Journal of Psycholinguistic Research最新文献

The current study investigates the comprehension of Mandarin Chinese's mei…shenme (not-what) construction among Korean-speaking learners, particularly their acquisition of the 'none' and 'insignificance' readings of this negative wh-pronoun construction. The 'insignificance' reading in Mandarin, which is analogous to the English word "hardly", represents a subtle and frequently used aspect of the language. However, this nuance is absent in Korean, which only conveys the 'none' reading and communicates a complete negation of the sentence. The 'insignificant' reading involves syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic interplay, posing a potential challenge for L2 (second language) learners. Adopting the same truth value judgment task from the L1 (first language) acquisition study by Huang and Crain (Lang Acquis 21(4):339-364, 2014), we found that Korean-speaking learners of Mandarin follow a developmental trajectory similar to L1 learners, acquiring the 'none' reading before the 'insignificance' reading. The observed acquisition of the 'insignificance' reading by advanced learners prompts a careful reconsideration of the Interface Hypothesis, which posits that linguistic properties involving external interface such as pragmatics are particular challenging for L2 acquisition. Overall, the study suggests that inherent linguistic structures are instrumental in initial learning stages, but the extent of exposure to naturalistic language use is also indispensable for the mastery of language subtleties.

This paper reports on an experimental study investigating native Mandarin listeners' perception of two English contrasts involving affricates, /dʒ/-/dɹ/, and /tʃ/-/tɹ/, using a combination of an AXB discrimination task and a Mouse Tracking (MT) identification task. Results show that Mandarin listeners experience substantial difficulty discriminating English affricates when such consonants precede an /u/ vowel, but find discrimination easy when preceding an /i/ vowel, revealing a pervasive effect of phonotactic constraints in Mandarin syllable phonology. The results also demonstrate that MT technology complements traditional psycholinguistic techniques like discrimination tasks and reveals additional information about nonnative listeners' online processing of speech during the decision-making process. By comparing the AXB and MT identification results, we report both similarities and complementarities of the keystroke and mouse-clicking paradigms that should be taken into consideration of L2 perception research designs for tapping into different modes of speech processing. The findings of the present study thus contribute to both our understanding of the influence of native phonology on L2 speech perception, as well as psycholinguistic methodologies for L2 perception research.

The burgeoning interest in the flipped language learning approach (FLLA), characterized by its learner-centered pedagogy and utilization of instructional technology, necessitates a systematic review to synthesize its psychological and learning effects. This review meticulously analyzed 55 peer-reviewed articles published between 2010 and 2023, employing a comprehensive search strategy across major databases including Education Source, ERIC, Web of Science, Scopus, and Computers and Applied Sciences Complete. Through bidirectional citation searching and Boolean logic, this study ensured the inclusion of relevant studies, adhering to stringent eligibility criteria to maintain the review's integrity. The articles were subjected to an inductive paradigmatic analysis to identify empirical evidence of FLLA's affordances and challenges, focusing on psychological effects, learning effects, instructional tools, and educational activities. The review reveals that FLLA promotes a broad spectrum of positive psychological effects, such as enhanced motivation, reduced anxiety, and improved attitudes towards technology, alongside significant learning outcomes including increased learner autonomy, engagement, and skill development. However, challenges such as increased workload and inconsistency in instructional design were also identified. In addition, all 55 studies underwent a structured methodological quality assessment adapted from the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) and four custom domains (sampling adequacy, instrumentation validity, statistical transparency, and ecological validity), revealing generally moderate-to-high methodological quality but with notable variability in sampling and reporting practices. The systematic review concludes that FLLA holds substantial promise for enriching language learning pedagogy, though further research is needed to address its challenges and fully leverage its benefits. The systematic review concludes that FLLA holds substantial promise for enriching language learning pedagogy, though further research is needed to address its challenges and fully leverage its benefits.

In order to probe into the potential to improve students' fluency by using formulaic sequences (FSs), many studies explored the relationship between FSs and oral fluency. However, their findings are sometimes conflicting, without adequate explanations. Yu's (Front Psychol 13:1012225, 2022) study suggested the reason to be that processing advantages of FSs might be neutralized or weakened. This follow-up study takes the structural type into consideration, and explores why FSs sometimes lose processing advantages in oral fluency, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate 120 spoken narratives. Results revealed that despite the small number of fixed FSs, they still mattered more to speakers' speed and breakdown fluency, compared with open-ended FSs. Besides, only the proportion of fixed FSs was positively related to speed, and only the variety of open-ended FSs was negatively related to repairing. The findings suggest that open-ended FSs sometimes fail to promote speed or breakdown fluency, and corrected or reused open-ended FSs could even impair repair fluency. Theoretical and pedagogical implications have been provided accordingly.

This issue is based on a conference that was held in July 2023 and that focused on new advances in the theory and measures of the Referential Process (RP). The concept of the RP was developed in the context of the Multiple Code Theory (MCT) and concerns the complex process by which people are able to connect all manner of experiences, including bodily and emotional experience, to words, in both spoken and written language. A previous issue of this journal, published in 2021, outlined the theory of the referential process, and included empirical and clinical applications. The research studies featured measures of language style based on the Discourse Attributes Analysis Program (DAAP), a computerized text analysis system that was developed by Bernard Maskit in the context of MCT. The 2023 conference covered new developments in the DAAP research program and also featured Dr. Maskit's presentation of the new TDAAP (Time-based DAAP) which analyzes spoken language on the basis of time flow rather than word count. This new program takes a major step towards examining the role of sensory and bodily experience in the verbal communication of experience. The conference was sponsored by the Pacella Research Center of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. It included both in-person and online participants across the U.S. and in Canada, Israel, and Italy, and represented the combined efforts of researchers and clinicians. At the conclusion of the conference, the editor of this journal, Dr. Rafael Javier, invited submission of the papers presented at the meetings for a special issue of the journal. In this introduction, we will briefly outline the theory that provides the conceptual framework for our projects. The next section will provide a brief introduction to the papers that are included in this issue.

The present study aimed to investigate whether bilinguals' affective processing in a second language (L2) was enhanced by semantic meaning and whether different levels of early L2 exposure influenced affective processing in L2. Mandarin native speakers and two groups of Uyghur-Mandarin bilinguals with different levels of L2 exposure at an early age were selected as participants and a priming evaluative decision task was conducted. We orthogonally manipulated the affective and semantic relations between primes and targets in a within-item manner to examine the reciprocal role of semantic meaning in L2 affective processing. For the Mandarin native speaker group, evaluative decisions for the target could be facilitated by semantically related and affective congruent stimuli independently. However, for the Uyghur-Mandarin bilingual groups, we found the significant interactive effects between semantic relatedness and affective congruency that the affective congruency effect could be moderated by semantic relatedness. Moreover, we found that the experience of early exposure to a second language played a role in L2 affective processing. Taken together, these findings demonstrated that L2 affective representations are different from native language (L1), in which L2 affective processing entails semantic meaning access compared with L1.