Dissertations / Theses: 'Cognitive Language'

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Clapp, Amanda Louise. "Investigating cognitive control in language switching." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/14106.

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How do bi/multilinguals switch between languages so effectively that there is no obvious intrusion from the alternatives? One can examine this by comparing language selection with task selection, or language switching with task switching. This is the approach adopted in the first of two strands of research presented in this thesis. In task switching, providing advance warning of the task typically leads to a reduction in the performance ‘switch cost’, suggesting top-down biasing of task selection. It is not clear whether the language switch cost also reduces with preparation, partly because there have been very few attempts to examine preparation for a language switch, and partly because these attempts suffered from non-trivial methodological drawbacks. In Experiments 1-3 I used an optimised picture naming paradigm in which language changed unpredictably and was specified by a language cue presented at different intervals before the picture. Experiment 1, conducted on ‘unbalanced’ bilinguals, revealed some evidence of reduction in the language switch cost for naming times with preparation, but only when cue duration was short. In an attempt to further optimise the paradigm, in Experiment 2 the cue-stimulus interval (which was varied from trial to trial in Experiment 1), was varied over blocks instead. Visual cues were replaced with auditory cues – the latter also enabled a comparison between semantically transparent word cues (the spoken names of the languages) and less transparent cues (fragments of national anthems). Experiment 2 revealed a reduction in switch cost with preparation for naming latencies, but only in the second language; the first language showed the reverse. To examine whether the increase in switch cost with preparation in the first language could be due to unbalanced bilinguals biasing processing towards L2, balanced bilinguals were tested in Experiment 3. This revealed a robust reduction in switch cost in naming latencies for both languages, which was driven primarily by the trials with the anthem cues. However, in the error rates the switch cost increased with preparation interval, thus complicating the interpretation of the reduction observed for response times. Experiment 4 investigated whether preparation for a language switch elicits the electrophysiological patterns commonly found during preparation for a task switch – a switch-induced positive polarity Event-Related Potential (ERP) with a posterior scalp distribution. Contrary to a recent report of the absence of the posterior positivity in language switching, it was clearly present in the present EEG data. As in task switching, the amplitude of the posterior positivity predicted performance. The electrophysiological data suggest that preparation for a language switch and preparation for a task switch rely on highly overlapping control mechanisms. The behavioural data suggest that advance control can be effective in language switching, but perhaps not as effective as in task switching. Experiments 1-3 also examined the effect of stimulus associative history – whether the language used on the previous encounter with a given stimulus influenced performance on the current trial). Having previously named a given picture in the same language benefited overall performance, but did not do so more for switches than repeats. Thus, stimulus associative history does not seem to contribute to the language switch cost. The second strand of my research asked whether bilinguals can set themselves independently for speech vs. comprehension. Previous research has examined the cost of switching the language in output tasks and in input tasks. But, it is not clear whether one can apply separate control settings for input and output selection. To investigate this, I used a paradigm that combined switching languages for speech production and comprehension. My reasoning was that, if there is cross-talk between the control settings for input vs. output, performance in one pathway should benefit if the language selected for the other pathway is the same relative to when it is different: a ‘language match effect’. Conversely, if there is no cross-talk, there should not be a language match effect. In Experiment 5 bilinguals alternated predictably between naming numbers in their first and second language (in runs of 3 trials), whilst also having to semantically categorise spoken words which occasionally (and unpredictably) replaced the numbers. The language of the categorisation ‘probes’ varied over blocks of ~17 naming runs, but was constant within a block. The results showed a clear match effect in the input task (categorisation), but not the output task (naming). To examine the potential role of proficiency, Experiment 6 used the same paradigm to test unbalanced and balanced bilinguals. The pattern of results was qualitatively similar in both groups to that observed in Experiment 5: a language match effect confined to the input task. These results suggest ‘leakage’ from the output control settings into the input control settings.

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Alhanai, Tuka(Tuka Waddah Talib Ali Al Hanai). "Detecting cognitive impairment from spoken language." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122724.

