Conceptual models are applied as the first step in software design methodologies for collecting the semantics involved in the universe of discourse. Nevertheless, the abstraction process creates some misunderstandings for novice designers, such as difficulties in modeling some constructs and in understanding the semantics that they represent. This…

This article delves into the connections between language as a rule-governed system of communication and music as a means to express subcultural ideologies and satisfy collective needs. By resorting to the morphological analysis of a corpus of names of alternative music artists, the article evinces that language is a manipulable code through which…

Recent studies have found that masked word primes that are orthographic neighbors of the target inhibit lexical decision latencies (Davis & Lupker, 2006; Nakayama, Sears, & Lupker, 2008), consistent with the predictions of lexical competition models of visual word identification (e.g., Grainger & Jacobs, 1996). In contrast, using the…

The reading skills of a girl with Williams Syndrome are assessed by a timed word-naming task. To test the efficiency of lexical and nonlexical reading, we considered four marker effects: Lexicality (better reading of words than nonwords), frequency (better reading of high than low frequency words), length (better reading of short than long words),…

Previous research indicates severe disabilities in processing figurative language in people diagnosed on the autism spectrum disorders. However, this aspect of language comprehension in Asperger syndrome (AS) specifically has rarely been the subject of formal study. The present study aimed to examine the possibility that in addition to their…

Memories for spatial locations often show systematic errors toward the central value of the surrounding region. This bias has been explained using a Bayesian model in which fine-grained and categorical information are combined (Huttenlocher, Hedges, & Duncan, 1991). However, experiments testing this model have largely used locations contained in…

This study examined the development of the episodic and semantic memory systems, with an emphasis on the emergence of the two aspects of the former: episodic memory (the ability to re-experience a past event) and episodic future thinking (the ability to pre-experience a future event). Three-, 4-, and 5-year olds were randomly assigned to one of…

The tremendously huge volume of biomedical literature, scientists' specific information needs, long terms of multiples words, and fundamental problems of synonym and polysemy have been challenging issues facing the biomedical information retrieval community researchers. Search engines have significantly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of…

In this paper we explore the idea that learning science involves appropriation of the school-science language and how it manifests in the classroom. This is done through an analysis of peer group discussions in Swedish secondary schools; discussions that served both as an arena for learning and as a research tool. In this arena, the students are…

Accounts of how research capacity in education can be developed often make reference to electronic networks and online resources. This paper presents a theoretically driven analysis of the role of one such resource, an online archive of educational research studies that includes not only digitised collections of original documents but also videos…

The ability to mentally simulate possible futures ("episodic future thinking") is of fundamental importance for various aspects of human cognition and behavior, but precisely how humans construct mental representations of future events is still essentially unknown. We suggest that episodic future thoughts consist of transitory patterns…

How does prior context influence lexical and discourse-level processing during real-time language comprehension? Experiment 1 examined whether the referential ambiguity introduced by a repeated, anaphoric expression had an immediate or delayed effect on lexical and discourse processing, using an eye-tracking-while-reading task. Eye movements…

The present research tested the hypothesis that the age at which one's first language (L1) words are learned influences language processing in bilinguals. Prior research on bilingual language processing by Kroll and colleagues has suggested that memory links between L1 words and conceptual representations are stronger than memory links between…

Verbal working memory (VWM), the ability to maintain and manipulate representations of speech sounds over short periods, is held by some influential models to be independent from the systems responsible for language production and comprehension [e.g., Baddeley, A. D. "Working memory, thought, and action." New York, NY: Oxford University Press,…

This research investigates the ability of adult proficient readers to predict words that have been fully or partially deleted, without being able to read what came after the blank. Predictions were analyzed for accuracy and if inaccurate for their grammatical nature, syntactic and semantic acceptability, and retention of the author's meaning.…