Language Teacher Cognition

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic disorder, characterised at the cognitive level by a phenotypic pattern of relative weaknesses (e.g., visuospatial skills) and strengths (e.g., some linguistic and nonverbal reasoning skills). In this study, we performed a systematic search and meta-analysis on lexical-semantic processing in WS, an area of knowledge in which contradictory results have been obtained. We found 42 studies matching our criteria, and, in total, 78 effect sizes were included in the meta-analysis. Results showed that individuals with WS have worse lexical-semantic skills than individuals with typical development, whether matched by chronological or mental age. However, people with WS have better lexical-semantic skills than people diagnosed with other cognitive disabilities. Finally, vocabulary skills seem to be relatively spared in WS, although they present some difficulties in semantic processing/integration, semantic memory organisation and verbal working memory s...

This study examined how senior high school teachers in Digos City develop their portfolios, focusing on documenting pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and reflective practices and the relationship between these constructs and teaching experience. The study employed an embedded mixed-methods design, incorporating a quantitative survey to assess PCK, reflective practices, and qualitative focus group discussions (FGDs) to explore teachers' experiences and portfolio development strategies. The Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Pearson's correlation, while qualitative data from FGDs were analyzed thematically using Colaizzi's phenomenological method. The study identified five key themes in portfolio development: a systematic approach, reflective practice as a guiding principle, the impact of professional development, external feedback, and teaching experience. Teachers demonstrated "extensive" PCK across content, pedagogical, and curriculum knowledge. A moderate positive correlation was found between years of teaching experience and PCK. Teachers showed "extensive" reflective practices in practical experience and metacognition but only "moderately extensive" in cognitive aspects. A strong positive correlation was also found between PCK and reflective practice. The study concludes that teacher portfolios are valuable tools for professional growth when developed systematically and supported by professional development, emphasizing the importance of strengthening teachers' PCK and reflective practices through comprehensive training and fostering a collaborative environment.

Considering the importance of individualised learning, artificial intelligence tools can effectively create an environment where students can learn by using them both in lessons and on their own, and enable students to learn a foreign language more effectively and permanently. The aim of this study is to examine the thinking worlds and thought patterns of prospective German teachers about the role of artificial intelligence in language teaching and learning and their views on the concept of artificial intelligence. The starting point of this study is the question of which metaphors prospective teachers use when talking about the concept of artificial intelligence. The questions of the study are as follows: 1. with which metaphors do pre-service German teachers express artificial intelligence? 2. How do pre-service German teachers define their metaphors related to the concept of artificial intelligence? 3. Under which conceptual categories are these metaphors categorised in terms of common characteristics? The participants of the study consisted of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th year prospective teachers studying at the

Abstract

Oral error correction in classrooms has contributed to much controversy in the literature regarding its implementation and effectiveness. However, this area in language teaching and learning remains under-researched.
This study investigated EFL students’ and teachers’ perceptions of oral error correction. The main purposes of this study were to compare students’ and teachers’ views and preferences regarding oral error correction, to evaluate teachers’ use of error correction strategies, and find out if teachers' views and practices match with their students’ beliefs and preferences.
A mixed methods approach was implemented to gather the data for this study and embrace both quantitative and qualitative (questionnaires, interviews and observations) methods. The research sample included thirty EFL students studying in UK universities. The students were mainly Arab and Chinese and of intermediate and post-intermediate English language levels. The sample also involved five English language teachers, each with a different range of teaching experience in varying levels of English language. The questionnaires were completed by students and additionally, five students with different nationalities were interviewed. Adding to the research, the teachers were observed and interviewed afterwards.
Data gained from the study results revealed some discrepancies and similarities in teachers’ and students’ views and preferences. The findings indicated that both teachers and students agreed that students’ mistakes need to be corrected. Nevertheless, students wanted to receive more error correction than teachers thought. The results also showed that both teachers and students agreed on the types of mistakes that should be corrected; they both believed that pronunciation errors should receive more attention, followed by grammar and that less attention was and should be given to vocabulary mistakes. In contrast, the findings also revealed significant discrepancies among teachers’ and students’ views and preferences regarding who, when, how and how often students’ oral errors should be corrected. It is apparent that these discrepancies result from holding different views and expectations. Therefore, this research recommended having discussions from time to time. Both teachers and students may need to reconsider their opinions and beliefs regarding oral error correction in order to create a harmonious atmosphere where the language skills can be developed efficiently and successfully.

