Examines whether there is a strong relationship between second language learners' noticing of benefactive auxiliary verbs and their use in communication. Participants were university students who had acquired Japanese at home without receiving any formal instruction. Data were collected in face-to-face interviews, an interpretation task with 20…

In an increasing number of second language (L2) classrooms, teachers and researchers are taking on new roles and responsibilities. From these new perspectives, they are developing similar concerns about L2 learning processes, which they typically express in ways that reflect their different backgrounds and goals. To support learning, teaching, and…

The seminal work by Ericsson and Simon established verbal reports as a genuine way to get a glimpse into the "black box" of the workings of the human mind, and it is now recognised as a method of value in the pursuit of new knowledge relating to, for instance, learner strategies, cognitive strategies, human-computer interaction, and functionality…

In this paper the L2-Dutch of a group of adolescent Moroccans living in the Netherlands is studied. Four tasks were administered to these informants, to a number of Dutch peers, and to some of the mothers of the Moroccan informants. These tasks were designed to test if the informants were able to cope with complex sentences, such as sentences with…

Lip movements were examined across several repetitive speaking conditions (speech alone and speaking concurrently with a linguistic, cognitive, or visuomotor challenge task) in 20 young adults. Performance in these nonspeech activities was also compared between isolated tasks and concurrent speech conditions. Linguistic challenges resulted in…

How do in-house lobbyists for American colleges and universities compare with other types of lobbyists in their roles, tasks, and strategies? To answer this question 105 in-house lobbyists were surveyed using an instrument that reiterated key questions asked in earlier researchers' studies on private or special interest lobbyists, such as the gun…

Background: The Towers of London (TOL) and Hanoi (TOH) have been viewed as equivalent measures of planning and/or problem solving, although recent evidence in adults suggests that the underlying measurement characteristics of these two tasks may differ. As tower tasks are one of the few instruments that can be used to assess executive functioning…

On-line comprehension studies of flexible word-order languages find that noncanonical ("scrambled") structures induce more difficulty than canonical structures [e.g., Hyona & Hujanen, "Q. J. Exp. Psychol." 50A (1997) 841-858], with this difference being attributed to the structural complexity/infrequency of these forms. However, by presenting…

Eighty blindfolded healthy female subjects participated in an active and a passive straight-ahead pointing task to study the estimation of the subjective sagittal middle in the presence or absence of an active haptic exploration. Subjects were to point straight-ahead with their left or right index finger starting from different right- or…

Single-task and dual-task versions of verbal and spatial serial order memory tasks were administered to 120 students tested for working memory capacity with four previously validated measures. In the dual-task versions, similarity between the memory material and the material of the secondary processing task was varied. With verbal material, three…

Background: The executive functions of inhibition, planning, flexible shifting of actions, and working memory are commonly reported to be impaired in neurodevelopmental disorders. Method: We compared these abilities in children (8?12 years) with high functioning autism (HFA, n = 17), attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, n = 21) and…

The cognitive load and learning effects of dual-code and interactivity--two multimedia methods intended to promote meaningful learning--were examined. In Experiment 1, college students learned about the causal chain of events leading to the process of lightning formation with a set of words and corresponding pictures (Group WP), pictures (Group…

The issue of multi-level classrooms and of the increasingly differentiated nature of students' learning experiences continues to be a major challenge for language teachers. It's safe to say that wherever two or more language teachers are gathered together, the "problem" of multi-level classrooms will figure somewhere in the conversation.…

Olfactory recognition memory was tested in adult male mice using a social discrimination task. The testing was conducted to begin to characterize the role of protein synthesis and the specific brain regions associated with activity in this task. Long-term olfactory recognition memory was blocked when the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin was…

Some children have difficulty in perceiving differences between sounds, even though they have normal hearing sensitivity, and it has been suggested that such problems could lead to difficulties in language and literacy development. Poor ability to distinguish sounds on the basis of frequency (perceived as pitch) has been described in poor readers…