Journal of Psycholinguistic Research最新文献

This study aims to examine how real-time processing of information about the social status of interlocutors (high vs. low) and the imposition of making a refusal by manipulating the indirectness of invitation forms (declining direct invitations vs. declining indirect invitations) affects the interpretation of refusals in Chinese. The event-related potentials results showed that high-status invitees who decline invitations from low-status inviters elicited weaker N400 effects followed by late mitigated negative effects, while high imposition refusals elicited stronger N400 effects followed by increased late negativities. The two factors of social status and imposition functioned independently during the comprehension of refusal utterances. These findings suggest that individuals take the social status of interlocutors and the imposition of making a refusal into consideration as an utterance unfolds, while face-threatening contexts create inferential difficulties for reinterpreting the pragmatic implications of an utterance.

The article aims to study the influence of music and music-calligraphy practice on the development of creative thinking among preschool children. The study used the general screening model of the Torrance Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement test (TCAMt) to assess the level of motor creativity in children. The study participants were 120 4-5 year-old children. The results of the calculations demonstrate an increase in the values of the four factors after the interventions. Fluency increased on average: for group A, which practiced musical intervention, by 28%; for group B, which practiced musical-calligraphic intervention, by 29%. The imagination factor increased for group A by 23.5% and for group B by 45.5%. This study has shown that the use of musical-calligraphic practice provides higher creative thinking skills in the categories of "imagination" and "originality", while "fluency" and "flexibility" are not different from the use of a single musical practice. This study has practical and scientific value, as it proves the influence of music and music-calligraphy practices on creativity development in children. The study results can be applied in preschool educational institutions, which are interested in increasing students' creativity.

Despite the accumulated body of research on teachers' professional development few have offered a relationship between professional development and knowledge sharing or reflective practice. We investigated whether Iranian Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) teachers' reflective teaching and their knowledge sharing can predict their professional success. To answer the research questions a quantitative approach was utilized. Then, 264 faculty members through available sampling were recruited using three questionnaires, namely reflective teaching measurement scale by Akbari et al. (System, 38(2): 211-227, 2010), teacher professional development scale by Soodmand Afshar and Ghasemi (J Teach Lang Skills 37: 169-210, 2018), and Teachers' knowledge sharing behavior by Ramayah et al. (Eval Rev 38(2): 1-28, 2014). Findings showed that knowledge sharing has a significant relationship with professional development (P < 0.001). In addition, teachers' reflective practice has a significant relationship with professional development (P < 0.001). Based on the findings we suggest that TEFL teachers should promote their knowledge sharing and reflection to improve their professional development.

Idioms, along with other formulaic multiword phrases, represent a substantial part of vocabulary knowledge. This study investigates how idiom knowledge develops through the adult lifespan, comparing familiarity and transparency ratings for a large set of common English idioms. A total of 237 participants, ranging from 18 to 77 years old, collectively rated 200 idioms. They also completed a short single-word vocabulary test and provided information about their educational background. Results showed a clear increase in idiom and single-word knowledge throughout the lifespan. For idioms, this represented a jump from the youngest age-group, then a steady increase from the age of around 25 onward. Single word vocabulary knowledge increased more evenly as a function of age. Perceptions of transparency were not affected in the same way. I discuss what these results suggest about the development of vocabulary through the lifespan.

Recall deals with the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information. Bilinguals have greater flexibility for recall as the person will have multiple language choices to come out with the target word. In other words, a bilingual will have more lexical choices to retrieve the target word. The current study investigates cross-language recall abilities in balanced bilinguals. A cohort group of participants were divided into three subgroups. The first sub-group of participants was asked to recall in second language while the stimuli/ target words were presented in the first language. The second group of participants was asked to recall in their first language while the stimuli/target words were presented in the second language. The third group of participants was allowed to carry out a free recall task. The descriptive analysis backed by statistical analysis revealed no significant difference between three groups suggesting that balanced bilinguals would have greater cognitive flexibility resulting in superior cross-language recall abilities in this population.