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Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2019
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 141-165).
Dementia comes second only to spinal cord injuries in terms of its debilitating effects; from memory-loss to physical disability. The standard approach to evaluate cognitive conditions are neuropsychological exams, which are conducted via in-person interviews to measure memory, thinking, language, and motor skills. Work is on-going to determine biomarkers of cognitive impairment, yet one modality that has been relatively less explored is speech. Speech has the advantage of being easy to record, and contains the majority of information transmitted during neuropsychological exams. To determine the viability of speech-based biomarkers, we utilize data from the Framingham Heart Study, that contains hour-long audio recordings of neuropsychological exams for over 5,000 individuals. The data is representative of a population and the real-world prevalence of cognitive conditions (3-4%). We first explore modeling cognitive impairment from a relatively small set of 92 subjects with complete information on audio, transcripts, and speaker turns. We loosen these constraints by modeling with only a fraction of audio (~2-3 minutes), of which the speaker segments are defined through text-based diarization. We next apply this diarization method to extract audio features from all 7,000+ recordings (most of which have no transcripts), to model cognitive impairment (AUC 0.83, spec. 78%, sens. 79%). Finally, we eliminate the need for feature-engineering by training a neural network to learn higher-order representations from filterbank features (AUC 0.85, spec. 81%, sens. 82%). Our speech models exhibit strong performance and are comparable to the baseline demographic model (AUC 0.85, spec. 93%, sens. 65%). Further analysis shows that our neural network model automatically learns to detect specific speech activity which clusters according to: pause followed by onset of speech, short burst of speech, speech activity in high-frequency spectral energy bands, and silence.
by Tuka Alhanai.
Ph. D.
Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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Snyder, William Brandon. "Language acquisition and language variation : the role of morphology." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/11130.

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Lin, Hui-Ju. "Bilingualism, feedback, cognitive capacity, and learning strategies in L3 development." Connect to Electronic Thesis (ProQuest) Connect to Electronic Thesis (CONTENTdm), 2009. http://worldcat.org/oclc/453905362/viewonline.

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VAN, CLEAVE MATTHEW JAMES. "THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1186060901.

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Hu, Guiling. "Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying Second Language Listening Comprehension." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2009. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/alesl_diss/11.

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This dissertation research investigates the cognitive mechanisms underlying second language (L2) listening comprehension. I use three types of sentential contexts, congruent, neutral and incongruent, to look at how L2 learners construct meaning in spoken sentence comprehension. The three types of contexts differ in their context predictability. The last word in a congruent context is highly predictable (e.g., Children are more affected by the disease than adults), the last word in a neutral context is likely but not highly predictable (e.g., Children are more affected by the disease than nurses), and the last word in an incongruent context is impossible (e.g., Children are more affected by the disease than chairs). The study shows that, for both native speakers and L2 learners, a consistent context facilitates word recognition. In contrast, an inconsistent context inhibits native speakers’ word recognition but not that of L2 learners. I refer to this new discovery as the facilitation-without-inhibition phenomenon in L2 listening comprehension. Results from follow-up experiments show that this facilitation-without-inhibition phenomenon is a result of insufficient suppression by L2 learners.

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Mahowald, Kyle. "Cognitive and communicative pressures in natural language." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106435.

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Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2016.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 189-204).
Why do languages have the words they do instead of some other set of words? In the first part of this thesis, I argue that cognitive and communicative demands strongly influence the structure of the lexicons of natural languages. It is known that words in natural language are distributed such that shorter words are more frequent and occur after more predictive contexts. I provide evidence that, at least in part, this pattern is driven by word shortenings (i.e., chimp -+ chimpanzee) and that word shortenings can be predicted by principles of efficient communication. I also show that, using nonce words with no pre-existing semantic meaning, a Zipfian correlation between length and frequency emerges in freely produced text and that this correlation is driven by participants' tendency to reuse short words more readily than longer words. In addition to word length, I investigate phonetic probability in a corpus of 97 languages. Across a wide variety of languages and language families, phonetic forms are optimized for efficient communication. And, using baseline phonetic models, I show that the words in the lexicons of four languages (English, Dutch, German, and French) are more tightly clustered in phonetic space than would be suggested by chance alone. This thesis depends on standard methods in language research. How reliable is the data that we work with as a field? In the second part of this thesis, I tackle that question by examining two dominant methods in modern language research: behavioral experiments (specifically syntactic priming) and linguistic acceptability judgments. I present data, based on large-scale surveys, showing that many of the standard syntactic and semantic judgments in a mainstream linguistic journal are flawed. Using this data, I construct a Bayesian prior over judgments and give recommendations for performing small sample-size experiments in linguistics that will not overly burden researchers. Finally, I present a large-scale meta-analysis of syntactic priming (the largest meta-analysis of a psycholinguistic phenomenon) and find that, while many priming studies are severely underpowered, there is no evidence of intense p-hacking.
by Kyle Mahowald.
Ph. D.

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Nácar, García Loreto 1988. "Language acquisition in bilingual infants : Early language discrimination in the auditory and visual domains." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/511361.

