Previous research has found mixed results for a link between executive function and perspective-taking. One proposed reason for this is that perspective-taking during comprehension tasks may not be internally reliable. This dissertation presents two large individual differences experiments with multiple perspective-taking during comprehension and…

Understanding language requires readers and listeners to cull meaning from fast-unfolding messages that often contain conflicting cues pointing to incompatible ways of interpreting the input (e.g., "The cat was chased by the mouse"). This article reviews mounting evidence from multiple methods demonstrating that cognitive control plays…

In sentences such as "Some dogs are mammals," the literal semantic meaning ("Some 'and possibly all' dogs are mammals") conflicts with the pragmatic meaning ("'Not all' dogs are mammals," known as a "scalar implicature"). Prior work has shown that adults vary widely in the extent to which they adopt the…

This paper reviews three studies investigating the relationship between brain regions involved in executive control and those involved in reading comprehension in typically-developing teens. In the first study, three regions of posterior left lateral prefrontal cortex (i.e., precentral gyrus, inferior frontal junction, inferior frontal gyrus) were…

The present study presents a meta-analysis of the relations between phonological processing abilities and different mathematics subskills. Using a random-effects model with 94 studies (135 unique samples, 826 effect sizes), the present meta-analysis revealed a significant general association between phonological processing and mathematics (average…

The present study compared bilingualism with bidialectalism in their respective impact on executive control, using a short-term language switching training paradigm for participants who were both bidialectals (Shanghainese-Mandarin Chinese) and bilinguals (Chinese-English). Twenty participants were assigned to a control group where no language…

Background: Aphasia is often accompanied by impairment of non-language cognitive functions. Assessment of cognitive capacity in people with aphasia (PWA) with standard neuropsychological methods may be problematic due to their language difficulties. Numerous experimental studies indicate that P300 may be considered as an index of cognitive…

Children with reading difficulties (RD) share challenges in executive functions (EF). Neurobiological correlates provide evidence for EF challenges during reading among these readers, but an online cognitive load detection mechanism has yet to be developed. Nevertheless, eye-movement tracking can provide online data of reading patterns (pupil…

Language switch costs have been explored less in receptive tasks than in productive tasks, and previous studies have produced mixed findings with regard to switch cost symmetry and the relationship of switch costs to executive function. To address these unresolved gaps, one hundred Chinese-English bilingual adults completed a bilingual lexical…

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the relationship between nonverbal cognitive functions and language processing of people with aphasia (PWA) by taking a data-driven approach, as well as multiple cognitive components and multilevel linguistic perspectives. It is hypothesized that language performance is differentially associated with…

A data-driven, transdiagnostic approach was used to identify the cognitive dimensions linked with learning in a mixed group of 805 children aged 5 to 18 years recognized as having problems in attention, learning, and memory by a health or education practitioner. Assessments included phonological processing; information processing speed; short-term…

This study investigated the relationship between balanced multilingualism and working memory. Specifically, it reports on the relationship between balanced proficiency in speaking, reading and comprehension (across three languages), and verbal and visuospatial working memory in young South African adults. Information about participants' language…

Background: Alzheimer's disease is characterized by macrolinguistic changes. This decline is often analyzed with quantitative scales. Aims: To analyze discourse production in early Alzheimer's disease (AD) and to identify qualitative markers of macrolinguistic decline. Methods & Procedures: We analyzed macrolinguistic features of a clinical…

Purpose: This study examined bilinguals' performance on functional executive function map tasks such as the Zoo Map from the Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome and the extent to which working memory, set-shifting, and inhibition measures predicted bilinguals' performance on these tasks. Additionally, we explored the utility of…

According to some accounts, the bilingual advantage is most pronounced in the domain of executive attention rather than inhibition and should therefore be more easily detected in conflict adaptation paradigms than in simple interference paradigms. We tested this idea using two conflict adaptation paradigms, one that elicits a list-wide…