A typical college classroom is often pictured with the professor talking for several hours while students frantically try to write down everything that is said. This type of classroom has traditionally produced surface learning and has done little to promote learning that lasts. Do university classrooms have to be professor driven? Can university…

Two experiments examined pictorial humor as an unusual but legitimate way to approach the study of children's representational activity and the transition from implicit to explicit knowledge. In both experiments, the participants were 3- and 4-year-old children. Experiment 1 studied the understanding of two pictorial jokes using two conditions,…

This paper reports the results of three studies examining comprehension and real-time processing of pronominal (Experiment 1) and Wh-movement (Experiments 2 and 3) structures in agrammatic and unimpaired speakers using eyetracking. We asked the following questions: (a) Is off-line comprehension of these constructions impaired in agrammatic…

Purpose: Comprehension deficits associated with right hemisphere brain damage (RHD) have been attributed to an inability to use context, but there is little direct evidence to support the claim. This study evaluated the effect of varying contextual bias on predictive inferencing by adults with RHD. Method: Fourteen adults with no brain damage…

Theory of mind was assessed in 32 adults with HFA, 29 adults with Asperger syndrome and 32 neurotypical adults. The HFA and Asperger syndrome groups were impaired in performance of the Strange stories test and the Faux-pas test and reported more theory of mind problems than the neurotypical adults. The three groups did not differ in performance of…

Media multitasking, or engaging in multiple media and tasks simultaneously, is becoming an increasingly popular phenomenon with the development and engagement in social media. This study examines to what extent video content affects students' reading comprehension in media multitasking environments. One hundred and thirty university students were…

Kintsch's (1988) construction-integration (CI) framework was applied to aesthetic responses to artwork. Art novices in 3 studies viewed and rated representational artworks on aesthetic responses including enjoyment, number of experienced thoughts, and achieved understanding. Parameters based on the CI framework, as well as variables assessing…

The purpose of this study is to determine how behavioral symptoms of inattention predict rapid automatized naming (RAN) performance and reading skills in typically developing children. Participants included 104 third- and fourth-grade children from different elementary schools in mid-Michigan. RAN performance was assessed using the four Rapid…

Studies by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, 2009) indicate that the inability to comprehend text is one of the primary reasons students perform poorly in school Reading difficulties often persist into adulthood with 23% of U.S. adults only meeting basic reading proficiency levels (NCES, 2004). To address this problem, it is…

Background: The cognitive bases of language impairment in specific language impairment (SLI) and autism spectrum disorders (ASD) were investigated in a novel non-word comparison task which manipulated phonological short-term memory (PSTM) and speech perception, both implicated in poor non-word repetition. Aims: This study aimed to investigate the…

Objective: Children with ADHD have an increased risk of poor academic performance. It is important to identify cognitive processes that may be related to this academic failure. In Western schooling systems, especially language processing skills may be of relevance. The present study, therefore, compares the ability to comprehend complex sentences…

This dissertation research investigates the cognitive mechanisms underlying second language (L2) listening comprehension. I use three types of sentential contexts, congruent, neutral and incongruent, to look at how L2 learners construct meaning in spoken sentence comprehension. The three types of contexts differ in their context predictability.…

Broca's area has been considered, for over a century, as the brain centre responsible for speech production. Modern neuroimaging and neuropsychological evidence have suggested a wider functional role is played by this area. In addition to the evidence that it is involved in syntactical analysis, mathematical calculation and music processing, it…

This study investigated the cognitive effort of 5th and 9th graders while writing a text. We manipulated genre (narrative text vs. argumentative text) and tested how level of handwriting automatisation contributes to cognitive effort and fluency in writing. The participants were 23 students from Grade 5 and 21 from Grade 9, who wrote two texts…

In research on learning, one of the fundamental questions concerns issues of language and thought. A number of empirical studies have revealed the interplay between understanding of subject matter and meanings of language expressions to be more dynamic and ambiguous than is commonly acknowledged. The aim of this article is to outline an…