It is unclear whether children with autism spectrum disorders have atypical semantic fluency and lower memory for the semantics of words. Therefore, we examined semantic typicality, fluency and recall for the categories of fruits and animals in 60 children with autism aged 7-15 years (boys: 48/girls: 12) compared to 60 typically developing…

This presentation highlights the challenges of establishing a consistent application of the two terms, "threats" and "hazards," in academic courses and professional training, designed for emergency, disaster, and humanitarian management programs offered by public and private higher education, government agencies, and…

Language comprehension requires a complex series of decisions under uncertainty. This is especially obvious when one string may have multiple different interpretations, whether due to lexical ambiguity, or the potential for an inference beyond literal content. This dissertation profiles how the human system for language comprehension times those…

In education, machine learning (ML), especially deep learning (DL) in recent years, has been extensively used to improve both teaching and learning. Despite the rapid advancement of ML and its application in education, a few challenges remain to be addressed. In this thesis, in particular, we focus on two such challenges: (i) data scarcity and…

Purpose: Many models of language comprehension assume that listeners predict the continuation of an incoming linguistic stimulus immediately after its onset, based on only partial linguistic and contextual information. Their related developmental models try to determine which cues (e.g., semantic or morphosyntactic) trigger such prediction, and to…

Young children often make pragmatic assumptions when learning new words. For example, they assume that a speaker who uses different words intends to refer to different things -- the so-called principle of contrast. We used a standard disambiguation task to explore whether children's assumptions about contrast depend on how much words differ.…

The present study explores the issue of why ambiguous words are recognized faster than unambiguous ones during word recognition. To this end we contrasted two different hypotheses: the "semantic feedback" hypothesis (Hino and Lupker in J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 22:1331-1356, 1996. https://doi-org.bibliotheek.ehb.be/10.1037/0096-1523.22.6.1331), and…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a self-administered naming treatment for one individual, B.N., presenting with semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) and a history of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Method: Naming treatment included components of Lexical Retrieval Cascade Treatment and was…

When a deaf or hard-of-hearing child enters a classroom with an interpreter, the goal, and sometimes the assumption, is that they will be granted full access to the classroom experience. This study focuses on the clarity and completeness with which critical elements of classroom discourse are conveyed through the interpretations of 40 educational…

The efficiency of cognitive component skills is typically assessed with speeded performance tests. Interpreting only effective ability or effective speed as efficiency may be challenging because of the within-person dependency between both variables (speed-ability tradeoff, SAT). The present study measures efficiency as effective ability…

This article discusses the relevance and construction of the concept of 'literariness' within pedagogy for an effective engagement with works of literature and literary theory. By juxtaposing Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogic mode of understanding, with Bhartrhari's doctrine of the "dhvani" and the "sphota," this article attempts to…

Purpose: Processing real-world sounds requires acoustic and higher-order semantic information. We tested the theory that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show enhanced processing of acoustic features and impaired processing of semantic information. Methods: We used a change deafness task that required detection of speech and…

Even though learning outcomes have become an expected part of writing programs, how they are defined and subsequently used is often unclear. This study did a textual analysis of the terms used for "outcomes" on 42 universities' first-year writing webpages. The study found that university writing programs use different terms for…

Teachers' mental representations significantly shape their attitudes and guide their professional behavior. This study focuses on identifying prospective teachers' mental representations of gifted students and their education, using the AGA technique. In a cross-sectional study, 480 prospective teachers (M[subscript age] = 20.73 years) listed the…

In two visual world eye-tracking experiments, this dissertation examines the role of literacy on predictive processing during spoken language comprehension. Previous studies have shown that comprehenders can use morphosyntactic cues available in the input to generate predictions about upcoming information. Recent key findings also suggest that…