Smith's 1973 model of articulatory phonological development between the ages of two and four is re-examined in an attempt to develop a model that includes the possibility of both perceptual and articulatory learning. Smith's data, regarding phonological transformations of words after rules established by his infant son's pronunciation of the words…

Research on child language acquisition should distinguish between different possible causes of variation and not just attribute variation to individual variation. An alternative analysis using a different methodology can show that children's patterns of acquisition are actually relatively similar. (Author/CB)

Presents the rationale behind a model for the use of the computer in the development of reading comprehension. Basic assumptions concerning reading are delineated. The model has three basic components: intake (text processing and text comprehension), personalization, and extension. (Author/SED)

The results of a word recognition study are compared to those of a sign recognition study in order to determine which aspects of lexical access are comparable in speech and sign, and which are specific to each of the two language modalities. The "gating paradigm" was used in both studies. (Author/AMH)

Two research areas, schema theory and linguistic theory, are described which have contributed to theories about language comprehension. Models of language comprehension conceptualized by Roger Schank, Carl Frederiksen, and Walter Kintsch are discussed in relation to the research and evaluated for practical use in reading instruction. (Author/PP)

Discusses the relative merits of feature versus model based semantics for the interpretation of verb phrases in English, French, and German. The article concludes that the simplicity afforded by features is offset by the depth of analysis achieved with event models that are additionally able to support a sophisticated approach to machine…

Orthogonally manipulated three word characteristics in Dutch and English--word imageability; word frequency; and cognate status--and obtained similar data patterns for three groups of bilinguals different from one another in second-language fluency. Findings indicate that "concept mediation" is a universal process in translating words…

Notes that little agreement exists as to which factors influencing academic outcomes for second-language learners are of primary importance. The study hypothesizes that second-language learners in immersion situations undergo an attention shift away from auditory system processing and towards visual information processing. (59 references)…

Discusses variation in interlanguage and suggests two hypotheses to explain such variation as multiple internal representations of a form and processing errors. Suggests that second language learners can initially represent new forms as prototype schemas, and that such non-discrete representations are a third source of variation in interlanguage.…

We annotated transcripts of human tutoring dialogue for the purpose of constructing a dialogue-based intelligent tutoring system, CIRCSIM-Tutor. The tutors were professors of physiology who were also expert tutors. The students were 1st year medical students who communicated with the tutors using typed communication from separate rooms. The tutors…

Understanding the mechanisms learners use to process target language input is crucial to developing a complete model of both first language (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition. If adult L2 learners are found to process the target language with mechanisms that differ from those used by child L1 learners and adult native speakers, what…

This study examined the on-line processing of French sentences in a grammaticality judgment experiment. Three age groups of French children (mean age: 6;8, 8;6 and 10;10 years) and a group of adults were asked to detect grammatical violations as quickly as possible. Three factors were studied: the violation type: agreement violations (number and…

This study places the predictions of the bilingual interactive activation model (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 1998) and the revised hierarchical model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) in the same context to investigate lexical processing in a second language (L2). The performances of two groups of native English speakers, one less proficient and the other more…

The purpose of this research was to examine the validity of the 55-item Revised Token Test (RTT) and to compare traditional and Rasch-based scores in their ability to detect group differences and change over time. The 55-item RTT was administered to 108 left- and right-hemisphere stroke survivors, and the data were submitted to Rasch analysis.…

The Wernicke-Lichtheim-Geschwind (WLG) theory of the neurobiological basis of language is of great historical importance, and it continues to exert a substantial influence on most contemporary theories of language in spite of its widely recognized limitations. Here, we suggest that neurobiologically grounded computational models based on the WLG…