Prepackaged Tour Versus Personal Journey: The Meaning of Informed Consent in the Context of the Teacher-study Group

This article discusses the specific ethical dilemma of obtaining informed consent and ensuring confidentiality and participant well-being while conducting a qualitative research study with novice ESL teachers in a Teacher Study Group. The discussion outlines their process of resolution of the ambiguities inherent in the research process – in essence the researchers’ personal journey of discovery. The article concludes with the broader implications for making the research process more transparent for other academic researchers working in the field of language-teacher cognition.     

儿童语言获得之认知发展机制研究新进展

儿童母语的习得是以已有的知识经验为基础的,即概念信息,由此儿童可以对经验过的对象、关系和事件做出区分并加以归类。这为以后儿童语言的获得奠定了基础。因此,儿童首先建立的是对事物的概念性表征,然后再以语言的形式表达之,即获得了语言性表征。但是,当儿童获得了语言表征之后,原先的概念表征还是继续发挥着它应有的作用。     

Psychoticism and attentional flexibility

In three separate experiments, we tested the hypothesis that a systematic relationship between psychoticism (P) and visual selective attention is infrequently observed because the tasks typically used to test individual differences in efficiency of attentional mechanisms do not entail attentional flexibility. We manipulated the selection rule of the computerized divided visual attention (DIVA) task to be either (a) a predictable, or (b) a random manner, and a secondary task was added to check the quality of high P scorers’ performance in an interference condition; and we also introduced breaks between DIVA tasks to allow for cue utilization. Results revealed that low P scorers outperformed high P scorers in the regular selection rule alternation condition (cue utilization possible), whereas high P scorers performed better in random alternation condition – high P scorers also showed performance superiority in the dual task condition unless stimuli presentation was speeded up. Thus, P does not necessarily impair attentional performance; indeed, our data point to performance advantages of high P, especially attentional efficiency in tasks requiring small demands of attentional control.     

Modeling the Developmental Patterning of Finiteness Marking in English, Dutch, German, and Spanish Using MOSAIC

In this study, we apply MOSAIC (model of syntax acquisition in children) to the simulation of the developmental patterning of children's optional infinitive (OI) errors in 4 languages: English, Dutch, German, and Spanish. MOSAIC, which has already simulated this phenomenon in Dutch and English, now implements a learning mechanism that better reflects the theoretical assumptions underlying it, as well as a chunking mechanism that results in frequent phrases being treated as 1 unit. Using 1, identical model that learns from child-directed speech, we obtain a close quantitative fit to the data from all 4 languages despite there being considerable cross-linguistic and developmental variation in the OI phenomenon. MOSAIC successfully simulates the difference between Spanish (a pro-drop language in which OI errors are virtually absent) and obligatory subject languages that do display the OI phenomenon. It also highlights differences in the OI phenomenon across German and Dutch, 2 closely related languages whose grammar is virtually identical with respect to the relation between finiteness and verb placement. Taken together, these results suggest that (a) cross-linguistic differences in the rates at which children produce OIs are graded, quantitative differences that closely reflect the statistical properties of the input they are exposed to and (b) theories of syntax acquisition need to consider more closely the role of input characteristics as determinants of quantitative differences in the cross-linguistic patterning of phenomena in language acquisition.     

Formal distinctiveness of high- and low-imageability nouns: analyses and theoretical implications

Words associated with perceptually salient, highly imageable concepts are learned earlier in life, more accurately recalled, and more rapidly named than abstract words (R. W. Brown, 1976; Walker & Hulme, 1999). Theories accounting for this concreteness effect have focused exclusively on semantic properties of word referents. A novel possibility is that word structure may also contribute to the effect. We report a corpus-based analysis of the phonological and morphological structures of a large set of nouns with imageability ratings (N = 2,023). High- and low-imageability nouns differed by length, etymology, prosody, affixation, phonological neighborhood density, and rates of consonant clustering. On average, nouns denoting abstract concepts were longer, more derivationally complex, and emerged in English from a different distribution of languages than did concrete nouns. We address implications for interactivity of word form and meaning as pertain to theories of word concreteness, lexical acquisition, and word processing.     

