Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Commons^™

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 …

The Modulatory Effect Of Expectations On Memory Retrieval During Sentence Comprehension, Luca Campanelli, Julie A. Van Dyke, Klara Marton

Publications and Research

Memory retrieval and probabilistic expectations are recognized factors in sentence comprehension that capture two different critical aspects of processing difficulty: the cost of retrieving and integrating previously processed elements with the new input words and the cost of incorrect predictions about upcoming words or structures in a sentence. Although these two factors have independently received substantial support from the extant literature, how they interact remains poorly understood. The present study investigated memory retrieval and expectation in a single experiment, pitting these factors against each other. Results showed a significant interference effect in both response time to the comprehension questions and …

Literacy Revolution: How The New Tools Of Communication Change The Stories We Tell, Molly Gamble

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

The transmission of culture depends upon every generation reconsidering what it means to be literate. The way we consider ourselves to be a literate species is changing, which puts us at a unique turning point in human history. Verbal literacy, or the ability to read and write, is slowly being replaced by visual literacy as a primary tool for human communication. As a culture, we tend to underestimate the creative ferment of our increasingly visual world. The linear, structured pathways of traditional literacy are shifting towards a creative and participatory pursuit of unstructured information that emphasize dimensional thinking. The acceleration …

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 …

Language And Cognition: Insight From Exceptional Cases, Anna Snyder

Senior Honors Theses

The understanding of the world in the human mind is accomplished through cognitive processing and articulated through linguistic processing. Undoubtedly, there is a significant connection between language and cognition because of how intricately they work together to create and express meaning. Researchers from a variety of fields have sought to discover the specifics of these domains to determine what kind of relationship exists between them and how the involvement between language and cognition should be best represented. Though they obviously interact, the different characteristics of each domain provide evidence that linguistic processes and cognitive processes may be distinct. Rather than …

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 …

Central Auditory Processing And The Link To Reading Ability In Adults, Lisa M. Brody

Honors Scholar Theses

What makes someone a good reader? What makes someone a poor reader? The root biological marker of reading ability has yet to be determined. Many scientists agree that phonological awareness, the understanding of speech sounds, and phonological decoding are key components of reading ability (Melby-Lervag, Lyster, & Hulme, 2012). In addition to this, new research suggests that the auditory system, specifically the timing of auditory processing in the brain, provides a crucial platform that supports the development of reading ability (Banai et al., 2009). This thesis provides empirical data to support the link between reading skill …

The Relationship Between English Language Learners And Reading Disabilities Profiles: Language Acquisition Vs. Reading Disabilities, Emily S. Hartz

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

School psychologists are asked to determine whether or not a student’s limited English proficiency affects his or her eligibly for special education services. Scores from language proficiency tests, such as the WIDA ACCESS for ELLs English Language Proficiency Test, are often the only data available that speak to a student’s language proficiency. There is little research that speaks to how scores on these tests relate to performance on diagnostic testing for special education, specifically achievement testing. In this sample of data drawn from a population of English language learners, who also qualify for special education services under the disability of …

Imagining Accomplishments From Differing Visual And Temporal Perspectives, Deanna C. Hall

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The current research examined the relationship between grammatical aspect (GA) (imperfective vs. past perfect) and accomplishment verbs in event representation in Experiment 1, and then investigated the influence of visual perspective taking on this representation process in Experiment 2. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded with slow cortical potentials (SCPs) acting as a measure of cognitive processing during the imagination period, and behavioural measure questionnaires provided ratings of vividness, temporal component, and importance of the imagined events.

It was hypothesized for Experiment 1 that imagining imperfective events would result in more negative SCP amplitudes than when imagining events with past perfect aspect, …

Examining The Intersection Of The Cognitive Advantages And Disadvantages Of The Bilingual Brain, Irina Rabkina

Scripps Senior Theses

Two conflicting findings characterize cognitive processing accompanying bilingualism. The “bilingual advantage” refers to improved cognitive performance for bilingual compared to monolingual participants. Most bilingual advantages fall under the umbrella of cognitive control mechanisms, most frequently demonstrated using the Stroop task and the Simon task (e.g., Bialystok, 2008; Coderre, Van Heuven, & Conklin, 2013). The “bilingual disadvantage,” on the other hand, refers to bilinguals’ diminished performance on tasks that require word retrieval or switching between languages. This study examined the intersection of the bilingual advantage and the bilingual disadvantage to investigate whether they stem from a single cognitive control process. The …

Time, Perspectives, Verbs, And Imagining Events, Jeffrey P. Hong

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

During the processing of verbs, readers form internal representations of the events described by those verbs. Two key elements in the construction of event representations are temporal information, given by the verbs that describe the represented events, and the visual perspective from which the events are represented. The current study is composed of two experiments aimed at examining the roles these two factors play in event representation. Specifically, the study aimed to determine how temporal information and visual perspective are represented during event imagination.

