Review and Discussion: We begin with an overview of auditory processing, the conceptualization of auditory processing disorder, and the assessment of auditory processing abilities in children. Next, we describe a…

We tested the prosodic hypothesis that the temporal alignment of a speaker's beat gestures in a sentence influences syntactic parsing by driving the listener's attention. Participants chose between two possible interpretations of relative-clause (RC) ambiguous sentences, while their electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. We manipulated the…

The current study investigated the hypothesis that cognates (i.e., translation equivalents that overlap in form, e.g., "lemon" is "limón" in Spanish) facilitate language switches. Spanish-English bilinguals were cued to switch languages while repeatedly naming pictures with cognate versus noncognate names in separate…

This research report provides an overview of the R&D efforts at Educational Testing Service related to its capability for automated scoring of nonnative spontaneous speech with the "SpeechRater"? automated scoring service since its initial version was deployed in 2006. While most aspects of this R&D work have been published in…

The aim of this study is to analyze the acquisition of comprehension skills according to the Whole Brain Model. The 50 listening and reading skills in the 2018 Turkish language teaching curriculum were examined. The study was based on qualitative research method. Data were collected using a document review and a structured and an unstructured…

Background: This study aims to develop a test for assessing pragmatic comprehension ability in Chinese as a second language (L2). Following the framework of an argument-based approach to test validation, this study attempts to obtain backing for the Evaluation and Explanation inferences. Methods: Test items were developed based on two sources of…

Semantic transparency effects during compound word recognition provide critical insight into the organization of semantic knowledge and the nature of semantic processing. The past 25 years of psycholinguistic research on compound semantic transparency has produced discrepant effects, leaving the existence and nature of its influence unresolved. In…

This study investigated whether Chinese--Korean bilinguals can use structure-based information to interpret Korean sentences containing floating numeral quantifiers during online processing. A numeral quantifier in Korean can be stranded from its modified noun through scrambling as long as the quantifier forms a constituent with the noun. For…

A substantial body of evidence demonstrates that infants understand the meaning of spoken words from as early as 6 months. Yet little is known about their ability to do so in the absence of any visual referent, which would offer diagnostic evidence for an adult-like, symbolic interpretation of words and their use in language mediated thought. We…

Mental representations have continuous as well as discrete, combinatorial properties. For example, while predominantly discrete, phonological representations also vary continuously; this is reflected by gradient effects in instrumental studies of speech production. Can an integrated theoretical framework address both aspects of structure? The…

Purpose: When learning novel word forms, preschoolers with developmental language disorder (DLD; also known as "specific language impairment") produce speech targets inaccurately and with a high degree of intraword variability. The aim of the current study is to specify whether and how layering lexical-semantic information onto novel…

This study compared the effectiveness of deductive instruction and guided inductive instruction for developing semantic radical knowledge of Chinese characters. The evaluation was conducted through a quasi-experimental 3-week intervention involving 46 intermediate learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). The results indicated that guided…

Purpose: It is well recognized that adding the visual to the acoustic speech signal improves recognition when the acoustic signal is degraded, but how that visual signal affects postrecognition processes is not so well understood. This study was designed to further elucidate the relationships among auditory and visual codes in working memory, a…

In discussing a university-industry partnership on the development of an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based simulation platform, this conceptual paper explores the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) as a pedagogical innovation in social work. Critically reflecting upon this ongoing project, we discuss the current promises and limitations of…