Oral error correction in classrooms has contributed to much controversy in the literature regarding its implementation and effectiveness. However, this area in language teaching and learning remains under-researched. This study investigated EFL students' and teachers' perceptions of oral error correction. The main purposes of this study were to compare students' and teachers' views and preferences regarding oral error correction, to evaluate teachers' use of error correction strategies, and find out if teachers' views and practices match with their students' beliefs and preferences. A mixed methods approach was implemented to gather the data for this study and embrace both quantitative and qualitative (questionnaires, interviews and observations) methods. The research sample included thirty EFL students studying in UK universities. The students were mainly Arab and Chinese and of intermediate and post-intermediate English language levels. The sample also involved five English language teachers, each with a different range of teaching experience in varying levels of English language. The questionnaires were completed by students and additionally, five students with different nationalities were interviewed. Adding to the research, the teachers were observed and interviewed afterwards. Data gained from the study results revealed some discrepancies and similarities in teachers' and students' views and preferences. The findings indicated that both teachers and students agreed that students' mistakes need to be corrected. Nevertheless, students wanted to receive more error correction than teachers thought. The results also showed that both teachers and students agreed on the types of mistakes that should be corrected;

A commonly held assumption is that demonstration and pantomime differ from ordinary action in that the movements are slowed down and exaggerated to be better understood by intended receivers. This claim has, however, been based on meagre empirical support. This article provides direct evidence that the different functional demands of demonstration and pantomime result in motion characteristics that differ from those for praxic action. In the experiment, participants were dressed in motion capture suits and asked to (1) perform an action, (2) demonstrate this action so that somebody else could learn how to perform it, (3) pantomime this action without using the object so that somebody else could learn how to perform it, and (4) pantomime this action without using the object so that somebody else could distinguish it from another action. The results confirm that actors slow down and exaggerate their movements in demonstrations and pantomimes when compared to ordinary actions.

This paper discusses the traceback method, which has been the basis of some influential papers on first language acquisition. The method sets out to demonstrate that many or even all utterances in a test corpus (usually the last two sessions of recording) can be accounted for with the help of recurrent fixed strings (like What's that?) or frame-and-slot patterns (like [What's X?]) that can also be identified in the remaining dataset (i.e., the previous sessions of recording). This is taken as evidence that language learning is much more item-based than previously assumed. In the present paper we sketch the development of the method over the last two decades, and discuss its relation to usage-based theory, as well as the cognitive plausibility of its components, and we highlight both its potential and its limitations. k e y w o r d s : language acquisition, traceback, usage-based theory [*] We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on a previous draft of this paper. Remaining shortcomings are of course ours.

abstractThis paper discusses the traceback method, which has been the basis of some influential papers on first language acquisition. The method sets out to demonstrate that many or even all utterances in a test corpus (usually the last two sessions of recording) can be accounted for with the help of recurrent fixed strings (like What’s that?) or frame-and-slot patterns (like [What’s X?]) that can also be identified in the remaining dataset (i.e., the previous sessions of recording). This is taken as evidence that language learning is much more item-based than previously assumed. In the present paper we sketch the development of the method over the last two decades, and discuss its relation to usage-based theory, as well as the cognitive plausibility of its components, and we highlight both its potential and its limitations.

A common feature of discourse coherence is hierarchical organization: more generally, central relations (characterizing the overall topic or goal) dominate complementary or modifying relations. In this hierarchy, higher levels tend to be marked by stronger prosodic cues than lower levels. This study seeks to understand how such a system emerges in human communication – what is present at the outset, and what takes time to develop. Specifically, we investigate whether the conceptualization of hierarchical organization precedes overt linguistic structuring, and whether distinct types and strengths of prosodic marking at different hierarchical levels can be discerned in the process of emergence. The only empirical evidence for such an investigation comes from sign languages, because they can arise de novo at any time. Sign languages offer the additional advantage of directly linking instantiations of linguistic structure to articulations of different visually perceived bodily articulat...

This study investigated whether cross-linguistic differences in causal expressions influence the mapping of causal language on causal events in three- to four-year-old Swiss-German learners and Turkish learners. In Swiss-German, causality is mainly expressed syntactically with lexical causatives (e.g.,ässe‘to eat’ vs.füettere‘to feed’). In Turkish, causality is expressed both syntactically and morphologically – with a verbal suffix (e.g.,yemek‘to eat’ vs.yeDIRmek‘to feed’). Moreover, unlike Swiss-German, Turkish allows argument ellipsis (e.g., ‘The mother feeds [∅]’). Here, we used pseudo-verbs to test whether and how well Swiss-German-learning children inferred a causal meaning from lexical causatives compared to Turkish-learning children tested in three conditions: lexical causatives, morphological causatives, and morphological causatives with object ellipsis. Swiss-German-learning children and Turkish-learning children in all three conditions reliably inferred causal meanings, an...

