Effects of language experience on the perception of American Sign Language

Perception of American Sign Language (ASL) handshape and place of articulation parameters was investigated in three groups of signers: deaf native signers, deaf non-native signers who acquired ASL between the ages of 10 and 18, and hearing non-native signers who acquired ASL as a second language between the ages of 10 and 26. Participants were asked to identify and discriminate dynamic synthetic signs on forced choice identification and similarity judgement tasks. No differences were found in identification performance, but there were effects of language experience on discrimination of the handshape stimuli. Participants were significantly less likely to discriminate handshape stimuli drawn from the region of the category prototype than stimuli that were peripheral to the category or that straddled a category boundary. This pattern was significant for both groups of deaf signers, but was more pronounced for the native signers. The hearing L2 signers exhibited a similar pattern of discrimination, but results did not reach significance. An effect of category structure on the discrimination of place of articulation stimuli was also found, but it did not interact with language background. We conclude that early experience with a signed language magnifies the influence of category prototypes on the perceptual processing of handshape primes, leading to differences in the distribution of attentional resources between native and non-native signers during language comprehension.     

The link between statistical segmentation and word learning in adults

Many studies have shown that listeners can segment words from running speech based on conditional probabilities of syllable transitions, suggesting that this statistical learning could be a foundational component of language learning. However, few studies have shown a direct link between statistical segmentation and word learning. We examined this possible link in adults by following a statistical segmentation exposure phase with an artificial lexicon learning phase. Participants were able to learn all novel object-label pairings, but pairings were learned faster when labels contained high probability (word-like) or non-occurring syllable transitions from the statistical segmentation phase than when they contained low probability (boundary-straddling) syllable transitions. This suggests that, for adults, labels inconsistent with expectations based on statistical learning are harder to learn than consistent or neutral labels. In contrast, a previous study found that infants learn consistent labels, but not inconsistent or neutral labels.     

Teaching children with autism to respond to and initiate bids for joint attention

A multiple baseline design across 3 children with autism was used to assess the effects of prompting and social reinforcement to teach participants to respond to an adult's bid for joint attention and to initiate bids for joint attention. Participants were taught to respond to an adult's bid for joint attention by looking in the direction of an object at which the adult pointed, by making a comment about the object, and by looking back at the adult. Additional training and reinforcement were needed to teach the participants to initiate bids for joint attention. Findings are discussed in terms of the social relevance of teaching children with autism to respond to and initiate bids for joint attention.     

Children's note taking as a mnemonic tool

When given the opportunity to take notes in memory tasks, children sometimes make notes that are not useful. The current study examined the role that task constraints might play in the production of nonmnemonic notes. In Experiment 1, children played one easy and one difficult memory game twice, once with the opportunity to make notes and once without that opportunity. More children produced functional notations for the easier task than for the more difficult task, and their notations were beneficial to memory performance. Experiment 2 found that the majority of children who at first made nonmnemonic notations were able to produce functional notations with minimal training, and there was no significant difference in notation quality or memory performance between spontaneous and trained note takers. Experiment 3 revealed that the majority of children could transfer their training to a novel task. The results suggest that children’s production of nonmnemonic notes may be due in part to a lack of knowledge regarding what task information is important to represent or how to represent it in their notes rather than to an inability to make functional notes in general.     

It’s not just what you say but when you say it: Self-presentation and temporal construal

Three experiments demonstrated that the use and effectiveness of self-presentation strategies are affected by time. In Experiment 1, participants used more indirect self-presentation statements for the distant than near future, but used more direct self-presentation statements for the near than distant future. In Experiment 2, participants for whom indirect self-presentation strategies were made accessible rated a future interview as more temporally distant than those for whom direct self-presentation strategies were made accessible. In Experiment 3, participants rated their self-presentation attempts as more effective if they used direct strategies for the near future and indirect strategies for the distant future. Implications for studying the timing of self-presentation and its relation to temporal construal levels are discussed.     