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Learning language is a cornerstone in the cognitive development during the first year of life. A fundamental difference between infants growing up in monolingual versus bilingual environments is the necessity of the latter to discriminate between two language systems since very early in life. To be able to learn two different languages, bilingual infants will have to perceive the regularities of each of their two languages while keeping them separated. In this thesis we explore the differences between monolingual and bilingual infants in their early language discrimination abilities as well as the strategies that arise for each group as a consequence of their adaptation to their different linguistic environments. In chapter two, we examine the capacities of monolingual and bilingual 4-month-old infants to discriminate between their native/dominant language from foreign ones in the auditory domain. Our results show that, in this context, bilingual and monolingual infants present different brain signals, both in the temporal and the frequency domain, when listening to their native language. The results pinpoint that discriminating the native language represents a higher cognitive cost for bilingual than for monolingual infants when only auditory information is available. In chapter three we explore the abilities of monolingual and bilingual 8-month-old infants to discriminate between languages in the visual domain. Here we show to infants never exposed to sign languages videos of two different sign languages and we measure their discriminatory abilities using a habituation paradigm. The results show that at this age only bilingual infants can discriminate between the two sign languages. The results of a second control study points in the direction that bilinguals exploit the information coming from the face of the signer to make the distinction. Altogether, the studies presented in this thesis investigate a fundamental ability to learn language - specially in the case of bilingual environments - which is discriminating between different languages. Compared to a monolingual environment, being exposed to a bilingual environment is characterized by receiving more information (2 languages) but with less exposure to each of the languages (on average half of the time to each of them). We argue that the developmental brain is as prepared to learn one language from birth, as it is to learn two. However, to do so, monolingual and bilingual infants will develop particular strategies that will allow them to select the relevant information from the auditory and visual domains.
La adquisición del lenguaje es una pieza fundamental en el desarrollo cognitivo durante el primer año de vida. Una diferencia fundamental entre los bebés que crecen en ambientes monolingües y bilingües es que estos últimos necesitan discriminar entre dos sistemas lingüísticos desde muy temprano en la vida. Para poder aprender dos idiomas, los bebés bilingües tienen que percibir las regularidades de cada uno de sus idiomas y a la vez mantenerlos separados. En esta tesis exploramos las diferencias entre bebés monolingües y bilingües tanto en sus capacidades de discriminación tempranas, como en las estrategias que desarrolla cada grupo como consecuencia de la adaptación a su entorno lingüístico. En el segundo capítulo, examinamos la capacidad de los bebés bilingües y monolingües a los 4 meses de edad para discriminar entre la lengua nativa/dominante de otra extranjera en el dominio auditivo. Nuestros resultados muestran que, en este contexto, los bebés monolingües y bilingües presentan diferentes señales auditivas cuando escuchan su lengua nativa. Los resultados señalan que discriminar la lengua nativa representa un coste cognitivo mayor para los bebés bilingües que para los monolingües cuando sólo sólo disponen de información auditiva. En el capítulo 3, exploramos las habilidades de los bebés monolingües y bilingües a los 8 meses de edad para discriminar lenguas en el dominio visual. Aquí, mostramos a bebés que nunca han sido expuestos a lengua de signos, videos de dos lenguas de signos diferentes y medimos sus habilidades discriminatorias usando un paradigma de habituación. Los resultados muestran que a esta edad sólo los bebés bilingües son capaces de hacer la distinción y apuntan que para ello aprovechan la información proveniente de la cara de la signante.

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Slama, Hichem. "Task-goal switching: Influences of time, language, alertness and expertise." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/229285.

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Almost 100 years ago, Jersild (1927) published his article “Mental Set and Shift”. He borrowed this title from a book of Hollingworth and Poffenberger (1919), according to whom “shifting back and forth from one mental set, one attitude or one task to another, is a relatively ineffective mode of work.” As pointed out by Jersild, the cost of switching between activities or mental sets is, for instance, the reason for Taylor’s model of industrialization and the trend in industry toward specialization. Through specialization, the element of switch is reduced to its minimum because “the cost of shift is loss in efficiency” (Jersild, 1927). However, outside of the factory, switching between multiple tasks is a crucial part of human life and the cost of switching, consequently, impacts our everyday functioning.The main topic of this doctoral dissertation is cognitive flexibility and task switching. The task-switching paradigm requires participants to switch frequently between tasks. Therefore, it measures the capacity of our brain to adapt rapidly according to tasks and goals. Dynamic adaptation according to context and goals is encompassed in cognitive psychology and neurosciences under the term cognitive control. Consequently, the ability to switch between tasks constitutes the part of cognitive control that is needed when the current goal changes and the cognitive system has to adapt. Our experimental contribution aimed at investigating how this task-goal switching can be modulated by factors such as time, language, alertness and expertise. In this introduction, we succinctly review the vast literature about attentional systems, cognitive control and task switching. In the experimental section, we describe the cued match-to-sample task that we developed to investigate task-goal switching and present five experimental studies that address the impact of several factors on task-goal switching. In the general discussion, we summarize our results and consider their implications for cognitive-control and task-switching literatures.
Doctorat en Sciences psychologiques et de l'éducation
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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Ecke, Peter 1964. "Cross-language studies of lexical retrieval: Tip-of-the-tongue states in first and foreign languages." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/282099.