This paper proposes a shared, distributed, asymmetrical model for the bilingual mental lexicon. To test the sharing of conceptual relations across translation equivalents, Experiment 1 used the classical priming paradigm with specific methodological innovations, trying to satisfy various constraints that had not been addressed in previous studies. The results suggest shared storage for the conceptual representations of the bilingual's two vocabularies and asymmetrical links between concepts and lexical names in the two languages. Experiment 2 examined the details of meaning separation by eliciting semantic closeness rankings for conceptual relations that are equivalent across language translations and those that are not. The results indicate that bilinguals tend to integrate conceptual differences between translation equivalents, but that they also display a “separatist” tendency to maintain the L1 conceptual system in the representation of L1 words and to adopt the L2 conceptua...

Good evening everyone, distinguished guests, colleagues and friends, Ravi, and Paru. I consider myself very lucky to have such a long friendship with Paru since the early 1990s, working under her as a member of her staff here at J'pura when she was head, and before and after that as a friend and colleague, and collaborating with her on various educational projects from training to syllabus design. And today, I consider it a singular privilege to introduce her latest book, Vocabulary for Communication: A guide to improve English Vocabulary. Let me begin with a small anecdote. Almost 30 years ago, Paru and I were marking papers, I as a very new lecturer with no training in teaching methodology or language studies. She gave me a rather unforgettable lesson in vocabulary. She recalled how a student had written: "I met with an accident. My car was injured, and my leg was damaged." We can label it 'non-standard' usage, but it was a totally logical confusion to a student who knew the meanings of the individual words but not when to use them or with what. Thus she explained to me, in her trademark clear and concise style, collocations and collocational appropriacy. I think it was then that Paru inadvertently introduced me

Good evening everyone, distinguished guests, colleagues and friends, Ravi, and Paru. I consider myself very lucky to have such a long friendship with Paru since the early 1990s, working under her as a member of her staff here at J'pura when she was head, and before and after that as a friend and colleague, and collaborating with her on various educational projects from training to syllabus design. And today, I consider it a singular privilege to introduce her latest book, Vocabulary for Communication: A guide to improve English Vocabulary. Let me begin with a small anecdote. Almost 30 years ago, Paru and I were marking papers, I as a very new lecturer with no training in teaching methodology or language studies. She gave me a rather unforgettable lesson in vocabulary. She recalled how a student had written: "I met with an accident. My car was injured, and my leg was damaged." We can label it 'non-standard' usage, but it was a totally logical confusion to a student who knew the meanings of the individual words but not when to use them or with what. Thus she explained to me, in her trademark clear and concise style, collocations and collocational appropriacy. I think it was then that Paru inadvertently introduced me

Reflective teaching practice is crucial for second language educators as it helps them improve their teaching methods and professional growth by critically analyzing their classroom experiences. First introduced by John Dewey and then expanded by people like Donald Schön (1983) and David A. Kolb (1984), this practice encourages teachers to continuously improve and adapt their strategies to meet students' needs. This research aimed to review and compare various studies on reflective practices in language teaching, focusing on the benefits and challenges faced by teachers. Although the findings reveal advantages such as improved teaching methods and professional development, challenges like lack of time, emotional strain and difficulties in applying theory are still frequent. The review highlighted that while variety of strategies are useful for reflection, teachers' emotional and professional awareness significantly impacts the effectiveness of these practices. The study concludes that reflective practice should combine theory with practical experience and emotional awareness and also further research is required to explore how culture and digital tools can aid in reflection

In grappling with the subject of motivation in the foreign language classroom, we will eschew a discussion of its various types, as they have been researched. In this paper, we will briefly examine a variety of techniques, strategies and macrostrategies which teachers can employ in order to motivate their students. As Dornyei (2001: 116) notes, "teacher skills in motivating learners should be seen as central to teaching effectiveness". Even though there have been a lot of education-oriented publications providing taxonomies of classroom-specific motives, they fall short of offering an efficient guide to practitioners. Thus, our main goal is to familiarise any putative "practitioners" with a set of techniques and strategies (henceforward, "motivational strategies") for motivating foreign language students.

