Journal of Psycholinguistic Research最新文献

Rhythm perception in speech and non-speech acoustic stimuli has been shown to be affected by general acoustic biases as well as by phonological properties of the native language of the listener. The present paper extends the cross-linguistic approach in this field by testing the application of the iambic-trochaic law as an assumed general acoustic bias on rhythmic grouping of non-speech stimuli by speakers of three languages: Arabic, Hebrew and German. These languages were chosen due to relevant differences in their phonological properties on the lexical level alongside similarities on the phrasal level. The results show Iambic-Trochaic-Law (ITL) conforming weak-strong grouping for duration-cued acoustic salience. However, only German participants judged intensity-varying sequences as strong-weak; no grouping preferences were found for speakers of Arabic and Hebrew. Overall these results suggest that prosodic properties of the phonological phrase and of the lexical level of the native language show differing effects on rhythmical grouping.

While abstraction is one of the best studied topics in psychology, there is little consensus on its relationship to valence and affect. Some studies have found that abstraction is associated with greater positivity, while other studies have led to the opposite conclusion. In this paper we suggest that a substantial part of this inconsistency can be attributed to the polysemy of the term abstraction. To address this problem, we use a framework developed by Iliev and Axelrod (Journal of psycholinguistic research, 46(3):715-729, 2017), who have proposed that abstraction should not be treated as a unitary construct, but should be split instead in at least two components. Concreteness is based on the proportion of sensory information in a concept, while precision is based on the aggregation of information corresponding to the concept's position in a semantic taxonomy. While both of these components have been used as operationalizations of abstraction, they can have opposite effects on cognitive performance. Using this framework, we hypothesize that when abstraction is defined as a reduction of precision, it will be associated with greater positivity, but when it is defined as lack of concreteness, it will be associated with less positivity. We test these predictions in a novel study and we find empirical support for both hypotheses. These findings advance our understanding of the link between abstraction and valence, and further demonstrate the multi-component structure of abstraction.

A premise of statistical learning research is that learners attend to and learn the frequencies of co-occurring sounds in the input, or phonotactic sequences. Inherent to the concepts of both frequency and phonotactics is order, or the temporal arrangement of the relevant elements. Order is similarly inherent to statistical learning, yet the effect of order on statistical learning is not well understood. In the present study, adult participants learned the relative frequencies of eight consonant sequences, for example, /mk/ and /st/ in the nonwords /nʌmkət/ and /gɪstək/. Both familiarization and test stimuli were independently ordered and randomized, thus allowing for a relatively broad search for order effects in an established statistical learning paradigm. Participants learned the target frequencies equivalently across the five ordering conditions, indicating no modulating effect of order. Nevertheless, the results reflect an initial pass at further integration of statistical learning with existing research on the effects of order in memory and general cognition. (155 words).

Motivational drivers and emotions that students experience play an important role in the process of learning a new language (L2). This has been recognised by researchers and educators, and extensive research has been conducted in recent decades to examine the psychological and emotional factors involved in L2 learning. However, two ubiquitous epistemic emotions, namely, boredom and curiosity, remain underexplored in the L2 research literature. This study addresses this gap. It performed a series of statistical tests to examine the relationship between these two epistemic emotions and L2 motivation. Specifically, it assessed whether epistemic curiosity plays a mediating role in the nexus of L2 motivation, epistemic curiosity, and epistemic boredom. Data were collected from adolescent learners of English in China (N = 312). The findings from the correlation analysis indicated that epistemic boredom had statistically significant negative relationships with epistemic curiosity and L2 motivation, except for the ought-to L2 self variable, where the relationship was not statistically significant. Conversely, epistemic curiosity had a positive and statistically significant relationship with L2 motivation, except for the ought-to L2 self variable, where the relationship was not statistically significant. Next, the path analysis examined the influence of L2 motivation on epistemic boredom without considering the mediating effect of epistemic curiosity. Its findings indicated that epistemic boredom had a statistically significant negative relationship with the general motivation/attitude and general motivation/effort variables. The subsequent path analysis, which focused solely on two goal-oriented L2 motivation constructs from the Gardnerian framework, detected the mediating role of epistemic curiosity. Some pedagogical implications are drawn from these findings.

Research on alphabetic reading presents conflicting findings concerning the timing of orthographic and meaning processes in reading morphologically complex words. Chinese characters offer distinct visual cues for morphemes, enabling straightforward manipulations to examine orthographic and meaning processes. Guided by the Character-Word Dual Function model, we report four priming experiments that test how a reader's lexical quality impacts the emergence of orthographic and semantic priming effects in reading Chinese compounds. We conducted comparisons between native Chinese speakers and Chinese L2 learners, who vary in their quality of lexical representations. By manipulating the semantic transparency of prime-target pairs, we distinguished meaning from orthographic effects. The emergence of these effects was revealed by varying prime exposure durations. Orthographic effects emerged at shorter exposures for both L1 and L2 readers. However, meaning effects appeared at longer exposure durations only for L1 readers. These results confirm the generality of the orthography-first emergence of morphological effect in reading Chinese and suggest that readers' access to morphological meaning relations increases with experience.

