Civil discourse is our most basic form of civic engagement. In a democracy, it is our best tool for collectively answering a society's most fundamental question: "What shall we do?" While most of us have no doubt participated in political discussions, engaging in civil discourse that is productive (i.e., dialogue that "fosters…

Adaptive learning systems aim to emulate how skilled educators provide every student with the best possible learning experience. We investigate how these systems might be enriched by incorporating activities and indicators of social learning, which focus on the influences of learners' social context and interactions. This doctoral research aims to…

Understanding how people learn the phonological patterns of their language is a major challenge facing the field of phonology. In this dissertation, I approach the issue of phonological learning by focusing on "saltatory" alternations, which occur when two alternating sounds "leap over" an intermediate, invariant sound (e.g.,…