Eight experiments investigated the effects of visual, spatial, auditory, and executive interference on the symbolic comparison of animal size and ferocity, semantic goodness of words, and numbers. Dynamic visual noise (DVN) and the reading of visually presented stimulus items were shown to selectively interfere with response times on the animal…

It is proposed that in the teaching and testing of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL), emphasis should be placed on features that are universal to all languages rather than particular to Chinese. Shared properties of Chinese and other languages, particularly English, are illustrated through examination of three major language components:…

In intercultural communication, linguistic competence must be accompanied by an understanding of the associations that the speakers share. For communicating in a foreign language, the most important kind of association is indicative association, which is related to the literature, customs, and history of a people. When Japanese people communicate…

Recognizing the widespread use of journal keeping, divergent views of the process, and the dearth of formal attempts to study this process, this study determined the cumulative (post-28 days) and immediate (daily) effects of unstructured (journal) and structured (bipolar checklist) self-evaluative writing upon self-evaluation and…

Changes in the self-perception of participants in two different types of training groups were investigated. A self-descriptive semantic differential for 'actual' and 'preferred' behavior was administered to participants in sensitivity training groups (T-groups) and management training workshops at the beginning and end of their training. Results…

A 30-item multiple-choice word analogy test and a corresponding 30-item picture analogy test (in which the pictures corresponded to the words in the word analogy test) were administered to 289 Civil Service employees. The equivalence of semantic (word) and figural (picture) test presentation of the same items was determined by comparing the…

The hypothesis that disparities in children's associative responses are due to differences in verbal achievement was tested. Also tested was the assumption that for black inner-city children, conventionality in associative responding is accomplished at the expense of increasing verbal repertories and elaborating the meaning of words of varying…

This discussion of universe-scope relations in Chinese and Japanese provides a contrastive analysis of certain features in the two languages. A striking similarity in the deep structure of the noun phrase in both languages is noted and discussed in detail. Both languages have two constituents in a noun phrase which have a semantic relationship…

Responses of Chicano and Anglo high school students on five concepts viewed as basic to the traditional Mexican family structure: (1) male, (2) self, (3) female, (4) father, and (5) mother, are investigated. (Author/AM)

An experiment to determine if different affective responses would result from exposure to three different forms of media presenting the same content used a semantic differential to measure affective response, and an objective test to measure cognitive learning. Analysis of covariance indicated significantly less learning for audiotaped version of…

Compares the information content in descriptions made by sixth grade students based on messages of text and picture, written and verbal, or written language alone. The semantic framework analyzes the importance of words and ideas in text and relationships between them. Found the written language to be more open to interpretation than verbal and…

Discusses semantic communication networks, methods of content analysis, and voice mail as a communication system. A study that examined conceptual distinctions between voice mail answering and voice mail messaging in a large insurance organization is described, and semantic network analysis is compared to traditional content analysis. (28…

Three experiments investigated the ability of eight-year old children with poor language comprehension to produce past tense forms of verbs. Twenty children selected as poor comprehenders were compared to 20 age-matched control children. Although the poor comprehenders performed less well than controls on a range of tasks considered to tap…

This article presents results from 2 studies comparing 3 approaches to teaching vocabulary during storybook reading: (a) contextual instruction, based on connecting words to their use in books and to children's personal experience; (b) analytical instruction, which enhances contextual instruction with semantic analysis of words in contexts other…

A study investigated whether English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) students' understanding of culturally-loaded words (those that are similar in primary meaning but different in connotation between the two languages) approximates that of native speakers of English, and how much English proficiency level may account for the extent of this…