Research suggests that second language (L2) readers often lack strategic competence in dealing with unknown lexica. This mixed methods study of Japanese readers of English used eye tracking and other methods to empirically examine the use and efficacy of vocabulary coping strategies, including dictionary use, inferring meaning from context, and…

Negative sentences are hard to process when they are presented out of context. When embedded in a context of plausible denial their processing difficulty decreases or is completely eliminated. We investigated in six behavioral experiments whether the processing of negation is eased in a denial context triggered by discourse markers (e.g.…

Emotion variability and its relationship to performance is an underexplored area of research both inside and outside the realm of medical education. We address this gap by examining the relative importance of the frequency of emotions and emotion variability that occurred in specific phases of self-regulated learning (SRL) in predicting students'…

The role of grammar instruction within second-language writing instruction has been a subject of debate for several decades. Researchers have debated the necessity of grammar instruction, different methodologies of grammar instruction, and grammar instruction's effectiveness for second-language writing development. Despite research indicating the…

Classroom communication is increasingly accepted as multimodal, through the orchestrated use of different semiotic modes, resources, and systems. There is growing interest in examining the meaning-making potential of other modes (e.g., gestural, visual, kinesthetic) beyond the semiotic mode of language, in classroom communication and in student…

Background: To be successful, students must learn to deal with socially and cognitively demanding tasks. Much remains unknown about the effects of previous classroom experiences and of students' emotional appraisal of a task on their physiological adaptive responses to it. Aims: To investigate how children's physiological response to a social and…

This study investigated developmental differences in metacognitive monitoring and control in younger (5- to 6-year-old) and older (8- to 10-year-old) children's prospective memory (PM). Metacognitive monitoring was assessed by asking the children to judge their performance before (prediction) and after (postdiction) performing a resource-demanding…

Individual differences in reading skill have frequently been related to variability in working memory capacity; however, it is unclear what drives this relation. The present study investigated two attentional control mechanisms that may contribute to this relation: proactive control and online filtering. To examine how the neural mechanisms of…

Language production ultimately aims to convey meaning. Yet words differ widely in the richness and density of their semantic representations, and these differences impact conceptual and lexical processes during speech planning. Here, we replicated the recent finding that semantic richness, measured as the number of associated semantic features…

Experimental studies show that children have greater difficulty with "wh"-extraction from object position than subject position, arguably an intervention effect (e.g., Relativized Minimality). In this study we provide additional evidence of a S/O asymmetry in A'-dependencies from a novel source--sluicing. The results of our first…

Fine motor skills develop in childhood. In this study, we evaluate motor planning in 6- to 11-year-old children using a pegboard and midline crossing task. The results of the pegboard task showed that children modified their strategies of hand use and space use as a function of age, albeit with a transition in the 8- to 9-year-old children. The…

This dissertation centers on the study of Kaqchikel word associations and the social variation that exists within them. Theoretical and methodological considerations for this project stem from the fields of psycholinguistics, variationist sociolinguistics, and cognitive linguistics. Together, these form an approach that fits within a blossoming…

The study investigates the reflections on tempo-aspectual morphology in Italian expressed by undergraduate multilingual learners with previous knowledge of Swedish and a Romance language (N = 22). The reflections of the participants, who were divided into four groups depending on a combination of proficiency in their background Romance language…

Purpose: This study builds a new system for automatically assessing learners' speech elicited from an oral discourse completion task (DCT), and evaluates the prediction capability of the system with a view to better understanding factors deemed influential in predicting speaking proficiency scores and the pedagogical implications of the system.…

Despite growing interest in exploring the application of chatbots in language education, studies on the process of chatbot-assisted language learning are scant. This qualitative study uses activity theory to understand how English as a foreign language students engage with a chatbot, Argumate, when composing argumentative essays. Five Chinese…