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This dissertation investigates "tip-of-the-tongue" states (TOTs) in native speakers of English, Russian, and Spanish, studying foreign languages, and in fluent Spanish-English bilinguals. Study (1) explored retrospective reports of subjects' every-day experiences with TOTs. Study (2) investigated TOTs (fragmentary information, associated words, resolution type) that were recorded in structured diaries over a four-week period. Experimental study (3) examined TOTs elicited through definition and translation primes in Spanish-English bilinguals in the U.S., and speakers of Spanish in Mexico. Studies (1) and (2) found that English, Russian, and Spanish TOTs display similar characteristics, but also differences concerning reported letters, syllable numbers, and associates. Foreign language TOTs also displayed differences compared to first language TOTs (different target word types, more phonologically related associates, 24% interlingual associates, extensive reference use). Bilingual TOTs involved 22% interlingual associates and above-average resolutions through reference use. Most of the TOT targets across all groups were nouns; proper names occurred relatively infrequently. Subjects' access to gender in Russian and Spanish noun TOTs, strong syntactic constraints on word associates, and the similarity of most target-associate pairs in either meaning or form support two-stage models of lexical production: Word meaning and syntax is processed at a first stage, dissociated from a second stage at which sound structure is accessed. Study (3) elicited high TOT rates for targets from the diaries supporting the respresentativeness of the diary data. Bilinguals were found more susceptible to TOTs (32%) compared to the control group (14%). Translation proved to be a useful TOT elicitation technique reducing ambiguity compared to definition primes. A comparison of targets of different cognate status found increased recall for cognates compared to non-cognates but no reduction in TOT elicitation. Concerning TOT causation and development, it is argued that neither the incomplete activation hypothesis nor the blocking hypothesis can completely account for this data corpus. Various TOT types were suggested: incomplete activation (with or without non-blocking or facilitating associates), incomplete activation with late blocking associates, and early blocking. Whereas most TOTs appeared to be the product of incomplete target activation, some TOTs occurred as a consequence of word substitution errors.

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Pallotta, Vincenzo. "Cognitive language engineering towards robust human-computer interaction /." Lausanne, 2002. http://library.epfl.ch/theses/?display=detail&nr=2630.

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Hong, Namkyung. "Language-specificity and young preschoolers' social-cognitive development." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2017. http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/85189/.

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This thesis investigated the role of linguistic access in reference to mental states in children’s social understanding. The importance of access to, or an understanding of, mentalistic language has been stressed regarding the development of children’s social understanding (e.g., Astington & Baird, 2005). It was predicted that the exposure to the mental-state terms using specific grammatically embedded forms specifying certainty and/or the origins of information would enhance Korean children’s social understanding. There has been a vast body of research, showing the predictive role of executive function on the development of social understanding, in particular false-belief understanding (e.g., Carlson & Moses, 2001; Sabbagh, Xu, Carlson, Moses, & Lee, 2006). However, research on Korean children did not support the view on the general development between the two cognitive skills (e.g., Oh & Lewis; 2008). Thus, the current study explored the relationships between executive function and false belief understanding in response to the debate. Executive function, or higher-level self control, is necessary to fulfil goal-directed action inhibiting irrelevant alternatives (Welsh & Pennington, 1988). Children learning from adults, however, trust information selectively (Koenig & Sabbagh, 2013). As children are required to suppress distracting information for selective trust, it was expected that higher skills in executive function may predict performance on selective trust. Thus, the role of executive function on this social understanding was also examined (in Experiment 1 and 2 for false belief and 5 for selective trust). In Experiments 1 and 2 (N = 175) when a protagonist in a false-belief task expressed either his uncertainty (i.e., -keyss (-ul keya) = may) or certainty (i.e., -ci = really), the linguistic markers influenced 3- and 4-year-olds’ apparent grasp of false beliefs. The different levels of certainty (i.e., -hata = do or –ya hata = must do) were applied to the executive function measures. However, the effects of different linguistic markers on executive skills were not observed. Experiment 3 (N = 144) moved the focus from false-belief understanding to selective trust with the application of differential evidentiality in correct and incorrect speakers. Four types of tasks, presented within a 2 (certainty vs. uncertainty) x 2 (accuracy vs. inaccuracy) design, were administered (N = 36 for each task) to three age groups (3.6-4.5 years, 4.6-5.5 years and 5.6-6.5 years). In order to indicate direct access to information, -te (I saw) was used while –napo (It seems) was used for indirect information. The findings from the four tasks showed a crucial effect of accuracy over certainty in selective trust. Following on from the results of Experiment 3, Experiments 4 and 5 compared the children’s performance in epistemic trust experiments in which linguistic access to the protagonists’ mental states was specified using either two evidential markers (i.e., -te vs. – napo) identifying both certainty and the origins of the protagonist’s knowledge, or specific verb terms (i.e., know vs. think) that expressed certainty. In Experiment 4 (N = 59), the findings revealed different developmental patterns according to the use of the two types of linguistic references (evidential markers vs. explicit verb terms): sensitivity to speakers’ epistemic states using mental-verb terms was in evidence at the age four and by evidentiality around the age six. The final experiment of this work employed a battery of executive function measures along with two selective trust tests, using the same contrasting means of identifying the protagonists’ certainty and knowledge (evidential markers vs. different linguistic terms: N = 84). The findings replicated the different developmental patterns of selective trust found in Experiment 4. There were different associations between executive function and questions of two of the three levels of the standard selective trust measure. Verbal working memory predicted the children’s performance in judging who is correct when the test question used included evidential markers. Visual working memory did the same job when verbal mental-state terms were used. Finally inhibitory control predicted selective learning when verbal terms were used. Taken together, the findings suggest that (a) a grasp of certainty appears earlier than an understanding of evidentiality; (b) the grammaticalized forms of certainty and evidentiality are more likely to influence children’s linguistic access to mental states than more explicit mental-verb terms (positively in false belief and negatively in epistemic trust). These lead to the conclusions that: (c) a mastery of semantics and syntactic forms is needed in developing social-cognitive skills; (d) specific language markers identifying the sources of a protagonist’s knowledge may reduce demands of executive function in processing another’s epistemic states.