The article "EFL Teacher's Beliefs on the Use of Word Mapping Strategy in Vocabulary Learning" by Mega Putri Rosalina, Sarjaniah Zur, and Azwar Abidin investigates how teachers perceive and implement word mapping strategies in vocabulary instruction. Based on qualitative

A well-known method of studying iconic words is through the collection of subjective ratings. We collected such ratings regarding familiarity, iconicity, imagery/imageability, concreteness, sensory experience rating (SER), valence and arousal for Mandarin ABB words. This is a type of phrasal compound consisting of a prosaic syllable A and a reduplicated BB part, resulting in a vivid phrasal compound, for example, wù-mángmáng 雾茫茫 'completely foggy'. The correlations between the newly collected ABB ratings are contrasted with two other sets of prosaic word ratings, demonstrating that variables that characterize ABB words in an absolute sense may not play a distinctive role when contrasted with other types of words. Next, we provide another angle for looking at ABB words, by investigating to what degree rating data converges with corpus data. By far, the variable that characterizes ABB items consistently throughout these case studies is their high score for imageability, showing that they are indeed rightfully characterized as vivid. Methodologically, we show that it pays off to not take rating data at face value but to contrast it with other comparable datasets of a different phenomenon or data about the same phenomenon compiled in an ontologically different manner.

The purpose of the study was to compare native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) with local teachers in Korean public schools on a variety of occupational psychology measures. The NEST group consisted of 127 respondents (81 female, 42 male, 4 non-binary/not stated), while
the Korean teacher group had 86 respondents (58 female, 28 male). The results indicated that, as hypothesized, the NEST group was lower than the Korean group in occupational well-being, self-efficacy in teaching, continuance commitment to the profession, normative commitment to the profession and workplace, and affective commitment to the workplace, but was higher on turnover intentions to the profession and turnover
intentions to the workplace. The study also confirmed a well-being gap between female and male NESTs, whereas no such gap was found with the Korean teacher group. The implications for the study indicate the need to understand and address the well-being gap between female and male NESTs. Also, in order to lessen the gap between NESTs and Korean teachers in well-being, self-efficacy, commitment, and turnover intentions,
policy makers could consider recruiting and incentivizing more professionally minded NESTs with relevant qualifications for longer-term positions in Korean public schools in order to meet the aims of co-teaching programs for improving the quality and methods of public English education.

Background: Schizophrenia is a chronic psychiatric disorder that affects mainly cognition and runs in chronic deteriorating course. Objective: The study aimed to assess the cognitive function of schizophrenic patients compared to healthy control and verify the effect of atypical anti-psychotics on cognition in schizophrenia. Patients & Methods: This case-control study included 3 groups, group 1: 20 newly diagnosed patients with schizophrenia, group 2: 20 schizophrenic patients receiving atypical antipsychotics and group 3: 20 control healthy persons. The participants of the three groups were subjected to clinical assessment, that included detailed psychiatric interview, neurological and general examination. Cognitive evaluation of both schizophrenic and control groups by, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), stroop test (computerized version), the Trail Making test, continuous performance test and Wechsler Memory scale (WMS). Results: The schizophrenic patients had worse results than healthy control group in all neuropsychological tests: The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), Stroop Test, The Trail Making Test (TM,) Continuous performance test (CPT) and The Wechsler memory scale (WMS).The impairment was more in the newly diagnosed patients without treatment. Conclusions and clinical implications: Patients with schizophrenia suffered from cognitive impairment which mostly involved the different cognitive domains in different combinations, manifested least way in patients who received atypical antipsychotics.

Autonomous learning is a study skill that may be challenging not only to learners with a dependent learning style but also to teachers used to teacher-oriented methodology. However, the considerable shift in the teaching and learning paradigm especially after the 2020 pandemic has made autonomous learning a must-gain skill. This research aimed to explore EFL teachers' perceptions of learner autonomy (LA), their actual practices, and the challenges of LA promotion at Omani secondary schools. It also investigated possible associations between teachers' beliefs about promoting LA and their academic level, gender, and years of experience. Within a convergent mixed-method parallel design, thirty Omani EFL school teachers were selected through convenience sampling to participate in the study. The instruments included teachers' perceptions questionnaire, classroom observation data, and interviews with teachers. Frequency counts, ordinal regression analysis, and grounded theory were used to analyze the quantitative and qualitative data. The results revealed that although EFL teachers at Omani secondary schools practice some strategies that promote learner autonomy, these practices are not intentionally and exclusively implemented for LA purposes. Moreover, the results showed some discrepancies between teachers' beliefs and their actual practices of LA due to some constraints and challenges such as the intensive English curriculum, teachers being overloaded with numerous school tasks besides teaching, learners' limited exposure to English outside the classroom, and teachers' inadequate professional background in the concept, principles, and practices of learner autonomy. No significant association was found between the teachers' general beliefs about LA and their particulars. It may be argued that the concept of autonomous learning and strategies to promote LA should be included as a core component of teacher training programs. By the same token, more self-study and self-assessment practices may be added to the English course materials in schools to help learners develop this essential skill for their higher education.