Dynamic self-organization and early lexical development in children

In this study we present a self-organizing connectionist model of early lexical development. We call this model DevLex-II, based on the earlier DevLex model. DevLex-II can simulate a variety of empirical patterns in children's acquisition of words. These include a clear vocabulary spurt, effects of word frequency and length on age of acquisition, and individual differences as a function of phonological short-term memory and associative capacity. Further results from lesioned models indicate developmental plasticity in the network's recovery from damage, in a non-monotonic fashion. We attribute the network's abilities in accounting for lexical development to interactive dynamics in the learning process. In particular, variations displayed by the model in the rate and size of early vocabulary development are modulated by (a) input characteristics, such as word frequency and word length, (b) consolidation of lexical-semantic representation, meaning-form association, and phonological short-term memory, and (c) delayed processes due to interactions among timing, severity, and recoverability of lesion. Together, DevLex and DevLex-II provide an accurate computational account of early lexical development.     

New Developments in Understanding Skilled Performance

ABSTRACT— Skilled performance, whether it involves rapid and accurate motor movements (such as playing a video game or using a scalpel in the operating room) or a high degree of domain knowledge (such as finding a small tumor in an X-ray or writing a journal article) typically involves learning and practice over an extended period of time. In light of recent theory and empirical research, I consider two enduring issues associated with skill acquisition: whether individuals become more alike in performance or more different over the course of skill acquisition, and what the determinants of individual differences in skilled performance are. Two broad classes of tasks are considered: tasks that involve speed and accuracy of motor movements and tasks that primarily involve domain knowledge. Issues of practice, ability, and other determinants of skilled performance such as gender and aging are discussed.     

From grammatical number to exact numbers: early meanings of 'one', 'two', and 'three' in English, Russian, and Japanese

This study examined whether singular/plural marking in a language helps children learn the meanings of the words 'one,' 'two,' and 'three.' First, CHILDES data in English, Russian (which marks singular/plural), and Japanese (which does not) were compared for frequency, variability, and contexts of number-word use. Then young children in the USA, Russia, and Japan were tested on Counting and Give-N tasks. More English and Russian learners knew the meaning of each number word than Japanese learners, regardless of whether singular/plural cues appeared in the task itself (e.g., "Give two apples" vs. "Give two"). These results suggest that the learning of "one," "two" and "three" is supported by the conceptual framework of grammatical number, rather than that of integers.     

Frequency trajectory effects in Chinese character recognition: Evidence for the arbitrary mapping hypothesis

Frequency trajectory is a better measure to investigate age-limited learning effects than age of acquisition (AoA) ratings (Zevin, J. D., & Seidenberg, M. S. (2002). Age of acquisition effects in word reading and other tasks. Journal of Memory and Language, 47(1), 1-29). The current study uses frequency trajectory as a variable to investigate age-limited learning effects in Chinese character recognition, and tests predictions of the arbitrary mapping hypothesis as applied in a non-alphabetic writing system. In Experiment 1, regression analyses showed that, compared to rated AoA, frequency trajectory of characters was less affected by other lexical properties, and could explain a significant proportion of variance of AoA. In Experiment 2, the frequency trajectory and predictability from orthography to pronunciation of characters were orthogonally manipulated in a character naming task. The frequency trajectory effect appeared only for the arbitrary mapping condition. In Experiment 3, frequency trajectory and predictability from orthography to meaning of characters were manipulated in a semantic category judgment task. The frequency trajectory effects were found only when the mapping from orthography to semantic is less consistent. In summary, the study confirmed that AoA is a genuine factor affecting word processing, and the AoA effects were limited to those situations in which mapping between input and output representation was arbitrary. These results provide strong cross-linguistic evidence in support of the arbitrary mapping hypothesis.     

Early precursors and enabling skills of reading acquisition

Research on early linguistic precursors and enabling skills of reading acquisition among young children is reviewed. Language development starts early in infancy when the child learns to categorize the speech sounds according to the pattern typical of the mother tongue. Equipped with these sound categories the child is ready to learn to segment words from the sound stream and to understand and to use words. The precise phonological representation of words will facilitate the important development of phonological awareness, a basic prerequisite for reading acquisition. This paper reviews some of my longitudinal research and training studies indicating the causal direction of the relation between phonological awareness and reading and includes some ongoing studies, where gender differences, socio‐economic factors, dose‐response‐effects and motivational factors are explored. Preventive and remedial implications of the findings are pointed out. Finally, the complexity of the causal relationships between different aspects of early language development, including genetic influences and later reading is pointed out.