Experiment 1 investigated the role of temporal information associated with verbs, given by grammatical aspect (GA) …

Review Of Marianne Gullberg And Kees De Bot (Eds): Gestures In Language Development., Gale Stam

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Handling Language: The Gestures Of Future Foreign Language Teachers, Gale Stam, Marion Tellier, Brigitte Bigi

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Mika Ishino, Gale Stam

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Découvrir Le Pouvoir De Ses Mains : La Gestuelle Des Futurs Enseignants De Langue., Marion Tellier, Gale Stam

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Event Segmentation And Memory Retrieval In Reading Comprehension, Charles Baker Brenner

Linguistics Honors Projects

Comprehending text involves the convergence of top-down, expectation-driven processes and bottom-up, stimulus-driven processes. The precise nature of this convergence, however, is not well understood. The current study used narrative time shifts and shifts in protagonist goal, both hypothesized to encourage event-segmented memory representations, to investigate the interaction between automatic and constructive memory processes during reading. The addition of time and goal shifts was found to have no effect on the automatic retrieval of information from memory. The results are interpreted as support for the bottom-up account of retrieval of information during reading, and for the idea that the top-down account …

Speech And Gesture In Language Acquisition Studies, Gale Stam

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Planteamientos Colaborativos En La Didáctica De La Composición Desde Modelos Procesuales, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

El presente artículo parte de una revisión del modelo tradicional de la enseñanza de la escritura en la clase de LE entendida como producto. Desde este punto de partida, se evidencian las ventajas de adoptar una escritura colaborativa basada en la consideración del texto como un proceso en construcción que pasa por diferentes fases creativas y en un modelo pedagógico que centra su atención en el alumno dentro de la práctica escrita.

SUMMARY: In the initial part of this article, we begin with a review of the traditional model of teaching composition in a foreign language class in which writing …

El Concepto De Audiencia Y La Colaboración Entre Iguales En La Revisión De Textos Escritos, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Bilingual Lexical Disambiguation In Context: The Role Of Non-Selective Cross-Language Activation, Ana Schwartz, Li-Hao Yeh, Ana Areas Da Luz Fontes

Selected Works Temporary Series

The present study tested whether lexical disambiguation in sentence context is affected by cross-language lexical activation. In Experiment 1 Spanish-English bilinguals read English sentences biasing the subordinate meaning of homonyms that were either cognates or non-cognates. Participants’ ability to reject follow-up target words related to the dominant meaning showed greatest inhibition when the homonym was a cognate and the dominant meaning was shared with Spanish. In Experiment 2 a separate group of bilinguals read sentences biasing the dominant meaning of the homonyms and were instructed to accept target words related to any meaning of the homonym. In this case cognate …

Working Memory Influences On Cross-Language Activation During Bilingual Lexical Disambiguation, Ana Areas Da Luz Fontes, Ana Schwartz

Selected Works Temporary Series

This study investigated the role of verbal working memory on bilingual lexical disambiguation. Spanish-English bilinguals with low and high digit span read sentences in their second language ending in a cognate homonym (novel), noncognate homonym (fast), cognate (piano) or non-cognate (pencil). The dominant meanings of cognate homonyms were shared across languages while subordinate meanings were unique to the second language. Participants decided whether follow-up targets were related in meaning to the sentence. On critical trials sentences biased the subordinate meaning of the homonym and targets were related to the dominant meaning (novel – BOOK; fast – SPEED), forcing rejection of …

On A Different Plane: Cross-Language Effects On The Conceptual Representations Of Within-Language Homonyms, Ana Areas, Ana Schwartz

Selected Works Temporary Series

We examined whether bilinguals’ conceptual representation of homonyms in one language are influenced by meanings in the other. 117 Spanish-English bilinguals generated sentences for 62 English homonyms that were also cognates with Spanish and which shared at least one meaning with Spanish (e.g., plane/plano). Production probabilities for each meaning were calculated. A stepwise multiple regression revealed that whether a meaning was shared with Spanish or not accounted for a significant portion of the variance, even after entering production probabilities from published monolingual norms. (Twilley et al., 1994). Homonyms classified as highly polarized based on monolingual responses became less polarized if …

