Research on communication strategies (CSs) has been drawing much attention in the area of psycholinguistics and applied linguistics. This study examined if triggering instruction can accelerate the cognitive aspects of CSs transference from L1 to L2. In the first part of the experiment, all participants, twenty-one Japanese university students,…

The first language (L1) use is vital to developing the quality of second-language (L2) writings. Establishing a clear argument with the logical flow in L2 can be a daunting task for learners with low L2 proficiency. To determine if L1 use is positively related to students' L2 texts, the researcher conducted a comparative study with 77 Japanese L2…

English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) textbooks and internet resources exhibit various formats and implementations of exercises on phrasal verbs. The experimental study reported here examines whether some of these might be more effective than others. EFL learners at a university in Japan were randomly assigned to 4 treatment groups. Two groups were…

Growing evidence indicates a suite of generalized differences in the attentional and cognitive processing of adults from Eastern and Western cultures. Cognition in Eastern adults is often more relational and in Western adults is more object focused. Three experiments examined whether these differences characterize the cognition of preschool…

Background: Many hypotheses have been proposed to address the relationship between sex offenders and neuropsychological functions. Method: The purpose of this study was to evaluate differences in executive functions between juvenile sex offenders and non-sex offenders with/without low IQ by using the Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive…

Using the Japanese version of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III), 26 girls with high-functioning (IQ greater than or equal to 70) pervasive developmental disorders (HFPDD) (mean age, 8.2 years) were compared with 116 boys with HFPDD (mean age, 9.0 years). Compared with the boys, the girls scored significantly…

Much of the evidence from the West has shown links between children's developing self-control (executive function), their social experiences, and their social understanding (Carpendale & Lewis, 2006, chapters 5 and 6), across a range of cultures including China. This chapter describes four studies conducted in three Oriental cultures,…

Large corpora such as the British National Corpus and the COBUILD Corpus and Collocations Sampler are now accessible, free of charge, online and can be usefully incorporated into a process writing approach to help develop students' writing skills. This article aims to familiarize readers with these resources and to show how they can be usefully…

US children's books are a rich source of information about mental states (Dyer, Shatz, & Wellman, 2000). Examining books from other cultures can determine whether and how such information is conveyed by other languages. Forty US and 40 Japanese picture books for preschoolers were compared. The books were coded for references to mental state…

Age- and IQ-balanced 27 children with high-functioning (IQ greater than or equal to 70) pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (HPDDNOS) and 27 children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were compared on the Japanese version of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children Third Edition (WISC-III) and the Childhood…

A discussion of the English language teaching method of Toru Matsumoto, author of "Thinking in English," reconstructs the instructional principle and presents it for further development. First, the history of English language teaching in Japan is reviewed and Matsumoto's biography is sketched. The salient features of the principle are…

Visual processing of televised information was compared among 85 Japanese and 111 American boys and girls at the kindergarten and 4th-grade levels. The literatures on cognition and learning indicate that language and child rearing factors are more conducive to the development of iconic processing skills in Japanese children than in American…

Reports a study of Japanese students learning English in Japan. Supports the notion that the necessity to communicate forces learners to notice linguistic problems, and that noticing a problem can push learners to modify their original input. Through this cognitive process, learners acquire second languages, especially the ability to produce oral…

Noting that children in literate societies all learn the sound-symbol relationships of their languages but that orthographies, sound-symbol relationships, and societal attitudes toward literacy differ, the essays in this book explore both the universal and the culturally constrained aspects of the process of learning to read. Following an…

The relationship between mathematics performance and fundamental linguistic variations in the cognitive representation of numbers was assessed, using 24 first graders each from the United States and Japan. Results indicate that the Japanese cognitive representation of number positively affects the understanding of place value. No gender…