Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Evaluating Neural Networks As Cognitive Models For Learning Quasi-Regularities In Language, Xiaomeng Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many aspects of language can be categorized as quasi-regular: the relationship between the inputs and outputs is systematic but allows many exceptions. Common domains that contain quasi-regularity include morphological inflection and grapheme-phoneme mapping. How humans process quasi-regularity has been debated for decades. This thesis implemented modern neural network models, transformer models, on two tasks: English past tense inflection and Chinese character naming, to investigate how transformer models perform quasi-regularity tasks. This thesis focuses on investigating to what extent the models' performances can represent human behavior. The results show that the transformers' performance is very similar to human behavior in many …

Association Strength Between Concepts As The Origin Of The "Foreign Language Effect", Emilia Ezrina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bilinguals sometimes make decisions in verbal tasks differently in their first (L1) and second (L2) language. This phenomenon is known as the foreign language effect (FLE), and it suggests strong connections between language and cognition. On the one hand, it is possible that L2 “blunts” emotional language. However, the FLE can be observed in non-emotional tasks. Therefore, it is possible that L2 requires more deliberate processing due to increased cognitive load, leading to more rational decisions. The support for each explanation is mixed.

In this thesis we propose looking for a single explanation for all instances of the FLE. After …

Linguistic Abstractions In Children’S Very Early Utterances, Qihui Xu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

How early do children produce multiword utterances? Do children's early utterances reflect abstract syntactic knowledge or are they the result of data-driven learning? We examine this issue through corpus analysis, computational modeling, and adult simulation experiments. Chapter 1 investigates when children start producing multiword utterances; we use corpora to establish the development of multiword utterances and a probabilistic computational model to account for the quantitative change of early multiword utterances. We find that multiword utterances of different lengths appear early in acquisition and increase together, and the length growth pattern can be viewed as a probabilistic and dynamic process.

Chapter …

Retrieval Practice Promotes Learning Of Turkish As A Foreign Language: A Computer-Assisted Language Learning Study, Maya C. Rose

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Adults generally find it difficult to learn a new language, yet exhibit remarkable individual differences in outcomes. Variation in second language (L2) learning is associated with input conditions (Morgan-Short et al., 2010) as well as learners’ aptitude (Dörnyei, 2005). Recent work has demonstrated benefits of retrieval practice in promoting L2 learning of grammatical patterns and vocabulary in both artificial and natural languages (Hopman & MacDonald, 2018; Keppenne et al., 2021). With that said, when retrieval practice is based on oral recall as opposed to a recognition test, it confounds potential benefits of repeated testing (Rowland, 2014) with those associated with …

Working Memory Training: Cognitive And Linguistic Implications In Adult English Language Learners, Deepti Wadhera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study used a cognitive training paradigm to explore whether the same mechanisms of working memory underly conflict resolution in non-verbal and verbal domains in adult English language learners.The association between an individual’s Working Memory (WM) performance and their success in skills such as interference control, decision-making and language processing has been repeatedly highlighted by researchers in cognitive psychology and linguistic fields. Particularly, acquisition and use of a second language is one life experience in which WM ability seems valuable. However, when this association is put to the test in studies that train participants’ WM and measure transfer of these …

Bilingual Reading Fluency And Prediction: Heritage Language Versus Second Language, Olga Parshina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The thesis presents the first comparative investigation of reading fluency and factors that affect it by examining eye movements in reading by Heritage Speakers (HSs) and L2 learners of Russian. The eye movements of bilingual participants are compared to two control groups, monolingual adults and monolingual children. Following the introductory Chapter 1, in Chapter 2 we present the study that establishes basic eye-movement characteristics in reading for Heritage Speakers and L2 learners in connection to proficiency and linguistics factors of word length and frequency. Contrary to our predictions, we found that all eye-movement characteristics of high-proficiency HSs are different from …

Beyond Exposure: Markers Of English Proficiency In School-Aged French–English Bilinguals, Erin Quirk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bilingual children show more variation in their language development than monolingual children, a fact that has been linked to their experience with their languages. Bilingual language experience also varies more than monolingual children's, both in terms of how much they hear the language spoken around them (exposure) and how much they speak the language themselves (production). This dissertation investigates the following aspects of the relationship between bilinguals’ language experience and development which are not well-understood: how children’s language production relates to their proficiency in that language, how children’s language exposure relates to receptive versus expressive and lexical versus grammatical skill, …

Reasoning With Pseudowords: How Properties Of Novel Verbal Stimuli Influence Item Difficulty And Linguistic-Group Score Differences On Cognitive Ability Assessments, Paul Agnello