In spite of the proliferation of research studies on vocabulary knowledge, investigating the relationship between self-regulation, vocabulary size, and collocational knowledge among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners has received scant attention. The current study aimed to investigate whether vocabulary and collocation size can explain EFL learners' self-regulated vocabulary learning. A population of 271 EFL learners from three state universities located in Iran participated in taking lexical measures (VST, Lex30, and a collocation test) and filling a questionnaire (SRCvoc). To check the relationship between self-regulated vocabulary learning, vocabulary and collocation size, standard multiple regression was conducted with SPSS. The results of standard multiple regression analysis showed that EFL learners' vocabulary and collocation size could explain a significant portion of the variance in the score of their self-regulation in vocabulary learning. The findings also indicated that verb-noun collocation size and productive vocabulary size were significant predictors of EFL learners' self-regulated capacity in vocabulary learning. Finally, implications and suggestions for future research are offered.

Whether conscious awareness is critical for detecting semantic information in individual words remains debated. We hypothesize that this issue is specific to language type and that orthography serves as a mediator between semantics and conscious awareness. Using a priming-based paradigm called breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS) with a full factorial design, this study investigated whether orthographic similarity and semantic relatedness between the prime and target could modulate conscious access to Chinese single characters. Statistics indicated that semantic relatedness did not facilitate the character's breakthrough from CFS unless combined with orthographic similarity, although orthographic similarity alone had an inhibitory effect. The results were discussed in light of the "unconscious binding" hypothesis and object-updating theory in visual perception as well as the unique sub-morphemic construction in psycholinguistics. Our findings demonstrate the possibility of orthography-based semantic processing occurring outside of conscious awareness and suggest that the multilevel interaction activation model may be applicable to the early recognition of Chinese characters.

The research aims to enhance the handling of modal verbs (MVs) in EFL textbooks by leveraging perspectives from corpora that include both native speakers' language data and the language data of individuals who are learning the language. To assess the authenticity of language in textbooks, an analysis between the native corpus and a collection of language data compiled from textbook is conducted. The research delves into the developmental patterns of MV usage among learners through a stratified analysis of student essays (Grades 7, 8, 9). Comparisons between learner patterns and a graded textbook series are made to ascertain potential correlations. A novel aspect of the examination explores how the salience and complexity of L2 forms and functions shape the impact of EFL textbooks on learner production. Findings reveal significant differences in the use of MVs between EFL textbooks and the British National Corpus (BNC). Moreover, analysis of student essays indicates a substantial influence of textbooks on learners' MV usage. The study proposes strategies to enhance EFL textbook design, advocating for authenticity and learner-centric approaches. Utilizing native and learner corpora facilitates targeted instruction, addressing common errors and challenges. The incorporation of authentic language examples from the native corpus is recommended to expose learners to real-world language use. This research underscores the significance of integrating native and learner corpora insights in EFL textbook design, ultimately fostering more effective language learning outcomes.

Chinese/Mandarin language teaching to undergraduate students from non-Chinese speaker countries has garnered significant attention due to China's pivotal role in global political and economic transformations. Mandarin, spoken by 70% of the Chinese population, is not only taught within China but also in several other countries. However, similar to teaching any second or foreign language, instructing Mandarin comes with its share of challenges, which, to the best of our knowledge, have not been thoroughly explored. To delve into these issues, we employed a qualitative (phenomenological) research approach. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 15 teachers and 20 Mandarin language learners, selected using theoretical sampling. Subsequently, the interviews were transcribed into text files and analyzed utilizing qualitative data analysis software, MAXQDA. The challenges and problems identified were categorized into four primary themes: linguistic, educational, psychological, and social/political. The findings hold potential implications for Chinese/Mandarin language policymakers, educators, curriculum developers, and learners.

To avoid misunderstandings, ironic speakers may accompany their ironic remarks with a particular intonation and specific facial expressions that signal that the message should not be taken at face value. The acoustic realization of the ironic tone of voice differs from language to language, whereas the ironic face manifests the speaker's negative stance and might thus have a universal basis. We conducted a study on 574 participants speaking 6 different languages (French, German, Dutch, English, Mandarin, and Italian-the control group) to verify whether they could recognize ironic remarks uttered in Italian in three different modalities: watching muted videos, listening to audio tracks, and when both cues were present. We found that speakers of other languages could overall recognize irony uttered in Italian when all the markers were present, and they relied mostly on visual cues: In all these language groups, accuracy in the audio-only modality was always lower than accuracy in the video-only modality, although this trend was significant only for Chinese and Dutch participants. Moreover, the rate of recognition in the audio-visual modality was always significantly higher compared to the audio-only, while the difference between the audio-visual and the video-only modality was significant only for the English group. Overall, these results speak in favor of the hypothesis of a common basis for the visual expression of irony, whereas the acoustic markers alone do not constitute a reliable cue for the cross-linguistic recognition of irony.