On A Different Plane: Cross-Language Effects On The Conceptual Representations Of Within-Language Homonyms, Ana Areas, Ana Schwartz

Departmental Papers (Psych)

We examined whether bilinguals’ conceptual representation of homonyms in one language are influenced by meanings in the other. 117 Spanish-English bilinguals generated sentences for 62 English homonyms that were also cognates with Spanish and which shared at least one meaning with Spanish (e.g., plane/plano). Production probabilities for each meaning were calculated. A stepwise multiple regression revealed that whether a meaning was shared with Spanish or not accounted for a significant portion of the variance, even after entering production probabilities from published monolingual norms. (Twilley et al., 1994). Homonyms classified as highly polarized based on monolingual responses became less polarized if …

Cross-Language Mediated Priming: Effects Of Context And Lexical Relationship, Ana Schwartz, Ana Areas Da Luz Fontes

Selected Works Temporary Series

We examined how linguistic context influences the nature of bilingual lexical activation. We hypothesized that in single-word context, form-related words would receive the strongest activation while, in sentence context, semantically related words would receive the strongest activation. Spanish-English bilinguals performed a semantic verification task on English target words preceded by a prime. On critical trials, the prime and target words were paired based either on a form-mediated relationship through the native language (L1), [e.g., bark (barco): BOAT] (Experiment 1) or on a semantically-mediated relationship [e.g., boat (barco): BARK] (Experiment 2). The prime word was presented either in isolation or after …

Using Cognates To Investigate Cross-Language Competition In Second Language Processing, Gretchen Sunderman, Ana Schwartz

Selected Works Temporary Series

No abstract provided.

Lexical Representation Of Second Language Words: Implications For Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition And Use, Ana Schwartz, Li-Hao Yeh, Moira Shaw

Selected Works Temporary Series

The goal of the present study was to examine whether cross-language activation of a bilingual’s native language influences the processing of lexical ambiguity within a second language. Highly proficient Spanish-English bilinguals performed a semantic verification task in which sentence frames were followed by the presentation of the final word of the sentence (the prime word). Participants then decided whether a follow-up target word was related to the meaning of the sentence. On critical trials the sentences ended in a semantically ambiguous word that was either a cognate with Spanish (e.g., novel), or a noncognate control matched on frequency and length …

Cross-Language Mediated Priming: Effects Of Context And Lexical Relationship, Ana Schwartz, Ana Areas Da Luz Fontes

Departmental Papers (Psych)

We examined how linguistic context influences the nature of bilingual lexical activation. We hypothesized that in single-word context, form-related words would receive the strongest activation while, in sentence context, semantically related words would receive the strongest activation. Spanish-English bilinguals performed a semantic verification task on English target words preceded by a prime. On critical trials, the prime and target words were paired based either on a form-mediated relationship through the native language (L1), [e.g., bark (barco): BOAT] (Experiment 1) or on a semantically-mediated relationship [e.g., boat (barco): BARK] (Experiment 2). The prime word was presented either in isolation or after …

Lexical Representation Of Second Language Words: Implications For Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition And Use, Ana Schwartz, Li-Hao Yeh, Moira Shaw

Departmental Papers (Psych)

The goal of the present study was to examine whether cross-language activation of a bilingual’s native language influences the processing of lexical ambiguity within a second language. Highly proficient Spanish-English bilinguals performed a semantic verification task in which sentence frames were followed by the presentation of the final word of the sentence (the prime word). Participants then decided whether a follow-up target word was related to the meaning of the sentence. On critical trials the sentences ended in a semantically ambiguous word that was either a cognate with Spanish (e.g., novel), or a noncognate control matched on frequency and length …

Using Cognates To Investigate Cross-Language Competition In Second Language Processing, Gretchen Sunderman, Ana Schwartz

Departmental Papers (Psych)

No abstract provided.

Second Language Acquisition From A Mcneillian Perspective, Gale Stam

Faculty Publications

Most second language acquisition research has concentrated on learners’ speech. This paper argues that it is necessary to look at both learners’ speech and gesture in order to better understand second language acquisition. It provides a summary of the second language acquisition process and the types of studies that have been conducted in the field. It discusses how gesture can be used to investigate learners’ thinking for speaking.