I’m Doing Better on My Own: Social Inhibition in Vocabulary Learning in Adults

Published: 05 June 2019Vocabulary learning is better achieved by children facing a teacher than when presented to the same teacher through video (so-called “video deficit” effect), which has significant implications for toddlers’ education. Since millions of adults also learn new vocabulary when acquiring a second language (L2), it is important to explore whether adults suffer from “video deficit” effects, as children do. In the present study, we report two experiments in which Spanish native late learners of English were involved in a vocabulary learning task. In Experiment 1, participants had to learn English (L2) labels associated to real objects. In Experiment 2, participants had to learn English (L2) and Spanish (L1) labels associated to novel objects. In both experiments, vocabulary learning was divided into three conditions: In the NoFace condition, participants were presented with the objects and their auditory labels, through video. In the Video condition, a teacher was showing the objects and uttering their names, through video. The Live condition was equivalent, except that the teacher was facing the participants in the room. Each condition was followed by a recall test. Better learning in Video compared to NoFace condition revealed that adults benefit from the teacher’s display with direct gaze, confirming the fundamental role of face display with direct gaze in social communication in adults. Interestingly, adults learned better through Video than in the Live condition. Those results were obtained in L2 vocabulary learning in both Experiments 1 and 2, and also generalized to native language in Experiment 2. We argue that adults suffer from social inhibition, meaning that they perform worse when in the presence of another person during task performance. In sum, we show that video-mediated teaching might not be detrimental for adults learning new vocabulary lists, as it is the case for young children. These results might have important implications for pedagogical programs targeting adults’ second language vocabulary learning, since proper acquisition of vocabulary list can be achieved through video including a teacher’s display.This research was funded by a grant from the FP7/2007–2013 Cooperation grant agreement 613465-AThEME, an ERC grant from the European Research Council (ERC-2011-ADG-295362), grants from the Spanish Government (PSI2014-54500, PSI2015-65694, and PSI2017-82941-P), and from the Basque Government (PI_2015_1_25 and PIBA18_29)

Reconstruction of the Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Research Experiment Sounding Rocket Flight Test

The Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Research and Experiments project is a flight test program for development of supersonic parachutes for potential future use at Mars. The flight tests are designed to reduce risk for the Mars 2020 mission. The flight tests involve two Disk-Gap-Band parachute designs to be tested at relevant Mach number and dynamic pressure conditions for the Mars 2020 entry capsule. The first of these parachutes is a built-to-print design that was successfully employed by the Mars Science Laboratory lander at Mars in August 2012, and the second is a design that is strengthened in material properties and construction methods but has the same geometry as that used by Mars Science Laboratory. The first flight test of the built-to-print parachute took place on October 4, 2017 at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility. This paper describes the instrumentation, data analysis techniques, and atmospheric and trajectory reconstruction results from this flight test

“Hello? Are You Still There?” The Impact of Social Media on Self-Disclosure and Reciprocity in Interpersonal Relationships: A Literature Review

Social Media sites have become increasingly popular platforms for developing and maintaining interpersonal relationships. Although the usage of computer-mediated communication is normal in day-to-day life, the understanding behind how and why these relationships grow is scarce. This literature review considers relational elements such as self-disclosure and reciprocity, and how they are impacted by online elements such as an asynchronous context, controllability, and the disinhibition effect. Contrary to interpersonal relationships that develop in a physical context, the law of reciprocity is fulfilled and replaced by affirmation and recognition from relational partners, while self-disclosure continues to be a vital element within relationships. Developing an online relationship isn’t difficult, but the factors involved are varied and worth exploring in further study

On Anomaly-Free Dark Matter Models

We investigate the predictions of anomaly-free dark matter models for direct and indirect detection experiments. We focus on gauge theories where the existence of a fermionic dark matter candidate is predicted by anomaly cancellation, its mass is defined by the new symmetry breaking scale, and its stability is guaranteed by a remnant symmetry after the breaking of the gauge symmetry. We find an upper bound on the symmetry breaking scale by applying the relic density and perturbative constraints. The anomaly-free property of the theories allows us to perform a full study of the gamma lines from dark matter annihilation. We investigate the correlation between predictions for final radiation processes and gamma lines. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the latter can be distinguished from the continuum gamma ray spectrum.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures. v2: minor changes to the text, references added, version to appear in PR

Alien Registration- Chasse, Clara D. (Madawaska, Aroostook County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/24953/thumbnail.jp

Language control in bilingual production: Insights from error rate and error type in sentence production

First published online: 16 October 2020Most research showing that cognates are named faster than non-cognates has focused on isolated word production which might not realistically reflect cognitive demands in sentence production. Here, we explored whether cognates elicit interference by examining error rates during sentence production, and how this interference is resolved by language control mechanisms. Twenty highly proficient Spanish–English bilinguals described visual scenes with sentence structures ‘NP1-verb-NP2’ (NP = noun-phrase). Half the nouns and half the verbs were cognates and two manipulations created high control demands. Both situations that demanded higher inhibitory control pushed the cognate effect from facilitation towards interference. These findings suggest that cognates, similar to phonologically similar words within a language, can induce not only facilitation but robust interference.We thank Michael Freund and Nicholas McCloskey for their help with data collection. This work was supported in part by the Therapeutic Cognitive Neuroscience Fund endowed to the Cognitive Neurology division of the Neurology Department at Johns Hopkins University. C.D. Martin was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (SEV-2015-490; PSI2017-82941-P; Europa-Excelencia ERC2018-092833), the Basque Government (PIBA18-29), and the European Research Council (ERC-2018-COG-819093). N. Nozari was also supported by a NSF grant (NSF BCS-1949631)