This study examines a collection of expressions for the taboo topic of menstruation in Dutch, German, and Mandarin Chinese. A model for the identification of conceptualization patterns in taboo verbalizations is set up, analyzing each expression according to the X-phemistic mechanisms and, if applicable, the metaphorical source domains or metonymic vehicles at its origin. The various conceptualizations of menstruation are approached from a socio-cultural perspective; variation in conceptualization is examined through a correspondence regression analysis with three speaker-related explanatory variables (L1 and associated cultural background, menstrual experience, and age group). The underlying interest is linguo-cultural as the study aims to verify whether dominant menstrual attitudes are reflected in the linguistic conceptualization of menstruation within each socio-cultural group. Such correlations are indeed found, although the youngest age-group shows some unexpected linguistic behavior.

An extensive literature going back three quarters of a century holds that metaphorical mappings between sensory domains conform to a hierarchy of the senses, such that mappings from 'low' senses (touch, taste) to 'high' senses (sight, sound) are preferred over mappings in the opposite direction. Recent work has established that these directional preferences are partially explained by lexical factors. Theorists have also proposed that perceptual factors play a role in directional preferences, but without testing these factors directly and without controlling for the established effects of lexical factors. This article uses a novel construction, the verbal analogy (e.g., The picture looks like my music sounds), to explore directional preferences while controlling for several crucial lexical factors. A naturalness rating experiment reveals local directional preferences, for mappings between touch and sound and between sight and sound. The experiment finds no evidence for a general preference for mappings in either direction of the purported hierarchy of the senses, suggesting that pervious empirical findings may have been mediated by the effects of lexical factors.

This study investigates the content and characteristics of the cognitions of 30 Turkish English-as-a-foreign-language preservice teachers as manifested in their teaching philosophy statements. The study showed that the preservice teachers’ cognition was focused on both the pedagogical (teaching-learning and language teaching methods) and the personal and interpersonal (learners’ and teachers’ roles and the relationship between them) aspects of teaching and was characterized by high idealism and naïveté, but they also demonstrated a certain level of awareness of the future contexts in which they would be teaching. Although their past experiences significantly shaped their cognition, they found that their current teacher education program helped them develop a critical view of these experiences.

In this paper, we show how some proposals within the Minimalist Program are compatible with a model of codeswitching that recognizes an asymmetry between the participating languages, the Matrix Language Frame model. Through our discussion of an analysis of NPs in a Spanish±English corpus, we illustrate this compatibility and show how recent minimalist proposals can explain the distribution of nouns and determiners in this data set if they adopt the notion of Matrix Language as the bilingual instantiation of structural uniformity in a CP. We outline the central premises of the Matrix Language Frame model, and introduce the Uniform Structure Principle which requires that the structure of constituents be uniform at an abstract level. We then review previous applications of the Minimalist Program to codeswitching. Much recent research in minimalism has focused on issues related to feature checking. Earlier approaches to feature checking required matching of features in grammatical structures, although more recent proposals consider distinctions in the values of features and in types of matching. Because phi-features for grammatical gender in Spanish and English differ, an analysis of NPs in this corpus of naturally occurring Spanish±English conversations provides a test for minimalist applications to codeswitching. We present our general ®ndings of the distribution of types of NP constituents and then consider explanations of these distributions in light of minimalist proposals. It is possible to explain these distributions in a recasting of the Matrix Language Frame model in minimalist terms, if the construct of the Matrix Language is maintained. The requirement that one language, the Matrix Language, provide an abstract grammatical frame in bilingual constituents corresponds to the type of uniformity that Chomsky (2001) suggests is necessary for the explanatory study of language and variation in language. * We gratefully acknowledge the support of the College of Liberal Arts, University of South Carolina, for ®eldwork and data analysis of the Spanish±English corpus discussed here. We also thank Raquel Blazquez-Domingo for help in collecting and transcribing the Spanish±English data.

We often refer to space when we talk about time. To support this, studies show that we tend to associate the past with the left and the future with the right, space. However, there is little research that compares the spatial mapping of individual time units within the same methodological framework. Here, we used the same line-bisection paradigm to study horizontal spatial biases in various individual time units (i.e., hours, days, and months). Fifty-four adults processed temporal words and indicated their location on a horizontal line representing a time interval via a mouse click. Each word corresponded to one of the three conditions: left, right, or central position on the line. Our results show a reaction-time facilitation effect for hour and day units in congruent conditions (e.g., left semantic bias + left position on the line). Also, processing hour units shifted the response coordinates in the direction of the presumed spatial bias. Finally, the congruent combination of visu...

