Under the noisy-channel framework of language comprehension, comprehenders infer the speaker's intended meaning by integrating the perceived utterance with their knowledge of the language, the world, and the kinds of errors that can occur in communication. Previous research has shown that, when sentences are improbable under the meaning prior…

What is the nature of conceptual representations? Models of semantic memory often describe concepts as a distributed feature space. However, it remains unknown which subset of this feature space constitutes the invariant representation of a concept. In this dissertation, I investigate the nature of modality-independent representations and their…

The broader aim of this study is the corpus-based investigation of the written language production process. To this end, temporal markers have been keylog recorded alongside the writing processes to exploit pauses to segment the speech product into linear units of performance. However, identifying these pauses requires selecting the relevant…

The boundary effect, namely the infants' failures to compare small and large numerosities, is well documented in studies using visual stimuli. The prevailing explanation is that the numerical system used to process sets up to 3 is incompatible with the system employed for numbers >3. This study investigates the boundary effect in 10-month-old…

In recent years, remarkable advancements in artificial intelligence technology have created new opportunities for transforming educational systems and enhancing student learning. This study focuses on designing a model for an AI-based intelligent assistant to provide a personalized learning experience in higher education. A qualitative approach…

Children's understanding of the temporal terms "first," "before," and "after" has implications for describing experienced events, but has typically been studied by asking them to interpret described events. In this study, one hundred and one 3- to 6-year-olds completed two tasks. In the description task, children…

We present the results of a study investigating the potential role of the generative AI GPT-4 in scaffolding students' metacognitive activities during problem-solving. The theoretical framework according to which students' interactions with GPT-4 are analysed is based on three main components: the notion of utilisation scheme within the frame of…

Interpreting a sentence can be characterized as a rational process in which comprehenders integrate linguistic input with top-down knowledge (e.g., plausibility). One type of evidence for this is that comprehenders sometimes reinterpret sentences to arrive at interpretations that conflict with the original language input. Does this reflect a…

Noise is a common impedance to easy and accurate speech understanding. In the presence of noise, speech processing mechanisms proceed with partial or ambiguous inputs, and listeners will engage additional cognitive resources to make sense of what they hear. The extent to which this is situation is affected by diminished exposure to a language is…

The prevalent "core phonological deficit" model of dyslexia proposes that the reading and spelling difficulties characterizing affected children stem from prior developmental difficulties in processing speech sound structure, for example, perceiving and identifying syllable stress patterns, syllables, rhymes and phonemes. Yet spoken word…

We studied the capability of automated machine translation in the online video education space by automatically translating Khan Academy videos with state-of-the-art translation models and applying text-to-speech synthesis and audio/video synchronization to build engaging videos in target languages. We also analyzed and established two reliable…

Evidence suggests custom chatbots are superior to commercial generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) systems for text-based anatomy content inquiries. This study evaluates ChatGPT-4o's and Claude 3.5 Sonnet's capabilities to interpret unlabeled anatomical images. Secondarily, ChatGPT o1-preview was evaluated as an AI rater to grade AI-generated…

Purpose: Individuals with developmental language disorder (DLD) often exhibit slower processing on time-based tasks in comparison with age-matched peers. Processing speed has been linked to various linguistic skills and might serve as a global indicator of individual differences in language abilities. Despite an extensive literature on processing…

Background: It is assumed that language impairments post-stroke do not show much improvement after the phase of spontaneous recovery, especially in the chronic stage. Several studies have reported language recovery and factors influencing it in the acute stages of stroke. There is limited literature focusing on language recovery in the chronic…

Collocational priming is a priming effect induced by collocationally related words; it has been taken to explain the cognitive reality of collocation. Collocational priming has largely been observed in first language (L1) speakers, whereas work on the representation of collocation in a second language (L2) is still limited. In the present study,…