Are speakers equipped with preferences concerning grammatical structures that are absent in their language? We examine this question by investigating the sensitivity of English speakers to the sonority of onset clusters. Linguistic research suggests that certain onset clusters are universally preferred (e.g., "bd" is greater than "lb"). We…

Two member onset consonant clusters with /s/ as the first member (#sC onsets) behave differently from other double onset consonant clusters in English. Phonological explanations of children's consonant cluster production have been posited to predict children's speech acquisition. The aim of this study was to consider the role of the Sonority…

The purpose of the current study is to document phonological change from a multidimensional perspective for a 3-year-old boy with phonological disorder by comparing three measures: (1) accuracy of consonant productions, (2) dynamic assessment, and (3) acoustic analysis. The methods included collecting a sample of the targets /s, [image omitted],…

Presents and analyzes three experiments on prefix stripping. Results show that pseudoprefixed words are indiscriminately treated as prefixed words and concludes that prefix stripping does occur in word recognition and that prefixed words are accessed through a representation of their stem. (Author/BK)

Presents two experiments designed to evaluate how subjects represent and process logical quantifiers in sentences considering verbal string, abstract propositional and abstract analog as models for quantifier memory. Results show that quantifier memory depends on propositional and verbal string information but not analog. (Author/BK)

Three experiments investigated the psychological status of the "ego-moving" and "time-moving" metaphors by asking subjects to carry out temporal inferences stated in terms of spatial metaphors. Results provide evidence that people use spatial metaphors in temporal reasoning. Implications for the status of metaphoric systems are discussed.…

There are two significant problems in using functional neuroimaging methods to study language. Improving the state of functional brain imaging will depend on understanding how the dependent measure of brain imaging differs from behavioral dependent measures (the ''dependent measure problem'') and how the activation of the motor system may be…

Second language acquisition (SLA) researchers strive to understand the language and exchanges that learners generate in synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC). Doughty and Long (2003) advocate replacing open-ended SCMC with task-based language teaching (TBLT) design principles. Since most task-based SCMC (TB-SCMC) research addresses an…

Three phoneme monitoring experiments examined the manner in which additional processing time influences spoken word recognition. Experiment 1a introduced a version of the phoneme monitoring paradigm in which a silent interval is inserted prior to the word-final target phoneme. Phoneme monitoring reaction time decreased as the silent interval…

Conditionals in natural language are central to reasoning and decision making. A theoretical proposal called the Ramsey test implies the conditional probability hypothesis: that the subjective probability of a natural language conditional, P(if p then q), is the conditional subjective probability, P(q [such that] p). We report three experiments on…

Generalization refers to the extension of learned behaviours to novel conditions, and it is one of the criteria by which the effectiveness and efficiency of a remediation programme may be judged. This article extracts principles of generalization from the treatment literature, and provides examples of how this information may be used to help guide…

Symbolic rule-based approaches have been a preferred way to study language and cognition. Dissatisfaction with rule-based approaches in the 1980s lead to alternative approaches to study language, the most notable being the dynamic approaches to language processing. Dynamic approaches provide a significant alternative by not being rule-based and…

Current views on the acquisition of PRO can roughly be divided into two areas: lexical and syntactic accounts. We present data on one verb, "decide," that yields data that not only differs from the data for other similar verbs with the same children, but does not lend itself easily to either type of account. Data from a sentence elicitation task…

Three experiments were conducted to test the phonological recoding hypothesis in visual word recognition. Most studies on this issue have been conducted using mono-syllabic words, eventually constructing various models of phonological processing. Yet in many languages including English, the majority of words are multi-syllabic words. English…

Study investigated the processing of ambiguous words that varied in frequency of use of their multiple interpretations. Results indicate that, whereas lexical access is an autonomous process, selection of the appropriate interpretation is a post-lexical process that is influenced by frequency information and context. (MM)