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McGlashan, G. Scott. "Towards a cognitive linguistic approach to language comprehension." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/20006.

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This thesis develops a cognitive linguistic approach to language comprehension. The cognitive approach differs from traditional linguistic approaches in that linguistic description is seen as an integral part of the description of cognition, and that the object of description is the nature of conceptual structures, the processes which relate these conceptual structures, and the effect of context upon these processes. As a cognitive description within cognitive science, a computational approach is adopted: language comprehension is described in terms of two modules, a linguistic processing module and a discourse processing module. Within these modules, conceptual structures and processes are given a uniform characterization: structures are characterized as partial objects which are extended by processes into (potentially) less partial objects. In the linguistic processing module, linguistic expressions is characterized as signs which combine as head and modifier. The conceptual structure in signs for lexical expressions are related to the conceptual structure in signs for phrasal expressions by means of two extensional processes: a specification process which unifies a modifier sign with parts of the head sign; and a linking process which extends the head sign by unifying the specified part with its own conceptual structure. This combination yields a result sign with a linguistic conceptual structure for the phrase. The discourse processing module characterizes the interpretation of linguistic conceptual structure by means of two extensional proceses. The first process, anchoring, relates the linguistic conceptual structure to concepts in a model of the discourse by either unifying it with an existing concept, or creating a new concept. The second process, elaboration, extends concepts in the discourse model by means of background knowledge, or theories, which specify relations between and within concepts. This can result in the creation of concepts in the discourse model which are not directly referenced by linguistic expressions.

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Dechter, Eyal. "Using the language of thought." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120620.

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Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2018.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 125-129).
In this thesis, I develop and explore two novel models of how humans might be able to acquire high-level conceputal knowledge by performing probabilistic inference over a language of thought (Fodor 1975) - a space of symbolic and compositional mental representations sufficiently expressive to capture the meanings of human thoughts and utterances. These models and their associated learning algorithms are motivated by an attempt to provide an understanding of the algorithmic principles that might underlie a child's ability to search the haystack of sentences in her language of thought to find the needle that corresponds to any specific concept. The first model takes advantage of the compositionality inherent to LOT representations, framing concept acquisition as program induction in a functional programming language; the Exploration- Compression algorithm this model motivates iteratively builds a library of useful program fragments that, when composed, restructures the search space, making more useful programs shorter and easier to find. The second model, the Infinite Knowledge Base Model (IKM), frames concept learning as probabilistic inference over the space of relational knowledge bases; the algorithm I develop for learning in this model frames this inference problem as a state-space search over abductive proofs of the learner's observed data. This framing allows us to take advantage of powerful techniques from the heuristic search and classical planning literature to guide the learner. In the final part of this thesis, I explore the behavior of the IKM on several case studies of intuitive theories from the concept learning literature, and I discuss evidence for and against it with respect to other approaches to LOT models.
by Eyal Dechter.
Ph. D.

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Broihier, Kevin J. (Kevin John). "Case studies in language learnability." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/10617.