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Pseudowords (words that are not real but resemble real words in a language) have been used increasingly as a technique to reduce contamination due to construct-irrelevant variance in assessments of verbal fluid reasoning (Gf). However, despite pseudowords being researched heavily in other psychology sub-disciplines, they have received little attention in cognitive ability testing contexts. Thus, there has been an assumption that all pseudowords work equally and work equally well for all test-takers. The current research examined three objectives with the first being whether changes to the pseudoword properties of length and wordlikeness (how much a pseudoword resembles a typical or …

Details In Testimony: How Hedge Words Influence People’S Perceptions Of Victim Testimony Credibility, Justine B. Rayborn

Student Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine whether hedge words and the age of a memory can influence the way participants (mock jurors) perceive an alleged sexual assault victim’s credibility. Prior research has demonstrated many issues that can affect the accuracy of memory for childhood events such as childhood amnesia, fragmented and distorted memories, false memories and source monitoring errors and the way in which jurors’ decisions can be swayed based on verbal cues to confidence. Here, we further investigated whether jurors' decisions are sensitive to the age of the memory—an event that happened in the recent or distant …

Native Language Adaptation To Novel Verb Argument Structures By Spanish-English Bilinguals: An Electrophysiological Investigation, Eve Higby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bilinguals have to learn two different grammatical systems. Some aspects of these grammars may be similar across the two languages (for example, the active-passive alternation) while others may exist in only one of the two grammars (for example, the distinction between recent and distant past). This dissertation investigates the degree to which grammar information specific to only one language is available when processing the other language. In particular, the current study focuses on the application of grammatical structures from the bilinguals’ second-learned language to their first-learned language, a direction of language transfer not often investigated. Based on a Shared Syntax …

Re-Examining The Bilingual Advantage On Interference-Control And Task-Switching Tasks: A Meta-Analysis, Seamus Donnelly

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A much-debated topic in psycholinguistics is whether lifelong bilingualism enhances executive functions (EF), the set of higher-order cognitive processes involved in the control of thought and action. Several researchers have predicted bilingual advantages on various EF tasks, especially interference-control and task-switching tasks. Many studies have tested these predictions, but results have proven unreliable. As a complementary approach to recent quantitative syntheses on this topic, the present dissertation tests whether the bilingual advantage is moderated by a number of theoretically significant variables: dependent variable (DV), task, age, age of L2 acquisition and lab.

Two meta-analyses were conducted. Study 1 considered interference-control …

Roles Of Shifting Attention, Alternating Attention And Inhibition On Temporary Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution And Use Of Context In Younger And Older Adults, Youngmi Park

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Twenty-four younger adults (20-35 years, mean: 25.88) and thirty-four older adults (65-79 years, mean: 71.82) read sentences via a word-by-word self-paced reading paradigm. Study 1 examined how older and young adults resolve sentences containing Noun Phrase (NP) and Verb Phrase (VP)-attached Prepositional Phrases (PPs) yielding temporary syntactic ambiguity, and which cognitive factors (working memory capacity, inhibition, shifting attention, alternating attention, and cognitive processing speed) contribute to temporary syntactic ambiguity resolution.

Study 2 was designed to investigate how both age groups utilize contextual information while resolving PP-attachment, and which cognitive functions play a role in the use of referential context during …

When Less Can Be More: Dual Task Effects In Stuttering And Fluent Adults, Naomi Nechama Eichorn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study tested the counterintuitive hypothesis that engaging cognitive resources in a secondary task while speaking could benefit aspects of speech production. Effects of dual task conditions on speech fluency, rate, and error patterns were examined in stuttering and fluent speakers based on specific predictions derived from three related theoretical frameworks. Twenty fluent adults and 19 adults with confirmed diagnoses of stuttering participated in the study. All participants completed two baseline tasks: (1) a continuous speaking task in which spontaneous speech was produced in response to given prompts; and (2) a working memory (WM) task involving manipulations of WM …

Effects Of Phonological Neighborhood Density On Lexical Access In Adults And Children With And Without Specific Language Impairment, Diana Almodovar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study was designed to examine how adults, children with typical language development (TLD), and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) process words from sparse and dense phonological neighborhoods, using the Cross Modal Picture-Word Interference Paradigm. The participants were asked to label a picture presented on a computer screen, while ignoring auditory distractors (interfering words or IWs) presented over headphones. The target items were manipulated according to neighborhood density (high and low density words), and the auditory distractors were either identical to the target, a neutral distractor (good), phonologically related (by rhyme), or unrelated to the target item. The …