It's Fascinating Research: The Cognition of Verbal Irony

ABSTRACT— Verbal irony is nonliteral language that makes salient a discrepancy between expectations and reality. For researchers who study verbal irony, a critical question is: How do we grasp the meaning of ironic language? The parallel-constraint-satisfaction approach holds promise as an answer to this question. By this account, multiple cues to ironic intent, such as tone of voice, incongruity, and knowledge of the speaker, are processed rapidly and in parallel and this information is coordinated with the utterance itself in order to construct a coherent interpretation that is the best fit for the activated information. Recently, research with individuals who struggle with irony comprehension (typically developing children, individuals with autism-spectrum disorder, individuals with brain injury) has provided new clues about the complex process by which ironic meaning is inferred.     

大学生英语学习策略使用特点及发展趋势研究

采用自编问卷对493名不同背景大学生英语学习策略的调查发现,大学生内隐学习策略显著低于外显策略,表明我国大学生英语学习以外显为主;外显策略中,社会/情感策略水平最高,而元认知策略水平最低;英语学习策略的使用在性别、英语学习难易程度的主观判断以及学业成就水平等因素上呈现出明显的差异性特点,女生的策略使用率总体高于男生,英语学习成就越高以及英语学习认知越积极的学生学习策略使用率越高;大学生英语学习策略的发展呈V型趋势,在大三低至谷底,男生的策略波动幅度显著大于女生。     

A computational model of early argument structure acquisition

How children go about learning the general regularities that govern language, as well as keeping track of the exceptions to them, remains one of the challenging open questions in the cognitive science of language. Computational modeling is an important methodology in research aimed at addressing this issue. We must determine appropriate learning mechanisms that can grasp generalizations from examples of specific usages, and that exhibit patterns of behavior over the course of learning similar to those in children. Early learning of verb argument structure is an area of language acquisition that provides an interesting testbed for such approaches due to the complexity of verb usages. A range of linguistic factors interact in determining the felicitous use of a verb in various constructions —associations between syntactic forms and properties of meaning that form the basis for a number of linguistic and psycholinguistic theories of language. This article presents a computational model for the representation, acquisition, and use of verbs and constructions. The Bayesian framework is founded on a novel view of constructions as a probabilistic association between syntactic and semantic features. The computational experiments reported here demonstrate the feasibility of learning general constructions, and their exceptions, from individual usages of verbs. The behavior of the model over the timecourse of acquisition mimics, in relevant aspects, the stages of learning exhibited by children. Therefore, this proposal sheds light on the possible mechanisms at work in forming linguistic generalizations and maintaining knowledge of exceptions.     

Body parts and early-learned verbs

This article reports the structure of associations among 101 common verbs and body parts. The verbs are those typically learned by children learning English prior to 3 years of age. In a free association task, 50 adults were asked to provide the single body part that came to mind when they thought of each verb. Analyses reveal highly systematic and structured patterns of associations that are also related to the normative age of acquisition of the verbs showing a progression from verbs associated with actions by the mouth, to verbs strongly associated with actions by hand and arm, to verbs not so strongly associated with any one body part. The results have implications for proposals about embodied verb meaning and also for processes of early verb learning.     

Learning words from reliable and unreliable speakers

Three studies examined whether 3- and 4-year olds would trust a reliable speaker over an unreliable speaker when learning a new word and whether that trust would be reversed, and the word mapping revised, when a trusted speaker later proved unreliable. Study 1 indicated that 3- and 4-year olds trusted a reliable speaker over an unreliable speaker. Study 2 indicated that some 4-year olds reversed trust and revised a word mapping when a trusted speaker later proved unreliable. Study 3 indicated that those 4-year olds who reversed trust and revised the word mapping were likely to maintain the revision and tended to favor the previously reliable speaker over time. These results are discussed in terms of the role of speaker reliability in young children's word learning.