Speakers frequently have a choice among multiple ways of expressing one and the same thought. When choosing between syntactic constructions for expressing a given meaning, speakers are sensitive to probabilistic tendencies for syntactic, semantic or contextual properties of an utterance to favor one construction or another. Taken together, such tendencies may align to make one construction overwhelmingly more probable, marginally more probable, or no more probable than another. Here, we present evidence that acoustic features of spontaneous speech reflect these probabilities: when speakers choose a less probable construction, they are more likely to be disfluent, and their fluent words are likely to have a relatively longer duration. Conversely, words in more probable constructions are shorter and spoken more fluently. Our findings suggest that the differing probabilities of a syntactic construction in context are not epiphenomenal, but reflect a part of a speakers' knowledge of their language.

We often refer to space when we talk about time. To support this, studies show that we tend to associate the past with the left and the future with the right, space. However, there is little research that compares the spatial mapping of individual time units within the same methodological framework. Here, we used the same line-bisection paradigm to study horizontal spatial biases in various individual time units (i.e., hours, days, and months). Fifty-four adults processed temporal words and indicated their location on a horizontal line representing a time interval via a mouse click. Each word corresponded to one of the three conditions: left, right, or central position on the line. Our results show a reaction-time facilitation effect for hour and day units in congruent conditions (e.g., left semantic bias + left position on the line). Also, processing hour units shifted the response coordinates in the direction of the presumed spatial bias. Finally, the congruent combination of visu...

Since 2020, in Colombia it is required that students pursuing bachelor's degrees in foreign languages obtain a level of sufficiency (C1), which affirms the validity of the knowledge of the language and culture as a degree requirement (MEN, 2017). Language policy posits that language tests measure students' language skills as well as (inter)cultural notions and attitudes. However, from a socio-cognitive lens, the conception of the tests does not say much about the cognitive and social processes that become crucial for taking the exams. Therefore, it seems relevant to review the ontology of institutional language exams and to identify which factors give coherence and validity to the passing of such tests as a degree requirement. To achieve this, a phenomenological description is proposed. The hypothesis of this article is as follows: language tests, instead of measuring the linguistic and (inter)cultural skills of students, are actually concerned with, above all, their social and cognitive systems, especially morality. As a result, there is a strong case to be made for profound and rapid changes to the convention of employing standardized tests as a degree requirement.

In this paper, task‐based language teaching (TBLT) and its relationship to task‐based learning is investigated by drawing on teachers' pedagogic principles and practices as they relate to adopting, adapting, or rejecting TBLT in their classrooms. In particular, the paper seeks to discover the relevance of TBLT‐related research and teacher education literature for experienced L2 teachers, the ways in which these published accounts are reflected in teachers' pedagogic principles, and how such principles and practices are combined with approaches other than TBLT. Four experienced UK‐based ESL teachers were interviewed and observed in their classrooms a number of times. Based on case studies of these teachers, four TBLT‐related pedagogical principles in their teaching are identified and discussed in the light of the interview and observational data.

One typical use of negation is to refer to exceptions. In a visual display showing several similar items (majority) and one exception, referring to the exception by negating the majority should therefore be pragmatically felicitous. We investigated whether comprehenders are sensitive to these pragmatic aspects when processing negative sentences and having to identify the according items in the visual display. In Experiment 1, participants read affirmative and negative sentences referring to either the exception or the majority object in strongly biased displays. Additionally, unbiased displays were implemented, showing equal numbers of objects of each type. Identification times of the correct referent were shorter with the biased display independent of sentence polarity. Also, picking the exceptional item in the biased display was faster than picking a majority item, independent of sentence polarity. Thus, participants did not specifically profit from pragmatically felicitous conditions when processing negation. Critically, in the biased displays, the exceptional object was highly salient, which might have initially drawn the participant's attention to this object, resulting in a general speed-up. Therefore, in Experiment 2, we used a biased display with reduced saliency of the exceptional object. Again negation did not result in a specific speed-up due to pragmatically correct negation use. Thus, negation does not seem to facilitate the identification of an exceptional object.

abstractRecent years have seen rapid developments in automated text analysis methods focused on measuring psychological and demographic properties. While this development has mainly been driven by computer scientists and computational linguists, such methods can be of great value for social scientists in general, and for psychologists in particular. In this paper, we review some of the most popular approaches to automated text analysis from the perspective of social scientists, and give examples of their applications in different theoretical domains. After describing some of the pros and cons of these methods, we speculate about future methodological developments, and how they might change social sciences. We conclude that, despite the fact that current methods have many disadvantages and pitfalls compared to more traditional methods of data collection, the constant increase of computational power and the wide availability of textual data will inevitably make automated text analysis...

