Theoretical claims about the benefits of corrective feedback have been largely premised on learners' noticing of feedback (e.g., Gass & Mackey, 2006; Long, 1996; Schmidt, 1990, 1995; Swain, 1995), and findings have demonstrated that both the feedback target (Mackey, Gass, & McDonough, 2000) and the mode of provision (Lai & Zhao,…

This study investigated Spanish-speaking learners' awareness of a non-distinctive phonetic difference between Spanish and English through a delayed mimicry paradigm. We assessed learners' speech production accuracy through voice onset time (VOT) duration measures in word-initial pre-vocalic /p t k/ in Spanish and English words, and in Spanish…

This paper addresses the nature and significance of productive engagement in cognitive activity and metacognitive regulation in collaborative learning tasks that involve complex scientific knowledge. A situative framework, combining the constructs of social regulation and content processing, provided the theoretical basis for the development of a…

These studies examined the role of ontological beliefs about category boundaries in early categorization. Study 1 found that preschool-age children (N = 48, aged 3-4 years old) have domain-specific beliefs about the meaning of category boundaries; children judged the boundaries of natural kind categories (animal species, human gender) as discrete…

We describe and use an analytical framework to document mathematics discourse in instruction (MDI), and interpret differences in mathematics teaching. MDI is characterised by four interacting components in the teaching of a mathematics lesson: exemplification (occurring through a sequence of examples and related tasks), explanatory talk (talk that…

The study explored the awareness of morphemic knowledge among young adult learners in the ESL context. Morphological Relatedness Test and Morphological Structure Test (adapted from Curinga, 2014) were two important tools used to assess the students' morphemic knowledge in this study. The tests measured the students' ability to reflect and…

In an increasingly multi-territorialized and interdependent world, people are getting more in touch with each other than ever before through many mass media services. This provides the possibility to overcome geographical boarders in order to build new relationships that foster mutual interests in economical and socio-cultural aspects from…

The typological contrast between verb- and satellite-framed languages (Talmy, 1985) has set the basis for many empirical studies on L2 acquisition. The current analysis goes beyond this typology by looking in detail at the conceptualization of the path of motion in a motion event. We take as a starting point the cognitive salience of specific…

The question of how meaningful associations between verbal and spatial information might be utilized to facilitate working memory performance is potentially highly instructive for models of memory function. The present study explored how separable processing capacities within specialized domains might each contribute to this, by examining the…

Humans are characterized by an especially highly developed ability to use instructions to prepare toward upcoming events; yet, it is unclear just how powerful instructions can be. Although prior work provides evidence that instructions can be sufficiently powerful to proactively program working memory to execute stimulus-response (S-R)…

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between vocabulary size and the speed and accuracy of lexical processing in preschoolers between the ages of 30 and 46 months using an automatic eye tracking task based on the looking-while-listening paradigm (Fernald, Zangl, Portillo, & Marchman, 2008) and mispronunciation paradigm…

Generic noun phrases, or generics, refer to abstract categories ("Dogs" bark) rather than particular individuals ("Those dogs" bark). Study 1 investigated how parents use gestures in association with generic versus particular reference during naturalistic interactions with their 2- and 3-year-old children. Parents provided…

Irony comprehension in seven- and eight-year-old children with typically developing language skills was explored under the framework of the graded salience hypothesis. Target ironic remarks, either conventional or novel/situation-specific, were presented following brief story contexts. Children's responses to comprehension questions were used to…

Request for information (RfI) is believed to be the universally dominant function of young children's questioning, whereas request for action (RfA) has been reported to be the leading interrogative form used in early child Cantonese. The possibility of crosslinguistic variability prompts further research and comparison with additional languages.…

French is the ninth most widely used language globally, but French-learning environments in Taiwan have been insufficient. Language acquisition is easier in a natural setting, and so such a setting should be available to language learners wherever possible. This study aimed to (1) create an authentic environment for learning French in Second Life…