Across three experiments, the current study explored how accented speech and coarticulation impact how bilingual listeners comprehend code-switches in speech. Eye-tracking methodology was used to compare responses to single-language and code-switched sentences. Experiment 1 observed how accented speech influenced the costs involved in…

Background: The medical information about anemia prevention produced by health-care professionals is difficult to understand because of its complicated terminology. Purpose: To evaluate quantitatively for the first time the clarity of existing online information about anemia prevention in Japanese. Methods: On January 20, 2023, we used the keyword…

Background: Oral comprehension difficulties are prevalent in preschool children with language difficulties and are frequently the target of speech and language therapy (SLT) intervention. To support the implementation of research to practice, there is a need to identify effective interventions for this population and to describe their components.…

Contribution: This article identifies possible ruptures between the ways fundamental notions of exact differential and exact differential equations (EDEs) are employed in mathematics courses and professional engineering disciplines. Background: Engineering students often experience difficulties with mathematics courses which may even lead to…

Educators and researchers have been interested in supporting sentence-level language comprehension for struggling readers, but it has been challenging to research. To investigate the properties of sentences that might be useful targets for future research in instruction and assessment, we coded several features of the items in a computer-adaptive…

There is a growing consensus that the ability to understand and process visual information should be part of the second language (L2) listening construct; however, the findings of studies exploring the use of visuals in L2 listening assessment contexts remain inconclusive. To better understand the underlying reasons for these inconclusive results,…

In the fall semester of 2020, 269 Japanese university students were compared in a quasi-experimental study to determine whether extensive and intensive listening interventions yielded significant gains in L2 listening comprehension. At the beginning of the study, 269 students took a 100-item L2 listening exam, and were randomly placed into an…

This study applied the Mixed Rasch Model (MRM) to the listening comprehension section of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) to detect latent class differential item functioning (DIF) by exploring multiple profiles of second/foreign language listeners. Item responses of 462 examinees to an IELTS listening test were subjected…

Informational video blogs are a popular method of communication among students that may be fruitful educational tools, but their potential benefits and risks remain unclear. Streaming videos created by "YouTubers" are often consumed for entertainment, which may lead students to develop habits that hinder in-depth information processing.…

Research on Theory of Mind (ToM) and reading comprehension is a lively and active field with numerous publications a year. ToM describes a child's ability to identify and reason about the mental states of others (e.g., think, believe, intend, want). The burgeoning findings from this research suggests ToM plays an important role in the reading…

Aim/Purpose: This exploratory qualitative case study examines the perceptions of high-school learners of English regarding a pedagogical intervention involving progressive reduction of captions (full, sentence-level, keyword captions, and no-captions) in enhancing language learning. Background: Recognizing the limitations of caption usage in…

Viewers' attentional selection while looking at scenes is affected by both top-down and bottom-up factors. However, when watching film, viewers typically attend to the movie similarly irrespective of top-down factors--a phenomenon we call the "tyranny of film." A key difference between still pictures and film is that film contains…

Executive functions (EF) have been theoretically implicated in multiple text comprehension. Yet, the contributions of EFs to comprehension and integration of multiple texts have not been tested empirically, and instructional supports for text integration grounded in EFs are only beginning to be developed. Using a conflicting-text paradigm, this…

This article reviews how individual differences have been conceptualized and researched within the area of multiple document literacy, in particular the extent to which proposed relationships between individual differences and the multiple document literacy process of sourcing have been supported by the empirical research. The findings showed that…

Background: Studies of syntactic comprehension and reading comprehension use a wide range of syntactic comprehension tests that vary considerably in format. The goal of this study was to examine to which extent different formats of syntactic comprehension tests measure the same construct. Methods: Sixty-nine Grade 4 students completed multiple…