Good enough processing: what have we learned in the 20 years since Ferreira et al. (2002)?

Traditionally, language processing has been thought of in terms of complete processing of the input. In contrast to this, Ferreira and colleagues put forth the idea of good enough processing. The proposal was that during everyday processing, ambiguities remain unresolved, we rely on heuristics instead of full analyses, and we carry out deep processing only if we need to for the task at hand. This idea has gathered substantial traction since its conception. In the current work, I review the papers that have tested the three key claims of good enough processing: ambiguities remain unresolved and underspecified, we use heuristics to parse sentences, and deep processing is only carried out if required by the task. I find mixed evidence for these claims and conclude with an appeal to further refinement of the claims and predictions of the theory

A platform to protest: A virtual ethnography of the UWC Fees WILL Fall Linguistic Landscape.

Magister Artium - MAThe year 2015 and 2016 marked a period of heightened turmoil for the universities in the Western Cape. The three leading institutions in the province were each affected by student-led protest during that year. The Rhodes Must Fall Campaign occurred at the University of Cape Town (UCT), followed by Luister at Stellenbosch University (SU) and later the Fees Must Fall Campaign happened at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Of the three universities, UWC was the most affected by the student-led protest in the province. Aside from the financial costs incurred by the physical damages to the university, the effects of the movement also lead to the extended shutdown of UWC in 2015 and again in 2016

Speaker Accent Modulates the Effects of Orthographic and Phonological Similarity on Auditory Processing by Learners of English

Published: 19 May 2022The cognate effect refers to translation equivalents with similar form between languages—i.e., cognates, such as “band” (English) and “banda” (Spanish)—being processed faster than words with dissimilar forms—such as, “cloud” and “nube.” Substantive literature supports this claim, but is mostly based on orthographic similarity and tested in the visual modality. In a previous study, we found an inhibitory orthographic similarity effect in the auditory modality—i.e., greater orthographic similarity led to slower response times and reduced accuracy. The aim of the present study is to explain this effect. In doing so, we explore the role of the speaker’s accent in auditory word recognition and whether native accents lead to a mismatch between the participants’ phonological representation and the stimulus. Participants carried out a lexical decision task and a typing task in which they spelled out the word they heard. Words were produced by two speakers: one with a native English accent (Standard American) and the other with a non-native accent matching that of the participants (native Spanish speaker from Spain). We manipulated orthographic and phonological similarity orthogonally and found that accent did have some effect on both response time and accuracy as well as modulating the effects of similarity. Overall, the non-native accent improved performance, but it did not fully explain why high orthographic similarity items show an inhibitory effect in the auditory modality. Theoretical implications and future directions are discussed.This research was supported by the Basque Government through the BERC 2022-2025 program and by the Spanish State Research Agency through BCBL Severo Ochoa excellence accreditation CEX2020-001010-S. CF and EN-B are supported by MINECO predoctoral grants from the Spanish government (BES-2016-077169) and (BES-2016-078896) respectively. CM was further supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [PID2020-113926GB-I00, PSI2017-82941-P, and RED2018-102615-T] and the Basque Government [PIBA18-29] and funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No:819093 to CM)

Inhibitory and Facilitatory Effects of Phonological and Orthographic Similarity on L2 Word Recognition Across Modalities in Bilinguals

Language perception studies on bilinguals often show that words that share form and meaning across languages (cognates) are easier to process than words that share only meaning. This facilitatory phenomenon is known as the cognate effect. Most previous studies have shown this effect visually, whereas the auditory modality as well as the interplay between type of similarity and modality remain largely unexplored. In this study, highly proficient late Spanish-English bilinguals carried out a lexical decision task in their second language, both visually and auditorily. Words had high or low phonological and orthographic similarity, fully crossed. We also included orthographically identical words (perfect cognates). Our results suggest that similarity in the same modality (i.e., orthographic similarity in the visual modality and phonological similarity in the auditory modality) leads to improved signal detection, whereas similarity across modalities hinders it. We provide support for the idea that perfect cognates are a special category within cognates. Results suggest a need for a conceptual and practical separation between types of similarity in cognate studies. The theoretical implication is that the representations of items are active in both modalities of the non-target language during language processing, which needs to be incorporated to our current processing models.This research was supported by the Basque Government through the BERC 2018-2021 program and by the Spanish State Research Agency through BCBL Severo Ochoa excellence accreditation SEV-2015-0490. CF and ENB are supported by MINECO predoctoral grants from the Spanish government (BES-2016-077169) and (BES-2016-078896), respectively. CDM is further supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [PSI2017-82941-P; RED2018-102615-T], the Basque Government [PIBA18-29], and through a Grant from the H2020 European Research Council [ERC Consolidator Grant ERC-2018-COG-819093