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Bloom, Paul 1963. "Semantic structure and language development." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/13686.

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O'Bryan, Erin Leigh. "Event structure in language comprehension." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/289983.

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This dissertation presents and evaluates the hypothesis that event structure information such as telicity is used during language comprehension. A verb or verb phrase is telic if it denotes an event that necessarily progresses towards an endpoint. The major experimental finding presented in this dissertation is that garden pathing is less severe in reduced relative clause sentences with telic embedded verbs than in those with atelic embedded verbs. For example, in the structurally ambiguous sentence 'The actress awakened/sketched by the writer left in a hurry', less comprehension difficulty occurs on the word 'by' when the embedded verb is telic ('awakened') than when it is atelic ('sketched'). On-line measures of comprehension difficulty in three different experimental paradigms showed this result at the earliest disambiguation point (on the by-phrase). Two of these paradigms involved comprehension in reading, and the third one involved spoken language comprehension. These experiments also included the factor of obligatory transitivity: whether or not the verb requires a direct object. The results show that telicity and obligatory transitivity both immediately affect the severity of the garden path independently of each other. In order to address the issue of how to categorize verb phrases as telic or atelic, I conducted a computerized study which collected semantic judgments and grammaticality judgments on verb phrases used in three classic telicity tests from the event structure literature. The participants in the study were 24 English-speaking students in an introductory linguistics course. The results provide preliminary evidence that sentence frames, such as the adverbials 'for an hour' and 'in an hour', provide an objective means of categorizing verb phrases as telic or atelic. The research strongly suggests that verb telicity information should be included in models of human language comprehension. I discuss means of including telicity in several pre-existing comprehension models. The account that best explains the telicity and transitivity effects taken together is based on identifying canonical sentence patterns associated with thematic roles, as proposed by Townsend and Bever (2001). The information that a verb is inherently telic activates the use of an NV(N) template with an obligatory theme role.

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Vanijdee, Alisa. "Language learning strategy use, interaction with self-instructional materials, and learner autonomy of Thai distance language learners." Thesis, University of Reading, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.365377.

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Lowry, Mark D. "Evaluating Theories of Bilingual Language Control Using Computational Models." Scholar Commons, 2019. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/7852.

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Bilingual language control refers to how bilinguals are able to speak exclusively in one language without the unintended language intruding. Two prominent verbal theories of bilingual language control have been proposed by researchers: the inhibitory control model (ICM) and the lexical selection mechanism model (LSM). The ICM posits that domain-general inhibition is employed in order to suppress the unintended language’s activation. The LSM posits that inhibition is not used; rather a lexical selection mechanism targets only the intended language’s words. In order to better test the theories’ hypotheses, I developed computational models to estimate participants’ reaction times when naming in blocks of semantically related pictures and in blocks of semantically unrelated pictures. For these tasks, the ICM model predicts that semantic interference will be abolished when bilinguals switch languages, while the LSM model does not. In Experiment One, English-Spanish bilinguals named pictures that were either semantically related to the previous four trials, or semantically unrelated to the previous four trials. Research indicated that language switching did not abolish priming effects, supporting the ICM. These results contradict conclusions found in previous literature. To reconcile this, another experiment was conducted. It was similar to Experiment One, except filler trials separated semantically related trials. Results showed that each time a semantically related neighbor was presented, naming latency increased by ~10ms regardless of language switching or number of filler items. It suggests that the existing literature mistook incremental learning effects as priming effects, and it demonstrates a need to incorporate theories of incremental learning into theories of bilingual language control.

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Libben, Maya. "The role of context in bilingual language processing." Thesis, McGill University, 2010. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=86797.