The kinds of entities that can be described as causing an event depend, in part, on the language one speaks. Whereas in English and Chinese it is possible to say The knife cut the bread or The key opened the door, in Korean and many other languages, such sentences sound very odd. According to the initiator hypothesis, languages fall into two major groups with respect to possible external arguments in causal expressions: those that require that the causer be capable of generating its own energy and those that require only that the causer participate in the causal chain leading up to a particular result. In support of this hypothesis, we show that ability to self-energize has a larger impact on acceptability ratings in Korean than in either English or Chinese (Exp. 1). We also show that restrictions on possible causers extend to the semantics of possible causes in the descriptions of animations depicting causal chains (Exp. 2). Finally, we show that cross-linguistic differences in the linguistic coding of causers may have consequences for the way people conceptualize animations of causal chains in terms of number of events (Exp. 3). Implications for the representation of verb meaning and the semantics of external arguments in other languages are discussed.

Background: Schizophrenia is a chronic psychiatric disorder that affects mainly cognition and runs in chronic deteriorating course. Objective: The study aimed to assess the cognitive function of schizophrenic patients compared to healthy control and verify the effect of atypical anti-psychotics on cognition in schizophrenia. Patients & Methods: This case-control study included 3 groups, group 1: 20 newly diagnosed patients with schizophrenia, group 2: 20 schizophrenic patients receiving atypical antipsychotics and group 3: 20 control healthy persons. The participants of the three groups were subjected to clinical assessment, that included detailed psychiatric interview, neurological and general examination. Cognitive evaluation of both schizophrenic and control groups by, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), stroop test (computerized version), the Trail Making test, continuous performance test and Wechsler Memory scale (WMS). Results: The schizophrenic patients had worse results than healthy control group in all neuropsychological tests: The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), Stroop Test, The Trail Making Test (TM,) Continuous performance test (CPT) and The Wechsler memory scale (WMS).The impairment was more in the newly diagnosed patients without treatment. Conclusions and clinical implications: Patients with schizophrenia suffered from cognitive impairment which mostly involved the different cognitive domains in different combinations, manifested least way in patients who received atypical antipsychotics.

A common feature of discourse coherence is hierarchical organization: more generally, central relations (characterizing the overall topic or goal) dominate complementary or modifying relations. In this hierarchy, higher levels tend to be marked by stronger prosodic cues than lower levels. This study seeks to understand how such a system emerges in human communication – what is present at the outset, and what takes time to develop. Specifically, we investigate whether the conceptualization of hierarchical organization precedes overt linguistic structuring, and whether distinct types and strengths of prosodic marking at different hierarchical levels can be discerned in the process of emergence. The only empirical evidence for such an investigation comes from sign languages, because they can arise de novo at any time. Sign languages offer the additional advantage of directly linking instantiations of linguistic structure to articulations of different visually perceived bodily articulat...

Adjectives that are used to describe sensory experiences are often used to express more than one modality. The adjective sweet, for instance, may primarily be associated with taste (i.e., taste is the dominant modality of sweet), but it can also be used for smell, sound or sight, and possibly even for touch. It has also been shown that some sensory modalities combine more easily than others. Many adjectives that are used to describe taste, for instance, can also be used for smell, but, less likely, for sound. These associations between sensory modalities as they are expressed in language are the topic of this study. We looked at the distribution of the combinations of dominant modalities in pairs of antonymic sensory adjectives (e.g., sweet–sour), and how the dominant modality of the adjectives in these pairs differed from that of the adjectives in isolation. In our dataset, there was a sizeable number of pairs consisting of adjectives with differing dominant modalities. Within thos...

abstractAs one of the Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan, Amis exhibits abundant lexical items for describing odors. This paper investigates the lexical representations of olfaction across the Amis dialects, showing that Amis possesses more than a dozen abstract odor terms, and uses the proclitic hala=/hali=/ha= plus reduplication of a noun as the source-oriented construction for manifesting olfactory perception. This study also incorporates controlled elicitation by using the booklet of ‘The Smell Identification Test™’ to elicit spontaneous descriptions for the perceived odors. The methodology provides further information to shed light on the categories of verbal responses for odors and the degree of perceptual consistency based on culturally dependent experiences.

In contrast to arbitrariness, a recent perspective is that words contain both arbitrary and iconic elements. We investigated iconicity in word recognition, and the possibility that iconic words have special links between phonological and semantic features that may facilitate their processing. In Experiment 1 participants completed a lexical decision task (is this letter string a word?) including words varying in their iconicity. Notably, we manipulated stimulus presentation conditions such that the items were visually degraded for half of the participants; this manipulation has been shown to increase reliance on phonology. Responses to words higher in iconicity were faster and more accurate, but this did not interact with condition. In Experiment 2 we explicitly directed participants' attention to phonology by using a phonological lexical decision task (does this letter string sound like a word?). Responses to words that were higher in iconicity were once again faster. These results demonstrate facilitatory effects of iconicity in lexical processing, thus showing that the benefits of iconic mappings extend beyond those reported for language learning and those argued for language evolution.

