Late L2 Acquisition and Phonological Memory Development

The development of phonological memory, a subdivision of short term memory, is crucial to learning and analyzing sequences of sounds to form words and phrases. This process utilizes short term representation and rehearsal to allow for the eventual long term representation of language. Individuals learning more than one language must acquire even more of these language sequences than monolinguals. Previous research agrees that early Spanish-English bilinguals have superior phonological memory to monolinguals, however the impact of second language acquisition on phonological memory remains unknown. This study examined three groups of undergraduate participants studying Spanish as a second language including study abroad students (SA), students currently enrolled in a Spanish course at or above the 300-level (CE), and students not currently enrolled in a Spanish course (NE). Participants completed tests of phonological memory including digit span and sentence repetition at the beginning and culmination of an academic semester. Participants also provided demographic data, L2 acquisition information, and their frequency of language use so that changes could be calculated. Results revealed that CE students were superior during pretest, but during posttest SA and CE demonstrated comparable results. The NE students demonstrated consistently lower scores. These findings suggest that foreign language instruction may benefit phonological memory development, even in late acquisition of the second language. The possible role of years of formal language instruction will be discussed

Language and memory for object location

In three experiments, we investigated the influence of two types of language on memory for object location: demonstratives (this, that) and possessives (my, your). Participants first read instructions containing demonstratives/possessives to place objects at different locations, and then had to recall those object locations (following object removal). Experiments 1 and 2 tested contrasting predictions of two possible accounts of language on object location memory: the Expectation Model (Coventry, Griffiths, & Hamilton, 2014) and the congruence account (Bonfiglioli, Finocchiaro, Gesierich, Rositani, & Vescovi, 2009). In Experiment 3, the role of attention allocation as a possible mechanism was investigated. Results across all three experiments show striking effects of language on object location memory, with the pattern of data supporting the Expectation Model. In this model, the expected location cued by language and the actual location are concatenated leading to (mis)memory for object location, consistent with models of predictive coding (Bar, 2009; Friston, 2003)

Bilingual episodic memory: an introduction

Our current models of bilingual memory are essentially accounts of semantic memory whose goal is to explain bilingual lexical access to underlying imagistic and conceptual referents. While this research has included episodic memory, it has focused largely on recall for words, phrases, and sentences in the service of understanding the structure of semantic memory. Building on the four papers in this special issue, this article focuses on larger units of episodic memory(from quotidian events with simple narrative form to complex autobiographical memories) in service of developing a model of bilingual episodic memory. This requires integrating theory and research on how culture-specific narrative traditions inform encoding and retrieval with theory and research on the relation between(monolingual) semantic and episodic memory(Schank, 1982; Schank & Abelson, 1995; Tulving, 2002). Then, taking a cue from memory-based text processing studies in psycholinguistics(McKoon & Ratcliff, 1998), we suggest that as language forms surface in the progressive retrieval of features of an event, they trigger further forms within the same language serving to guide a within-language/ within-culture retrieval

Code Generation for Efficient Query Processing in Managed Runtimes

In this paper we examine opportunities arising from the conver-gence of two trends in data management: in-memory database sys-tems (IMDBs), which have received renewed attention following the availability of affordable, very large main memory systems; and language-integrated query, which transparently integrates database queries with programming languages (thus addressing the famous ‘impedance mismatch ’ problem). Language-integrated query not only gives application developers a more convenient way to query external data sources like IMDBs, but also to use the same querying language to query an application’s in-memory collections. The lat-ter offers further transparency to developers as the query language and all data is represented in the data model of the host program-ming language. However, compared to IMDBs, this additional free-dom comes at a higher cost for query evaluation. Our vision is to improve in-memory query processing of application objects by introducing database technologies to managed runtimes. We focus on querying and we leverage query compilation to im-prove query processing on application objects. We explore dif-ferent query compilation strategies and study how they improve the performance of query processing over application data. We take C] as the host programming language as it supports language-integrated query through the LINQ framework. Our techniques de-liver significant performance improvements over the default LINQ implementation. Our work makes important first steps towards a future where data processing applications will commonly run on machines that can store their entire datasets in-memory, and will be written in a single programming language employing language-integrated query and IMDB-inspired runtimes to provide transparent and highly efficient querying. 1

A Concurrent Language with a Uniform Treatment of Regions and Locks

A challenge for programming language research is to design and implement multi-threaded low-level languages providing static guarantees for memory safety and freedom from data races. Towards this goal, we present a concurrent language employing safe region-based memory management and hierarchical locking of regions. Both regions and locks are treated uniformly, and the language supports ownership transfer, early deallocation of regions and early release of locks in a safe manner

Working memory in children with developmental disorders

The aim of the present study was to directly compare working memory skills across students with different developmental disorders to investigate whether the uniqueness of their diagnosis would impact memory skills. The authors report findings confirming differential memory profiles on the basis of the following developmental disorders: Specific Language Impairment, Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, and Asperger syndrome(AS). Specifically, language impairments were associated with selective deficits in verbal short-term and working memory, whereas motor impairments (DCD) were associated with selective deficits in visuospatial short-term and working memory. Children with attention problems were impaired in working memory in both verbal and visuospatial domains, whereas the children with AS had deficits in verbal short-term memory but not in any other memory component. The implications of these findings are discussed in light of support for learning

Exploratory Practice: Researching the Impact of Songs on EFL Learners' Verbal Memory

Traditionally popular songs have been used as a way of enhancing listening and auditory perception skills and teaching vocabulary, but not necessarily for memory recall. Popular song gap-fills are already commonplace within the EFL (English as a foreign language) field; however, this study found that more attention needs to be given, to the lexical, grammatical and phonological items that learners are instructed to retain. The results of this study suggest that, verbal memory is a vital part of language learning that should be incorporated into popular song gap-fills and that EFL teachers, theorists and textbook authors need to review the way language in popular songs is encoded, stored and retrieved, by incorporating memory strategies, following guidelines on gap-selection, including a phonological aspect and using a recycling activity. In this article traditional and contemporary understandings of verbal memory and popular song are outlined and comprehensively analysed within relevant fields that embrace ELT (English language teaching), Biology, Psycholinguistics, Neurolinguistics and Cognitive Psychology perspectives and discusses their pedagogical implications