Past studies of sentiment analysis have mainly applied algorithms based on vocabulary categories and emotional characteristics to detect the emotionality of text. However, the collocation of state-changing words and emotional vocabulary affects emotions. For example, adverbs of degree strengthen emotions, and negative adverbs reverse emotions. This study investigated the weighted effect of state-changing words on emotion. The research material comprised 73 state-changing words that were collocated with four emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, and anger. A total of 84 participants participated in the vocabulary assessment. The results revealed that state-changing words could be classified into four types: intensifying, weakening, neutralizing, and reversing. In a comparison of the weighting factors among emotions, the weighting effect of the same state-changing word in the positive emotion category was particularly evident. The results could serve as a reference for follow-up studies on detecting emotions in text.

This paper aims to study how different musical act modes influence the student's psychological state, creative development, and music appreciation. In particular, the research focuses on concert videos, video clips, and audio records. Based on the Likert scale, the authors determined that video clips significantly influenced students' learning process since they contributed to the combination of visual and sound effects. Video concerts were less important. Concerts are mainly staged actions with frequent use of pre-recorded music, affecting the accuracy of singing techniques. The authors concluded that the most effective approach is systematical learning using the effect of colors and sounds with a preliminary analysis of musical compositions. The results showed that the most significant number of students significantly improved their knowledge (87%, with an average score of 0.92), and the elements of a musical act (rhythm, color scheme, text, and performance) influenced their development. The practical significance of the paper lies in the use of approaches to learning using colors and sound effects with an emphasis on the development of certain elements. The study prospects involve determining how effectively the elements of a musical act influence the psychological state resulting from comparing music genres.

The present study offered the emotion prototypicality (EmoPro) ratings for 1,083 Chinese emotion words. EmoPro measures the extent to which an emotion word refers to an emotion. Emotion words with high EmoPro are representative emotion-label words, so EmoPro provides an objective evaluation of defining an emotion-label word. The EmoPro rating results had adequate reliability and validity. The correlation results showed that EmoPro was related to valence, arousal, age of acquisition (AoA), and word frequency, but was not associated with concreteness, familiarity, and imageability. The EmoPro was also predicted by valence, arousal, and AoA. However, EmoPro failed to predict lexical decision performance after considering the contribution of valence, arousal, AoA, and concreteness. The present normative study is of high value for selecting the most typical emotion-label words as stimuli in future affective science and psycholinguistic studies.

Taking the economic issue of Trump's First State of the Union Address (SUA) as original data, the present study examined the evaluation features of political speeches by adopting a holistic approach, which includes both macro and micro dimensions. At the macro level, a series of semantic patterns were identified, with Goal-Achievement and General-Example Patterns being the most prevalent. They predetermine the evaluative tone, giving the surrounding statements evaluative meanings, exhibiting the radiating nature of evaluative meaning; at the micro level, a variety of resources have been identified, both explicit and implicit, lexical and syntactical, attitudinal and gradational, which collaborate to reinforce the subjective evaluation, revealing the holistic characteristic in the realization of evaluative meaning. Throughout the analysis, three evaluative mechanisms have been proposed, which are the coupling of meaning, semantic prosody, and tense switching. They collaborate and promote the subjective evaluation to be established and reinforced in a cumulative, gradient or hybrid pattern. In a narrow sense, the present study has partially revealed Trump's political discourse feature. Broadly speaking, it contributes to the theoretical development of the appraisal framework by refining existing evaluation systems through a holistic research paradigm, which in turn facilitates accurate interpretation of various types of discourse.

It is known that the words with the letters "f" and "x" used in the Kazakh language originated from Arabic and Persian and are found in European words that entered through the Russian language. Of the article is to discuss the basics of translating the letters "f" and "x" into the Kazakh alphabet. The use of religious and European words in normative dictionaries, with the letters "f" and "x" and entered into the language through the Russian language, is analysed on the basis of the methods of linguistics and statistical analysis. The specifics of these letters in religious discourse and their use in onomastics will be determined. The reasons for the inclusion of the letters "f" and "x" in the improved new alphabet are mentioned. Investigating how the Kazakh language adopts and modifies foreign sounds can contribute to a broader understanding of linguistic adaptation. The proposed research paper can be used in the analysis of the problem of assimilation of borrowed words.