A common feature of discourse coherence is hierarchical organization: more generally, central relations (characterizing the overall topic or goal) dominate complementary or modifying relations. In this hierarchy, higher levels tend to be marked by stronger prosodic cues than lower levels. This study seeks to understand how such a system emerges in human communication – what is present at the outset, and what takes time to develop. Specifically, we investigate whether the conceptualization of hierarchical organization precedes overt linguistic structuring, and whether distinct types and strengths of prosodic marking at different hierarchical levels can be discerned in the process of emergence. The only empirical evidence for such an investigation comes from sign languages, because they can arise de novo at any time. Sign languages offer the additional advantage of directly linking instantiations of linguistic structure to articulations of different visually perceived bodily articulat...

This study investigated whether cross-linguistic differences in causal expressions influence the mapping of causal language on causal events in three- to four-year-old Swiss-German learners and Turkish learners. In Swiss-German, causality is mainly expressed syntactically with lexical causatives (e.g.,ässe‘to eat’ vs.füettere‘to feed’). In Turkish, causality is expressed both syntactically and morphologically – with a verbal suffix (e.g.,yemek‘to eat’ vs.yeDIRmek‘to feed’). Moreover, unlike Swiss-German, Turkish allows argument ellipsis (e.g., ‘The mother feeds [∅]’). Here, we used pseudo-verbs to test whether and how well Swiss-German-learning children inferred a causal meaning from lexical causatives compared to Turkish-learning children tested in three conditions: lexical causatives, morphological causatives, and morphological causatives with object ellipsis. Swiss-German-learning children and Turkish-learning children in all three conditions reliably inferred causal meanings, an...

The role of morphemes in lexical recognition has been extensively explored in recent years, although the evidence from older adults is extremely scarce. In this study, we carry out a lexical decision task to assess the interference generated by morphological composition of pseudo-words (i.e., the longer and more error prone decisions on pseudo-words made up of morphemes in comparison to pseudo-words without morphological appearance) in a group of young and older adults (mean = 74 years). The results show the expected effect on both response latencies and error rates for both groups. The effect of imageability is also significant. The specific results for the older adults show an interaction between the morphological effect and cognitive reserve: older adults with higher levels of cognitive reserve are more sensitive to morphological interference than older adults with lower cognitive reserve. The overall results are interpreted based on current models of morphological processing and aging.

abstractThis paper studies two types of cognitive factors which have been assumed to underpin people’s interpretation of conditional promises and threats: logic and socio-cognitive assumptions about what conditional promisors and threateners are obliged and permitted to do. We consider whether the logic of conditionals is compatible with the socio-cognitive assumptions underlying their interpretation or whether the two come apart. From the classical logical accounts of conditionals, almost all modern theories have inherited a constraint which specifies that a conditional cannot be true if its antecedent is true and consequent false. This logical constraint is widely assumed to constitute, at least partially, a conditional’s semantics, or ‘core meaning’. A replication of Beller et al.’s (2005) study, reported in this paper, calls for revisiting this long-standing, cross-theoretically assumed constraint. As predicted, we have found that, in English, conditional promises are generally ...

The purpose of this research is to investigate how we can tackle the issues of gender and sexual orientation in the teacher education program at the graduate level on the bases of what we have done concerning career development and education for teachers. It would be necessary, first of all, to explain the background of this study. The Central Council for Education in Japan suggested in its 2012 report that the teachers should continue learning and updating their abilities according to their career stages and the colleges of education were expected to respond to this issue. To discuss a "teacher who continues to learn" throughout his/her life, we needed to consider the viewpoints on the notion of occupation or vocation and on that of "life career," as shown by Super (1980), that is, a career that consists of various life roles. At that time, most of the programs in the graduate schools in Education focused on the development of teaching skills in a narrow sense assuming that the students have acquired careerrelated abilities, such as self-understanding, communication skills and so on. Recently, however, it has been considered that we need to develop professional skills and human and basic abilities. In this context, our graduate school has also developed and implemented career education throughout the curriculum, from the perspective of life career (Kawasaki, Yoshimura, Nakai, 2015, 2017), but we are now beginning to recognize another aspect which is comparatively new but cannot be ignored in teacher education: Diversity. Actually, even in the government's documents concerning career education, diversities in gender, age, individuality and values have been mentioned (Central Council for Education 2011, for example). It is, therefore,