Discusses the cognitive processes involved in constructing linear orderings from pairwise relationships of information items. Examines the effects that sentence types used in presenting information have on these processes, and tests two models designed to clarify the acquisition of spatial knowledge and the processing of locative and comparative…

Language is not, as commonly believed, a biologically arbitrary assemblage of processes that are not themselves linguistic. Rather, language consists of specialized processes of phonetic perception that conform to the acoustic consequences of the way that articulatory movements are regulated. (Author/GC)

Reports a study on coding operations during visual word recognition. Subjects made lexical judgments about words and nonwords when phonological recoding was either beneficial or detrimental to making decisions; the phonological model was used by subjects when helpful. This supports a dual retrieval model of word recognition. (Author/PJM)

Presents several types of synophones, words similar in sound but different in meaning, including those differing in one phoneme only, more than one phoneme which can have an identical Latin root, and several phonemes which defy exact definition. Suggests validity of context as aid to comprehension of unknown words should not be overestimated.…

Considers the difficulties in creating a definition of metaphor. Distinguishes metaphors from statements of literal similarity and nonsense. (JT)

Contains status reports of research in three areas of speech production: functional properties of the speech production apparatus, control principles underlying speech production, and the biological basis of the speech production process. (RL)

Explores the alternating mental perspectives that writers assume during the composing process, from inner experience to outer judgment and back to experience. (HTH)

The effect of presupposition on memory depends upon a restricted class of pragmatic conditions. If certain intended misleaders are introduced, presupposition does not enter into memory. This was shown with two experiments in which subjects "remembered" an accident differently, depending upon whether misleading facts were introduced.…

Discusses the relationship between the brain, language, and communication in the following sections: (1) combining words, (2) language as a system, (3) language as a function of the brain, (4) the science of communication, and (5) language as a social institution. (NCR)

Contends that links between phonological memory and receptive vocabulary should be interpreted cautiously. Explains modifications to nonword repetition task procedures. Argues that further work is necessary to determine if children's phonological memory, and not general phonological processing abilities, contributes to vocabulary acquisition. The…

A study of 66 children (ages 4-9) with specific language impairments examined the effects of language impairments on naming pictures. Results found that the children with specific language impairments were slower than other children in picture naming and that the slower naming rate was not related to lexical processing. (CR)

Presents a computational study of children's acquisition of word-to-meaning mappings, approximates this task as a mathematical problem, and presents an algorithm for solving the problem, illustrating the algorithm's operation on a small example. Notes that computational simulations demonstrated the robustness of the algorithm and illustrated how…

Five- through 9-year olds and adults heard ironic and literal criticisms and literal compliments. Found that comprehension of irony emerged between 5 and 6 years; and ratings of humor in irony increased with age but ratings of meanness in irony did not. (BC)

Discusses frequency effects in language acquisition. Provides an example of how frequency may relate to grammatical judgments of nonnative speakers acquisition of multiple wh-questions. (Author/VWL)

Responds to Ellis (2002), which focuses on frequency in language processing, language use, and language acquisition. Suggests his findings are consistent with those of second language acquisition researchers working with a variationist framework. Provides a brief overview of this research area and describes a psycholinguistic model of language…