The effects of language and emotionality of stimuli on vocabulary learning

Learning new content and vocabulary in a foreign language can be particularly difficult. Yet, there are educational programs that require people to study in a language they are not native speakers of. For this reason, it is important to understand how these learning processes work and possibly differ from native language learning, as well as to develop strategies to ease this process. The current study takes advantage of emotionality-operationally defined as positive valence and high arousal-to improve memory. In two experiments, the present paper addresses whether participants have more difficulty learning the names of objects they have never seen before in their foreign language and whether embedding them in a positive semantic context can help make learning easier. With this in mind, we had participants (with a minimum of a B2 level of English) in two experiments (43 participants in Experiment 1 and 54 in Experiment 2) read descriptions of made-up objects-either positive or neutral and either in their native or a foreign language. The effects of language varied with the difficulty of the task and measure used. In both cases, learning the words in a positive context improved learning. Importantly, the effect of emotionality was not modulated by language, suggesting that the effects of emotionality are independent of language and could potentially be a useful tool for improving foreign language vocabulary learning

The effects of contextual diversity on incidental vocabulary learning in the native and a foreign language

Published: 18 August 2020Vocabulary learning occurs throughout the lifespan, often implicitly. For foreign language learners, this is particularly challenging as they must acquire a large number of new words with little exposure. In the present study, we explore the effects of contextual diversity—namely, the number of texts a word appears in—on native and foreign language word learning. Participants read several texts that had novel pseudowords replacing high-frequency words. The total number of encounters with the novel words was held constant, but they appeared in 1, 2, 4, or 8 texts. In addition, some participants read the texts in Spanish (their native language) and others in English (their foreign language). We found that increasing contextual diversity improved recall and recognition of the word, as well as the ability to match the word with its meaning while keeping comprehension unimpaired. Using a foreign language only affected performance in the matching task, where participants had to quickly identify the meaning of the word. Results are discussed in the greater context of the word learning and foreign language literature as well as their importance as a teaching tool.This research has been partially funded by grants PGC2018-097145-B-I00, RED2018-102615-T, PSI2015-65689-P, and SEV-2015-0490 from the Spanish Government, H2019/HUM-5705 from the Comunidad de Madrid, and AThEME-613465 from the European Union. This research is supported by the Basque Government through the BERC 2018-2021 program and by the Spanish State Research Agency through BCBL Severo Ochoa excellence accreditation SEV-2015-0490. CF is supported by a MINECO predoctoral grant from the Spanish government (BES-2016-077169)

The effects of language and emotionality of stimuli on vocabulary learning

Learning new content and vocabulary in a foreign language can be particularly difficult. Yet, there are educational programs that require people to study in a language they are not native speakers of. For this reason, it is important to understand how these learning processes work and possibly differ from native language learning, as well as to develop strategies to ease this process. The current study takes advantage of emotionality—operationally defined as positive valence and high arousal—to improve memory. In two experiments, the present paper addresses whether participants have more difficulty learning the names of objects they have never seen before in their foreign language and whether embedding them in a positive semantic context can help make learning easier. With this in mind, we had participants (with a minimum of a B2 level of English) in two experiments (43 participants in Experiment 1 and 54 in Experiment 2) read descriptions of made-up objects—either positive or neutral and either in their native or a foreign language. The effects of language varied with the difficulty of the task and measure used. In both cases, learning the words in a positive context improved learning. Importantly, the effect of emotionality was not modulated by language, suggesting that the effects of emotionality are independent of language and could potentially be a useful tool for improving foreign language vocabulary learning

The Influence of Emotional and Foreign Language Context in Content Learning

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 January 2020Prior research has found reduced emotionality with foreign language use, especially with single words, but what happens if emotionality is conveyed throughout a longer text? Does emotionality affect how well we remember and associate information, that is, content learning? We played participants descriptions of two invented countries and tested how well they remembered facts about these countries. Each participant listened to one positive and one neutral description, which was read either in their native language (Spanish) or in their foreign language (English). Participants remembered facts they heard in positive semantic contexts better than those learned in neutral semantic contexts and did better in their native than their foreign language. Importantly, there was no interaction between language and emotionality, suggesting that the previously reported decrease in emotionality in a foreign language might not extend to all areas of foreign language useThis research has been partially funded by grants PGC2018-097145-B-I00, PSI2015-65689-P, the Basque Government through the BERC 2018-2021 program, SEV-2015-0490 from the Spanish Government, and AThEME-613465 from the European Union. CF is supported by a MINECO predoctoral grant from the Spanish government (BES-2016-077169). AdB is supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship from the European Research Council (grant agreement number 743691). JAD is supported by the Spanish Government grant RED2018-102615-T

Age-related differentiation in verbal and visuo-spatial working memory processing in childhood

Working memory (WM), a key feature of the cognitive system, allows for maintaining and processing information simultaneously and in a controlled manner. WM processing continuously develops across childhood, with significant increases both in verbal and visuo-spatial WM. Verbal and visuospatial WM may show different developmental trajectories, as verbal (but not visuospatial) WM relies on internal verbal rehearsal, which is less developed in younger children. We examined complex VWM and VSWM performance in 125 younger (age 4 to 6 years) and 101 older (age 8 to10 years) children. Latent multi-group modeling showed that (1) older children performed better on both verbal and visuospatial WM span tasks than younger children, (2) both age groups performed better on verbal than visuospatial WM, and (3) a model with two factors representing verbal and visuospatial WM fit the data better than a one-factor model. Importantly, the correlation between the two factors was significantly higher in younger than in older children, suggesting an age-related differentiation of verbal and spatial WM processing in middle childhood. Age-related differentiation is an important characteristic of cognitive functioning and thus the findings contribute to our general understanding of WM processing