Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Commons^™

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 …

Integrating Affect Perception Tasks From The New York Emotion Battery Into A Comprehensive Measure Of Neuropsychological Change Across The Lifespan, Melinda A. Cornwell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: The ability to perceive others’ emotions is a vital skill for social competency, impacting the success of personal and professional relationships (Brinton & Fujiki, 2011; Cassidy et al., 1992; Côté & Miners, 2006). According to Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST; Carstensen, 1991), human motivation develops to become more discerning in choosing milieus that yield the most gratifying return on the investment of personal resources (e.g., time, attention, and effort), perhaps explaining why some research findings indicate that older adults may demonstrate an affect perception (AP) bias described as a positivity effect (Reed et al., 2014). Moreover, AP predicts cognitive and …

Processing Coercion In A First, Non-Dominant Language: Mandarin-English Heritage Bilinguals, Christina N. Dadurian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recent work in heritage language grammars has shown variability in L1 competence, despite high proficiency in both languages. While sources of variation have been debated, little attention has been given to the role of language dominance. This thesis uses a self-paced listening task to explicitly investigate the roles of language dominance and pragmatic competence in how heritage speakers of Mandarin Chinese process aspectual coercion in their non-dominant home language, as compared to late bilinguals. Specifically, constructions that vary in acceptability and salience in input between Mandarin and English are tested: Iterative coercion, complement event coercion of entity NPs, and perfective …

Violent Language On Indonesian Comedy Shows And Its Effects On Children Language Development, Iqbal Nurul Azhar

International Programs

No abstract provided.

Cross-Modal Distraction On Simultaneous Translation: Language Interference In Spanish-English Bilinguals, Violet Young

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

Bilingualism has been studied extensively in multiple disciplines, yet we are still unsure how exactly bilinguals think. Though the existence of a bilingual advantage is debated, this effect has been shown in tasks using selective attention. These tasks study the effects of language interference, where two types of interference are observed: interlingual (between-languages) and intralingual (within one language). This study examines language interference in Spanish-English bilinguals using an auditory-visual simultaneous translation experimental setup. Sixteen college English monolinguals and 17 college Spanish-English bilinguals were tested. Participants translated or repeated words displayed on a screen while ignoring distractor words played through headphones. …

Cross-Language Morphological Activation: The Case Of Arabic-English Bilinguals, Anas Alkhofi

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

The role of morphology in bilingual lexical access is an under-investigated topic. Due to the overrepresentation of concatenative-based languages which inherently cannot adequately isolate effects of morphology from those of orthography and semantics, morphological processing had been relegated to a secondary role in lexical access. The present research utilized Arabic, a non-concatenative Semitic language, to investigate the role of morphology in bilingual language processing. Two experiments using translation recognition and masked lexical decision were conducted with Arabic-English bilinguals to answer two research questions: 1) Does (Arabic) morphology mediate cross-language activation? and 2) Is Arabic-English cross-language morphological activation task-dependent? Mixed effects …

Comparing Behavioral And Parent-Report Measures Of Executive Functioning In Deaf And Typically Hearing Children, Abeer Mohamed

Honors Scholar Theses

Executive functioning (EF) is a multidimensional aspect of development that encompasses various mental skills. Children’s utilization of inhibition, in particular, has proven to be one of the most important determinants of academic success. How deafness in children impacts their EF abilities is a question that remains divisive within deaf studies. Some suggest that auditory deprivation is a direct cause of poor EF, while others posit reduced or insufficient language experience that deaf children live with harms their EF development. We sought to explore this question further with a participant sample from our larger SLaM (Study of Language and Math) project. …

Eye-Movement Benchmarks In Heritage Language Reading, Olga Parshina, Anna K. Laurinavivhyute, Irina A. Sekerina

Publications and Research

This eye-tracking study establishes basic benchmarks of eye movements during reading in heritage language (HL) by Russian-speaking adults and adolescents of high (n = 21) and low proficiency (n = 27). Heritage speakers (HSs) read sentences in Cyrillic, and their eye movements were compared to those of Russian monolingual skilled adult readers, 8-yearold children and L2 learners. Reading patterns of HSs revealed longer mean fixation durations, lower skipping probabilities, and higher regressive saccade rates than in monolingual adults. High-proficient HSs were more similar to monolingual children, while low-proficient HSs performed on par with L2 learners. Low-proficient HSs differed from high-proficient …

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, …

Computational Approaches To The Syntax–Prosody Interface: Using Prosody To Improve Parsing, Hussein M. Ghaly

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Prosody has strong ties with syntax, since prosody can be used to resolve some syntactic ambiguities. Syntactic ambiguities have been shown to negatively impact automatic syntactic parsing, hence there is reason to believe that prosodic information can help improve parsing. This dissertation considers a number of approaches that aim to computationally examine the relationship between prosody and syntax of natural languages, while also addressing the role of syntactic phrase length, with the ultimate goal of using prosody to improve parsing.

