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1. Advanced Second Language Learners of Mandarin Show Persistent Deficits for Lexical Tone Encoding in Picture-to-Word Form Matching

   https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.689423  

   Pelzl, Eric; Lau, Ellen; Guo, Taomei; DeKeyser, Robert (June 2021, Frontiers in communication)

   null (Ed.)

   People who grow up speaking a language without lexical tones typically find it difficult to master tonal languages after childhood. Accumulating research suggests that much of the challenge for these second language (L2) speakers has to do not with identification of the tones themselves, but with the bindings between tones and lexical units. The question that remains open is how much of these lexical binding problems are problems of encoding (incomplete knowledge of the tone-to-word relations) vs. retrieval (failure to access those relations in online processing). While recent work using lexical decision tasks suggests that both may play a role, one issue is that failure on a lexical decision task may reflect a lack of learner confidence about what is not a word, rather than non-native representation or processing of known words. Here we provide complementary evidence using a picture- phonology matching paradigm in Mandarin in which participants decide whether or not a spoken target matches a specific image, with concurrent event-related potential (ERP) recording to provide potential insight into differences in L1 and L2 tone processing strategies. As in the lexical decision case, we find that advanced L2 learners show a clear disadvantage in accurately identifying tone mismatched targets relative to vowel mismatched targets. We explore the contribution of incomplete/uncertain lexical knowledge to this performance disadvantage by examining individual data from an explicit tone knowledge post-test. Results suggest that explicit tone word knowledge and confidence explains some but not all of the errors in picture-phonology matching. Analysis of ERPs from correct trials shows some differences in the strength of L1 and L2 responses, but does not provide clear evidence toward differences in processing that could explain the L2 disadvantage for tones. In sum, these results converge with previous evidence from lexical decision tasks in showing that advanced L2 listeners continue to have difficulties with lexical tone recognition, and in suggesting that these difficulties reflect problems both in encoding lexical tone knowledge and in retrieving that knowledge in real time. 

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2. Predicting Human Judgments of Relational Similarity: A Comparison of Computational Models Based on Vector Representations of Meaning

   Snefjella, B.; Ichien, N.; Holyoak, K. J.; Lu, H. (January 2022, Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society)

   Computational models of verbal analogy and relational similarity judgments can employ different types of vector representations of word meanings (embeddings) generated by machine-learning algorithms. An important question is whether human-like relational processing depends on explicit representations of relations (i.e., representations separable from those of the concepts being related), or whether implicit relation representations suffice. Earlier machine-learning models produced static embeddings for individual words, identical across all contexts. However, more recent Large Language Models (LLMs), which use transformer architectures applied to much larger training corpora, are able to produce contextualized embeddings that have the potential to capture implicit knowledge of semantic relations. Here we compare multiple models based on different types of embeddings to human data concerning judgments of relational similarity and solutions of verbal analogy problems. For two datasets, a model that learns explicit representations of relations, Bayesian Analogy with Relational Transformations (BART), captured human performance more successfully than either a model using static embeddings (Word2vec) or models using contextualized embeddings created by LLMs (BERT, RoBERTa, and GPT-2). These findings support the proposal that human thinking depends on representations that separate relations from the concepts they relate. 

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3. Exploring effects of brief daily exposure to unfamiliar accent on listening performance and cognitive load

   https://doi.org/10.3389/flang.2024.1243678  

   McLaughlin, Drew J; Baese-Berk, Melissa M; Van_Engen, Kristin J (May 2024, Frontiers in Language Sciences)

   IntroductionListeners rapidly “tune” to unfamiliar accented speech, and some evidence also suggests that they may improve over multiple days of exposure. The present study aimed to measure accommodation of unfamiliar second language- (L2-) accented speech over a consecutive 5-day period using both a measure of listening performance (speech recognition accuracy) and a measure of cognitive load (a dual-task paradigm). MethodsAll subjects completed a dual-task paradigm with L1 and L2 accent on Days 1 and 5, and were given brief exposure to either L1 (control group) or unfamiliar L2 (training groups) accent on Days 2–4. One training group was exposed to the L2 accent via a standard speech transcription task while the other was exposed to the L2 accent via a transcription task that included implicit feedback (i.e., showing the correct answer after each trial). ResultsAlthough overall improvement in listening performance and reduction in cognitive load were observed from Days 1 to 5, our results indicated neither a larger benefit for the L2 accent training groups compared to the control group nor a difference based on the implicit feedback manipulation. DiscussionWe conclude that the L2 accent trainings implemented in the present study did not successfully promote long-term learning benefits of a statistically meaningful magnitude, presenting our findings as a methodologically informative starting point for future research on this topic. 

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4. Investigating the Development of Preservice Science Teachers’ Nature of Science Instructional Views Across Rings of the Family Resemblance Approach Wheel

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-023-00418-7  

   Voss, Sarah; Kent-Schneider, Isaiah; Kruse, Jerrid; Daemicke, Ren (February 2023, Science & Education)

   While much is known about teacher learning of nature of science (NOS) concepts, less is known about how teachers develop an understanding of how to effectively teach NOS or how instructional views might differ across levels of the Family Resemblance Approach (FRA) wheel. Therefore, this study investigated the NOS instructional views related to different levels of the FRA wheel of preservice secondary science teachers as they completed a semester-long NOS course. At four times during the semester, data was collected through written documents and interviews about NOS instructional views. Participant NOS instructional views were evaluated in terms of three aspects of NOS teaching: explicit, reflective, and role of context (McComas et al., 2020). In terms of the explicit and reflective components of NOS instruction, participants generally progressed from utilizing inaccurate representations of NOS to inclusion of accurate implicit messages, and finally to explicit reflective instruction often mimicking course activities. As the semester progressed, their questioning also moved toward targeting more specific NOS aspects. As far as the role of context, participants moved from treating NOS as its own topic to a more embedded approach. Other findings include that preservice teachers tended to use more abstract and contextualized activities for social institutional aspects of NOS as opposed to concrete and moderately contextualized activities for cognitive-epistemic NOS. Features of the NOS course may account for some aspects of the learning progressions observed. 

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5. Effects of individual differences in text exposure on sentence comprehension

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-43801-8  

   Stoops, Anastasia; Montag, Jessica L. (December 2023, Scientific Reports)

   Abstract Linguistic experience plays a clear role in accounting for variability in sentence comprehension behavior across individuals and across sentence types. We aimed to understand how individual differences in reading experience predict reading behavior. Corpus analyses revealed the frequencies with which our experimental items appeared in written and spoken language. We hypothesized that reading experience should affect sentence comprehension most substantially for sentence types that individuals primarily encounter through written language. Readers with more text exposure were faster and more accurate readers overall, but they read sentence types biased to written language particularly faster than did readers with less text exposure. We see clear effects of text exposure on sentence comprehension in ways that allow explicit links between written and spoken corpus statistics and behavior. We discuss theoretical implications of effects of text exposure for experience-based approaches to sentence processing. 

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