The affective turn in the second language (L2) acquisition literature has witnessed a shift from the periphery to a clear focus on emotions. Nevertheless, this shift tends to examine emotion separately from cognition. Vygotsky's "perezhivanie" provides a theoretical lens to explore the inextricable interconnectedness of emotion and…

In order to examine whether syntactic processing is a necessary prerequisite for semantic integration in Japanese, cortical activation was monitored while participants engaged in silent reading task. Congruous sentences (CON), semantic violation sentences (V-SEM), and syntactic violation sentences (V-SYN) were presented in the experiment. The…

Recursive NPs are difficult to produce and late to emerge. We compare prosodic and syntactic abilities in Japanese-speaking five- and six-year-olds (n = 28) and adults (n = 10). It is reported that syntactic structure in Japanese is prosodically marked via downstep and metrical boost. Results of an elicited imitation task suggested that children…

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 present study examined the locus responsible for the effect of emotional state on sentence processing in healthy native speakers of Japanese, using event-related brain potentials. The participants were induced into a happy, neutral, or sad mood and then subjected to electroencephalogram recording during which emotionally neutral sentences,…

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…

This study adopts Oxford's (2017) definition of language learning strategies (LLS) framed by self-regulation theory and explores the longitudinal development in the use of three second language (L2) writing strategies (global planning, local planning, L1-to-L2 translation) by Japanese university students as it interacts with cognitive, affective,…

Previous research has demonstrated that adults are successful at visually tracking rigidly moving items, but experience great difficulties when tracking substance-like "pouring" items. Using a comparative approach, we investigated whether the presence/absence of the grammatical count-mass distinction influences adults and children's…

This study investigated the application of the speeded lexical decision task to L2 aural processing efficiency. One-hundred and twenty Japanese university students completed an aural word/nonword task. When the variation of lexical decision time (CV) was correlated with reaction time (RT), the results suggested that the single-word recognition…

In recent years, it has been reported that WM (working memory) is concerned with word generation, but many points regarding the relationship between the individual differences of WM capacity and the patterns of word generation remain unclear. This study is to investigate these unclear points by using three types of word fluency task with different…

Tests request strategies used by speakers of Japanese and British English in two culturally neutral situations likely to trigger a request. Concludes that the degree of imposition goes on a par with the number of politeness strategies but that there are differences in the types of strategies used: the British use conventional forms and supportive…

A divided-attention experiment with 24 college students who were native speakers of Japanese speaking English and 16 English-Japanese bilingual students speaking Japanese confirm the prediction that performance in a thinking task declines when a concurrent linguistic task in a foreign language is required. (SLD)

Reports on a patient of Japanese background with suspected dementia in an English-speaking geriatric unit. The subject was tested in Japanese using tasks such as naming, story recall, and processing by semantic category. Results demonstrate the potential contribution of information from language-based tasks in the person's preferred language to…

This experimental study examined how and to what extent native speakers of Japanese acquire syntactic properties of English reflexives. There is emphasis on the effects of the Governing Category Parameter (Wexler and Manzini, 1987), which relates to Principle A of the Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1981). It is hypothesized that second language (L2)…

In this Canadian college study, 22 Japanese, English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners' translation processes and writings were examined and contrasted with the same group's first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) writing performance. All subjects (aged 19-23 years) had been educated in Japan in Japanese prior to attending English-language…