Idiomatic expressions pose substantial learning difficulties for learners across languages and tend to be acquired later in the course of language development both in L1 and L2. A number of factors have been identified as contributing to this difficulty. However, cross-linguistic studies on figurative language acquisition are still rare. The…

Studies with infants show divergence between performance on theory of mind tasks depending on whether "direct" or "indirect" measures are used. It has been suggested that direct measures assess a flexible but cognitively demanding ability to reason about the minds of others, whereas indirect measures assess distinct processes…

Should instruments, such as Likert-type scales, contain both positively worded and negatively worded items within the same scale (i.e. mixed format)? Recent evidence suggests that the use of scales with a mixed format can adversely affect the psychometric properties of scales. In particular, the mean item response to the positively worded items…