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This thesis investigates the linguistic factors that mediate lexical access in bilinguals. A fundamental question regarding bilingualism is whether the bilingual lexicon has a language-specific organization (having independent or modular memory stores for each known language) or a language-non-specific organization (having an integrated memory store containing all known words in both languages). Previous studies have largely demonstrated that bilinguals simultaneously access representations from both languages during comprehension, thus adhering to the non-selective activation approach. However, the degree to which activation spreads across language representations has been found to depend on several mitigating factors, which are the focus of this research.
The three studies presented in this dissertation investigate access to words that exist across languages such as interlingual homographs (e.g., chat - casual talk in English, cat in French) and cognates (e.g., film and piano, which are identical in English and French). In Chapter 2 (Libben & Titone, 2009), we investigate the effect of sentence context and semantic constraint on non-selective access for bilinguals reading in their second language, using eye-movement methodology. French-English bilinguals read English sentences containing cognates, interlingual homographs, or matched control words. Sentences provided low or high semantic constraint for target-language meanings. Results suggested that bilinguals, reading in their second language, show non-selective access to cross-linguistically ambiguous words during sentence reading, but that this activation is attenuated in high constraint contexts during later stages of processing.
Chapter 3 (Libben et al., under revision) presents two experiments that use a similar sentence reading paradigm as that employed in Chapter 2, but tested English dominant English-French bilinguals reading in their native language. In Experiment 1, participants were presented only with English sentences while in Experiment 2, French filler sentences were also included. Results suggested that, when bilinguals read in their native language they are able to selectively access the context-appropriate language. However, in the presence of second language cues, non-selective spreading of activation occurs. The three experiments presented in Chapter 4 use behavioural techniques to test the generalizability of the findings reported in the previous two studies and investigate specific participant- and lexical-features that contribute to non-selective access patterns.
Together these studies argue for an integrated and context-sensitive bilingual language processing system where the semantic framework that is constructed during reading provides important top-down influences on lexical access of words that are cross-linguistically ambiguous. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings, as well as avenues for future research are discussed.
Cette thèse de doctorat explore les facteurs linguistiques qui affectent l'accès lexical chez les individus bilingues. Une question fondamentale ayant trait au bilinguisme est de déterminer si le lexique bilingue possède une organisation spécifique à chaque langue (comportant des recueils de mots en mémoire qui sont indépendants ou modulaires pour chaque langue connue) ou une organisation intégrée non-spécifique (comportant un seul recueil pour les mots connus dans les deux langues). Des études récentes ont démontré que les bilingues accèdent simultanément aux représentations mentales de mots provenant des deux langues durant la compréhension, supportant ainsi la notion d'accès non-sélectif à un lexique intégré. Cependant, la mesure dans laquelle l'activation lexicale se propage d'une langue à l'autre dépend de plusieurs facteurs mitigeant, et ceux-ci représentent le focus des travaux de recherches présentés ici.
Les trois études présentées dans cette thèse de doctorat explorent l'accès à des mots existant dans deux langues tels que des homographes interlinguales (chat, par exemple, signifie une conversation légère en anglais et un chat en français) et des mots « cognats » (film et piano, par exemple, sont identiques en anglais et en français). Dans le chapitre 2 (Libben & Titone, 2009), nous utilisons la méthode de traçage oculaire pour investiguer les effets que le niveau de contrainte sémantique créé par des phrases a sur l'accès non-sélectif des mots chez des individus bilingues lisant dans leur langue seconde. Dans le cadre de cette étude, des individus bilingues français-anglais lisaient des phrases anglaises contenant des mots cognats, des homographes interlinguales ou des mots contrôles. Les résultats suggèrent que des individus bilingues lisant dans leur langue seconde accèdent de façon non-sélective à des mots pouvant être qualifiés comme ambigus de par leur existence dans les deux langues, mais que cette activation est atténuée à des étapes plus avancées du traitement lexical lorsque les mots rencontrés sont contenus dans des phrases créant un contexte sémantique fort.
Le chapitre 3 (Libben et al., en révision) présente deux expériences utilisant un paradigme de lecture de phrases similaire à celui employé dans le chapitre 2, mais chez des individus bilingues anglais-français dont la langue maternelle est l'anglais lisant dans leur langue maternelle. Dans la première expérience, les participants lisaient une liste de phrases présentées uniquement en anglais, alors que dans la seconde expérience les listes contenaient aussi des phrases françaises. Les résultats suggèrent que les individus bilingues peuvent accéder à leur lexique de manière sélective lorsqu'ils lisent dans leur langue maternelle, activant uniquement les représentations propres à la langue appropriée dans le contexte. Cependant, lorsque mis en présence d'indices provenant de la langue seconde, l'activation lexicale se propage de façon non-sélective. Finalement, les trois expériences présentées dans le chapitre 4 utilisent des techniques comportementales afin de tester la généralisabilité des résultats obtenus dans les deux études précédentes et explorent les facteurs spécifiques aux participants ou aux caractéristiques lexicales qui contribuent aux patrons d'accès non-sélectifs obtenus.
Les résultats de ces études plaident en faveur d'un système de traitement lexical intégré mais sensible au contexte chez les individus bilingues, où le cadre sémantique élaboré durant la lecture procure d'importantes influences de haut en bas sur l'accès lexical de mots dont l'appartenance linguistique est ambigüe. Les implications théoriques et appliquées de ces résultats ainsi que des avenues à explorer dans le futur sont discutées.

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Raphalalani, Matodzi Rebecca. "Basic emotions in Tshivenda : a cognitive semantic analysis." Thesis, Link to the online version, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10019/238.

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Futrell, Richard Landy Jones. "Memory and locality in natural language." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/114075.

