Language choice--specifically word choice--is an important topic on a basic communication or public speaking course. One sub-topic under "Language" involves understanding the difference between denotation and connotation. Denotation refers to a word's definition, while connotation refers to the emotions associated with the word. Speakers need to…

This study examined neural activity associated with establishing causal relationships across sentences during on-line comprehension. ERPs were measured while participants read and judged the relatedness of three-sentence scenarios in which the final sentence was highly causally related, intermediately related, and causally unrelated to its…

Purpose: Kiran and colleagues (Kiran, 2007, 2008; Kiran & Johnson, 2008; Kiran & Thompson, 2003) previously suggested that training atypical examples within a semantic category is a more efficient treatment approach to facilitating generalization within the category than training typical examples. In the present study, the authors extended…

Sidman (1994) noted that the existence of a member that is common to more than one class may produce either class merger (union) or class intersection. A multiple-selection, matching-to-sample test was developed to examine the conditions under which these outcomes occur. Test trials each required three conditional discriminations involving…

Attention can be oriented to different spatial locations yielding faster processing of attended compared to unattended stimuli. Similarly attention can be oriented to a semantic category such as "animals" or "tools". Words from the attended category will also be recognized faster than words from an unattended category. Here, we asked whether it is…

Six lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine the influence of complex structure on the processing speed of English compounds. All experiments revealed that semantically transparent compounds (e.g., "rosebud") were processed more quickly than matched monomorphemic words (e.g., "giraffe"). Opaque compounds (e.g., "hogwash") were also…

Purpose: The semantic abilities of children with pragmatic language impairment (PLI) are subject to debate. The authors investigated picture naming and definition skills in 5-year-olds with PLI in comparison to typically developing children. Method: 84 children with PLI and 80 age-matched typically developing children completed receptive…

Decades of research on visual perception has uncovered many phenomena, such as binocular rivalry, backward masking, and the attentional blink, that reflect "failures of consciousness". Although stimuli do not reach awareness in these paradigms, there is evidence that they nevertheless undergo semantic processing. Object substitution masking (OSM),…

When we speak, we constantly retrieve and select words for production in the face of multiple possible alternatives. Our ability to respond in such underdetermined situations is supported by left ventrolateral prefrontal cortical (VLPFC) regions, but there is active debate about whether these regions support (1) selection between competing…

Spoken word recognition involves the activation of multiple word candidates on the basis of the initial speech input--the "cohort"--and selection among these competitors. Selection may be driven primarily by bottom-up acoustic-phonetic inputs or it may be modulated by other aspects of lexical representation, such as a word's meaning…

Previous research has proposed that tests enhance retention more than do restudy opportunities because they promote the effectiveness of mediating information--that is, a word or concept that links a cue to a target (Pyc & Rawson, 2010). Although testing has been shown to promote retention of mediating information that participants were asked…

In recent years, the anatomical and functional bases of conceptual activity have attracted a growing interest. In particular, Patterson and Lambon-Ralph have proposed the existence, in the anterior parts of the temporal lobes, of a mechanism (the "amodal semantic hub") supporting the interactive activation of semantic representations in all…

The study investigated morphosyntactic abilities and semantic-pragmatic competence in 24 children with developmental dyslexia aged 7-12 years. Morphosyntactic abilities were investgated in a direct object clitic production task, semantic-pragmatic competence in a quantifier comprehension task. Children with dyslexia produced fewer clitics than…

This study is a quantitative, quasi-experimental investigation focusing on the effects of word recognition training on word recognition fluency, reading speed, and reading comprehension for 151 Japanese university students at a lower-intermediate reading proficiency level. Four treatment groups were given training in orthographic, phonological,…

The relevance of the investigated problem is caused by the fact that most children who start to study do not have a good level of higher mental functions. It leads to difficulties at school and health problems. The article aims at estimating the level of higher mental functions and the degree of educational motivation development among…