One of the central considerations in the validity argument for the TOEFL iBT is the relationship between the language on the exam and the language required for university courses. Corpus linguistics has recently been shown to be an effective way to explore this relationship, which can also be considered as an aspect of authenticity. Applying…

Bilingual children often show advanced executive functioning (EF) and false belief (FB) understanding compared to monolinguals. The latter has been attributed to their enhanced inhibitory control EF, although this has only been examined in a single study which did not confirm this hypothesis. The current study examined the relation of EF and…

This study investigates the relative effectiveness of four types of input-enhanced instruction on the development of Iranian EFL learners' production of pragmatically appropriate and grammatically accurate suggestions. Over a 16-week course, input delivered through video clips was enhanced differently in four intact classes: (1) metapragmatic…

The purpose of this study was to investigate and compare the impact of task-based instruction (TBI) and traditional instruction (TI) on the motivation and vocabulary development in secondary language education. The focus of the study was to also find out the perceptions of teachers about implementing these two instructional methods in their…

This study investigated the factors underlying the estimation of learner self-confidence during explanations with a conversational agent in an online explanation task. Based on reviews of previous studies, we focused on how factors such as the learner's task activities and personal characteristics can be predictors. To examine these points, we…

Most models of human performance on the traveling salesperson problem involve clustering of nodes, but few empirical studies have examined effects of clustering in the stimulus array. A recent exception varied degree of clustering and concluded that the more clustered a stimulus array, the easier a TSP is to solve (Dry, Preiss, & Wagemans,…

Orientation dependence in spatial memory has often been interpreted in terms of accessibility: Object locations are encoded relative to a reference orientation that affords the most accurate access to spatial memory. An open question, however, is whether people naturally use this "preferred" orientation whenever recalling the space. We…

When asked to search for a target letter while reading, the patterns with which people miss the target letter reveal information about the process of reading itself. Questions remain as to whether this paradigm reflects normal reading processes however. We used a novel continuous-performance neuroimaging paradigm to address this question. In…

This paper investigates the role of amount of current and "cumulative" exposure in bilingual development and ultimate attainment by exploring the extent to which simultaneous bilingual children's knowledge of grammatical gender is affected by current and previous amount of exposure, including in the early years. Elicited production and…

Selective attention in the presence of distraction is a key aspect of healthy cognition. The underlying neurobiological processes, have not, however, been functionally well characterized. In the present study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to determine how ecologically relevant distracting noise affects cortical activity in 27…

Children are notoriously bad at delaying gratification to achieve later, greater rewards (e.g., Piaget, 1970)--and some are worse at waiting than others. Individual differences in the ability-to-wait have been attributed to self-control, in part because of evidence that long-delayers are more successful in later life (e.g., Shoda, Mischel, &…

The present study examines the nature of the Spanish rhotics experimentally, investigating the possibilities that the trill is best understood as deriving from an underlying geminate or that the tap and trill may be separate phonemes. In order to explore these two theories, a behavioral task was designed exploiting the absence of native words in…

Many recent models of learning and instruction center learning on real-world tasks and problems to support knowledge application and transfer. Among these models are problem-based learning and task-centered learning, two different approaches to learning that are often mistaken for one another. However, there are important distinctions between…

Training effectiveness depends on conducting a thorough needs assessment. Traditional needs assessment methods are insufficient for today's business environment characterized by rapid pace, risk, and uncertainty. To overcome the deficiencies of traditional needs assessment methods, a narrative-based unstructured interview approach with subject…

Previous research has shown that high phonotactic frequencies facilitate the production of regularly inflected verbs in English-learning children with specific language impairment (SLI) but not with typical development (TD). We asked whether this finding can be replicated for German, a language with a much more complex inflectional verb paradigm…