Human creativity and ingenuity partly depend on divergent thinking -- the ability to generate many varied, original, and elaborate responses. Prior research has found ample evidence of an effect of cognitive factors, including the organization of semantic networks and associative ability, on divergent thinking. Less is known, however, about how…

Perceptual simulations are unconscious and automatic, whereas perceptual imagery is conscious and deliberate, but it is unclear how easily one can transfer perceptual information from unconscious to conscious awareness. We investigated whether it is possible to be aware of what one is mentally representing; that is, whether it is possible to…

Reviews recent research on crosslinguistic variation. Suggests that lexical systems are as notable for their differences as they are for their similarities. (Author/VWL)

Discusses analogical change in word structure where meaning seems to have had a role in determining the direction of the change. Many examples are given of pairs of British place names and other English words of various origins. A few examples are included from other languages. (Author/LMO)

A study of code-switching in a group of 35 Spanish-English bilingual third-graders is reported. The students' diary journal entries and writing assignments based on previous classwork are examined. Retelling of stories previously told by the teacher and the journal entries helped identify the kind of language used by students, the code-switching…

In analyzing the issue of the extent to which speaking a nonstandard dialect of English affects a child's ability to learn to read, this paper reviews linguistic and reading research from the 1960s to the present and notes how that research has changed and developed. Based on this research, the paper argues that (1) there is no direct causal…

This article discusses the various dialects of English spoken in Liberia and analyzes the problems of Liberian students in writing compositions in English. Errors arise mainly from differences in culture and cognition, not from superficial linguistic problems. (CFM)