Chapter 2 examines the effect of syntactic phrase length on prosody in double center embedded sentences in French. Data collected …

Testing The Perceptual Magnet Effect In Monolinguals And Bilinguals, Michael C. Stern

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Previous research has demonstrated an apparent warping of the perceptual space whereby the best exemplars or ‘prototypes’ of speech sound categories minimize the perceptual distance between themselves and neighboring stimuli in the same category. This phenomenon has been termed the ‘perceptual magnet effect’ (PME). The present study extends work on the PME to a speech sound category previously unstudied in this paradigm (American English /æ/), and to bilingual speech sound representation and perception. American English monolinguals and Turkish-English bilinguals completed identification tasks, category goodness rating tasks, and same-different discrimination tasks with synthesized vowel sounds from the American English /æ/ category—not …

The Interplay Between Interference Control And L2 Proficiency In L2 Auditory Sentence Comprehension In The Presence Of Verbal And Non-Verbal Masking, Jungna Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Speech perception and comprehension in the presence of interfering auditory stimuli is a challenge for bilingual listeners (e.g., Ezzatian, Avivi-Reich, & Schneider, 2010; Krizman, Bradlow, Lam, & Kraus, 2017). How efficiently and skillfully listeners manage auditory interference may also be closely related to their ability to pay attention to a target and suppress irrelevant information. Based on Friedman and Miyake’s (2004) framework of interference control, this dissertation investigated the underlying mechanisms of late Korean-English bilingual individuals’ auditory interference control in the presence of auditory verbal and nonverbal masking and evaluated the potential interaction between L2 proficiency and interference control.

Two …

Relevant Angry Affect Slows Response Time To Commands, Aleah Combs

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Previous research has found that emotional prosody can interact with speech perception and listeners’ processing of the meaning of particular word/emotion pairings(Kim and Sumner, 2017). What remains unclear is how this interactive processing can affect behavioral responses such as responses to imperatives. To answer this question,71 participants were presented with a series of commands given in a relevant affect.Commands were read either with angry prosody, happy prosody, or neutral prosody (control) and the participants were instructed to press the requested button on a response box as quickly and accurately as possible. All emotional states were simulated and normed for perceived …

The Effects Of Chinese And Spanish Writing Systems On L2 English Learners’ Vocabulary Acquisition, John Mitchell

All Master's Theses

Writing systems vary in how they relate graphemes to phonology and meaning. Consequently, each writing system makes unique demands on native speakers, resulting in different cognitive processes. This research examines the visual and phonological processes used by native Spanish and Chinese speakers and how these processes affect their acquisition of English vocabulary and spelling. Experiments 1 and 2 investigate how native Chinese and Spanish speakers associate graphemes to phonology. Experiments 3 seeks to differentiate visual processing from phonological processing when acquiring vocabulary. Experiment 4 assesses the efficacy of those processes. Six native Chinese speakers (NCS) and six native Spanish speakers …

Investigating The Relationship Between Individual Differences And Island Sensitivity, Catherine Pham, Lauren Covey, Alison Gabriele, Saad Aldosari, Robert Fiorentino

Department of Linguistics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

It is well-attested that native speakers tend to give low acceptability ratings to sentences that involve movement from within islands, yet the source of island effects remains an active debate. The grammatical account posits that island effects result from syntactic constraints on wh-movement, whereas the resource-limitation view posits that low ratings emerge due to processing-related constraints on the parser, such that islands themselves present processing bottlenecks. The current study addresses this debate by investigating the relationship between island sensitivity and individual differences in cognitive abilities, as it has been argued that the two views make distinct predictions regarding whether a …

Altered Speech: A Case-Study Of Identity-Driven Speech In A Dissociative Identity Disorder System, Sarah Domin

Scripps Senior Theses

The field of sociolinguistics has long been interested in how speech differs across groups. These studies have been focused on how demographic factors like class, race, and geographical region alter speech patterns. However, more recently, the agency of individuals to use language as a tool to construct a certain identity or persona has been highlighted (e.g., Podesva 2007; Eckert 1989; Eckert 2008). These studies are limited due to the nature of their methods, relying on either one individual with a limited scope of characteristics or on a larger group of people with many different variables at play other than identity. …