This book is unique in bringing together studies on instructed second language acquisition that focus on a common question: "What renders this research particularly relevant to classroom applications, and what are the advantages, challenges, and potential pitfalls of the methodology adopted?" The empirical studies feature experimental,…

This book is the first to bring together a collection of recent empirical studies investigating languaging, an important construct first introduced by Swain in 2006 but which has since been deployed in a growing number of L2 studies. The contributing authors include both established and emerging authors from around the globe. They report on…

This document presents a study of natural language understanding of computer programs. In the study, the performance of IRUS, a natural language query system designed to interface with a database, was compared with the performance of preschool and early elementary school children in answering questions about a specific database. Questions used in…

In the controversy over the conceptualization of language and verbal behavior there is an underlying unity of goals and concepts, characterized in the teaching and learning of the first language as acquisition or transmission of skills. Both the behaviorist and cognitive perspectives of learning accommodate this point of view conceptually, if not…

A study of the cognitive processes involved in achieving coherence in discourse examined a major factor affecting the accessibility of referents: the length of absence of the referent from the distribution of different types of grammatical referential devices (definite nouns and anaphoric pronouns) in discourse. Six versions of a set of twenty…

The study examined the encoding function in student note taking in relationship to learning from a university lecture. It was expected that note taking effectiveness would be positively related to learning; and, that the notes of high and low effective note takers would differ significantly. After pretesting, a 551-word lecture on research methods…

Describes three experiments that examined the processing of speech by dyslexic readers. Compares their performance with that of age-matched and reading-ability-matched controls. Shows that dyslexics have difficulty with the nonlexical procedures involved in verbal repetition. (HOD)

This report summarizes research on experienced programmers' comprehension of computer programs that was carried out over a three-year contract period (1982-85). Following an extensive review of the programming skill literature, an analysis of programs based on the multiple abstractions (points-of-view) that characterize program text and design was…

Investigates the metalinguistic ability of monolingual or bilingual children between five and nine years of age on two language tasks (grammaticality judgment and correction). (HOD)

This research is testing the suggestion that acquisition and representation of formal language knowledge of dysphasic children is qualitatively different from the normal language acquisition/representation processes. In a cohort-sequential design, aspects of language and cognitive development of 120 dysphasic children aged 6-14 are being analyzed…

Examines the effects of age on hearing children's oral rather than written story production and whether there are age-related changes in the signed productions of deaf children comparable to those observed in hearing age-mates. (HOD)

Twenty reading-disabled, 10 math-disabled, and 25 control-group college students were assessed on a battery of psychophysical tasks that included 5 tests of temporal processing. Findings suggest that poor temporal processing is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of reading disability but that there is a modest association between the two…

A study was conducted to provide a replication of the gaze duration algorithm proposed by M. A. Just and P. A. Carpenter using a different kind of passage, to compare the three gaze duration algorithms that have been proposed by other researchers, and to measure processing time in reading. Fifty-one college students read a passage while their eye…

Three sets of experiments compared skilled and unskilled college and school age (sixth through eighth grade) readers' processing of spoken and printed sentences in isolation and in story context. The two types of readers differed in their processing of the structural, thematic, and schematic properties of sentences in both reading and listening.…