Does making an inference lead to better learning than being instructed directly? Two experiments evaluated preschoolers' ability to learn new words, comparing their memory for words learned via inference or instruction. On Inference trials, one familiar and one novel object was presented and children were asked to "Point at the [object name (i.e.,…

In the book "Verbal Behavior," Skinner provided a comprehensive, behavioral account of language. While the impact of Skinner's analysis on empirical research has been examined broadly, this review of the literature focused on studies relevant to organizational behavior management (OBM). Both empirical and nonempirical journal articles in OBM were…

Following Jacobson's 1990 work, this study is another attempt to offer a unified analysis of the Japanese aspect marker "te iru" that touches upon Gestalt psychologists' ideas of figure/ground opposition, Langacker's cognitive grammar, and Kunihiro's cognitive analysis. (Contains 34 references.) (LB)

This paper expands on schematic theory through a review of recent work in the field of semiotics. Content and formal schemata are shown to be grounded respectively in perceptual (abductive) and indexical (inductive) strategies of inference. A third kind of schemata is based on deductive generalization and referred to as abstract schemata. All…

This study investigated the development of visual chunking skills in the processing of Chinese characters among Hong Kong pupils. One-hundred-seventy-nine primary school students from first, second and fourth grades were administered a character copying task. Children as young as 6 years of age were aware of character units and were able to apply…

Three experiments investigated the effects of rime consistency on reading and spelling among developing readers ranging in age from 7 to 11 years. Experiment 1 found that children read words with inconsistent feedforward mappings between orthography and phonology (O [right arrow] P) less accurately than consistent words. OP consistency interacted…

Provides evidence for the utility of schema-based frameworks which assume that schemas and scripts organize information, aid in comprehension, and guide information retrieval. (FL)

Three different visual skills, along with Chinese character recognition, vocabulary, speeded naming, and syllable deletion skills were tested twice over one school year among 118 Hong Kong and 96 Xiangtan, China kindergartners. Results revealed that a task of Visual Spatial Relationships [Gardner, M. F. (1996). "Test of visual-perceptual…

To investigate the hypothesis that cognitive rules govern writing behavior, Carter's signaled stopping technique was used to study language and cognitive effects in public relations messages. Principles from Grunig, et al (1985) Axiomatic Theory of Cognition and Writing, which proposed premises, axioms and definitions about writing, were applied…

French-speaking children and adults heard silent comic-strip stories that differed by frame display mode, explicitness of the links between depicted events, and whether the topic changed on the last frame. Subjects' use of referents for the last frame indicated that manipulation of context was a good means of assessing speakers' acquisition of…

In a step toward creating a robust natural language understanding system which detects and avoids miscommunication, this artificial intelligence research report provides a taxonomy of miscommunication problems that arise in expert-apprentice dialogues (including misunderstandings, wrong communication, and bad analogies), and proposes a flexible…

The acquisition of German in three adult Poles over a three-year period is examined based on an acquisition profile of each person that specified the sequences in acquisition. The findings suggest that cognitive factors must be considered to explain the varying degree of success in the acquisition process. (40 references) (Author/LB)

Extracts from financial reports broadcast on two British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio channels are analyzed for cognitive structures that affect the conceptual organization of this discourse type. The approach used for the analysis is based on two assumptions in the relationship of communication and cognition. These are: (1) financial…

Examines whether young children make explicit references to beliefs, ideas, thoughts, and intentions. Relates that three-year-old children correctly distinguish between real and mental items and that they think and dream about things that are not real. Concludes that conceptual development theories portraying early development as concrete and…

Analysis of a large corpus (80 pairs of speakers) of 7-12 year olds suggests that 2 principles underlie the development of dialogue coordination skills. The seven to eight year olds establish a limited common dialogue lexicon, whereas older speakers show evidence of deep coordination processes aimed at establishing mutual intelligibility of a…