While the predicate-final structure of the Japanese language has been considered one of the main causes of its late projectability (Tanaka, 1999), this study demonstrates that the final predicate component of a "turn constructional unit" (TCU) furnishes a useful resource for conversational participants to negotiate various aspects of interaction.…

While others have focused on gender-based language and the workplace, this research study explores gender-based language, in this case women's language, and the classroom. The study specifically examines examples of women's language and how this language affects student response in the classroom. Five variables have been identified as…

People gesture a great deal when speaking, and research has shown that listeners can interpret the information contained in gesture. The current research examines whether learners can also use co-speech gesture to inform language learning. Specifically, we examine whether listeners can use information contained in an iconic gesture to assign…

We investigated whether 1-year-old infants use their shared experience with an adult to determine the meaning of a pointing gesture. In the first study, after two adults had each shared a different activity with the infant, one of the adults pointed to a target object. Eighteen- but not 14-month-olds responded appropriately to the pointing gesture…

Threatening facial expressions can signal the approach of someone or something potentially dangerous. Past research has established that adults have an attentional bias for angry faces, visually detecting their presence more quickly than happy or neutral faces. Two new findings are reported here. First, evidence is presented that young children…

A key skill in early human development is the ability to comprehend communicative intentions as expressed in both nonlinguistic gestures and language. In the current studies, we confronted domestic dogs (some of whom knew many human "words") with a task in which they had to infer the intended referent of a human's communicative act via iconic…

Neurocognitive theories of anxiety predict that threat-related information can be evaluated before attentional selection, and can influence behaviour differentially in high anxious compared to low anxious individuals. We investigate this further by presenting emotional and neutral faces in an adapted binocular rivalry paradigm. We show that the…

Purpose: To examine the communicative profiles of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in the second year of life. Method: Communicative acts were examined in 125 children 18 to 24 months of age: 50 later diagnosed with ASD; 25 with developmental delays (DD); and 50 with typical development (TD). Precise measures of rate, functions, and…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) reportedly fail to show contagious yawning, but the mechanism underlying the lack of contagious yawning is still unclear. The current study examined whether instructed fixation on the eyes modulates contagious yawning in ASD. Thirty-one children with ASD, as well as 31 age-matched typically…

Edouard Lock's dance film "Amelia" (2002) is the focus of this essay. Second-wave feminist and poststructuralist perspectives inform the analysis of this piece of contemporary dance. Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory and Julia Kristeva's theory of the semiotic and symbolic realms of representation are explored and critiqued, whilst Jacques Derrida's…

Corrective feedback has been discussed mainly in second language acquisition contexts, but less has been done concerning corrective feedback in foreign language settings. In this descriptive study, conducted at a Mexican university, our aims were to identify the perceptions of instructors of English as a foreign language about corrective feedback…

Parents of 592 children between the age of 0 ; 8 and 1 ; 4 completed the Estonian adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (ECDI Infant Form). The relationships between comprehension and production of different categories of words and gestures were examined. According to the results of regression modelling the…

This article discusses a study on how language use and language development can be promoted through engaging students in different participation roles in board games. Theoretically, the study is grounded in sociocultural perspectives of activity theory and the role of play as a form of human motivation. A group of Grade 4 primary students learning…

The internationally recognized series of "Horizon Reports" is part of the New Media Consortium's Horizon Project, a comprehensive research venture established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact over the coming five years on a variety of sectors around the globe. This volume, the "2010 Horizon…

This study investigated the effects of peer training intervention on social interactions of two participants with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and four typically developing peers. A multiple probe (Horner & Baer, 1978) across tasks, replicated across participants design, was used to evaluate these effects. Prior to data collection, a task…