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Thesis: Ph. D. in Cognitive Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2017.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 189-211).
I explore the hypothesis that the universal properties of human languages can be explained in terms of efficient communication given fixed human information processing constraints. I argue that under short-term memory constraints, optimal languages should exhibit information locality: words that depend on each other, both in their interpretation and in their statistical distribution, should be close to each other in linear order. The informationtheoretic approach to natural language motivates a study of quantitative syntax in Chapter 2, focusing on word order flexibility. In Chapter 3, I show comprehensive corpus evidence from over 40 languages that word order in grammar and usage is shaped by working memory constraints in the form of dependency locality: a pressure for syntactically linked words to be close. In Chapter 4, I develop a new formal model of language processing cost, called noisy-context surprisal, based on rational inference over noisy memory representations. This model unifies surprisal and memory effects and derives dependency locality effects as a subset of information locality effects. I show that the new processing model also resolves a long-standing paradox in the psycholinguistic literature, structural forgetting, where the effects of memory appear to be language-dependent. In the conclusion I discuss connections to probabilistic grammars, endocentricity, duality of patterning, incremental planning, and deep reinforcement learning.
by Richard Landy Jones Futrell.
Ph. D. in Cognitive Science

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Ionin, Tania. "Article semantics in second language acquisition." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/7963.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2003.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 311-318).
This thesis examines article choice and parameter-setting in second language (L2) acquisition. It argues, on the basis of L2-English elicitation and production data, that L2- learners have access to UG-based semantic distinctions governing article choice, but do not know which distinction is appropriate for English. A Fluctuation Hypothesis (FH) is proposed, according to which L2-learners fluctuate between different parameter settings until the input leads them to set the parameter to the target value. The thesis proposes that articles cross-linguistically may encode definiteness or specificity. The definition of specificity that is adopted is based on Fodor and Sag's (1982) view of specificity as speaker intent to refer. The behavior of referential this, a specificity marker in colloquial English, is examined, and it is proposed that the definition of specificity incorporates the concept of noteworthy property. An Article Choice Parameter is next proposed, which governs whether articles in a given language are distinguished on the basis of definiteness or on the basis of specificity. While English has the Definiteness setting of this parameter, it is suggested, on the basis of data from Mosel and Hovdhaugen (1992), that Samoan has the Specificity setting. It is hypothesized, in accordance with the FH, that L2-learners fluctuate between the two settings of the Article Choice Parameter. This hypothesis leads to the prediction that L2- English errors of article use should come in two types: overuse of the with specific indefinites and overuse of a with non-specific definites. These predictions are examined in a series of studies with adult speakers of Russian and Korean, two languages with no
(cont.) articles. The empirical data confirm the predictions, and show that L2-English article choice is not random but reflects access to the two settings of the Article Choice Parameter. The same patterns of results are found for L-Russian and L-Korean speakers, and it is shown that the results are not attributable to LI-transfer. On the basis of these findings, it is concluded that L2-learners have direct UG-access to semantic distinctions underlying article choice. The data also provide evidence for the existence of a specificity distinction which cross-cuts the definiteness distinction.
bu Tania Ruth Ionin.
Ph.D.

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Piantadosi, Steven Thomas. "Learning and the language of thought." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/68423.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2011.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 179-191).
This thesis develops the hypothesis that key aspects of learning and development can be understood as rational statistical inferences over a compositionally structured representation system, a language of thought (LOT) (Fodor, 1975). In this setup, learners have access to a set of primitive functions and learning consists of composing these functions in order to created structured representations of complex concepts. We present an inductive statistical model over these representations that formalizes an optimal Bayesian trade-off between representational complexity and fit to the observed data. This approach is first applied to the case of number-word acquisition, for which statistical learning with a LOT can explain key developmental patterns and resolve philosophically troublesome aspects of previous developmental theories. Second, we show how these same formal tools can be applied to children's acquisition of quantifiers. The model explains how children may achieve adult competence with quantifiers' literal meanings and presuppositions, and predicts several of the most-studied errors children make while learning these words. Finally, we model adult patterns of generalization in a massive concept-learning experiment. These results provide evidence for LOT models over other approaches and provide quantitative evaluation of different particular LOTs.
by Steven Thomas Piantadosi.
Ph.D.

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Shi, Enchao. "Second language grammar and secondary predication." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/289919.

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This study aims to formulate a theory of L2 grammar adequate enough to account for the final L2 state. We argued that L 2 I-language was free of L1 properties, the basis of the CHL2 Uniformity Hypothesis (CUH), and that L1-related performance data were effects of the Relativized Transfer Condition (RTC), constituting the L2 performance systems. The English resultatives (Mary painted the house red), available in Mandarin and depictives (John ate the meat raw), unavailable in Mandarin, were used to examine the hypotheses. Nineteen Mandarin speakers of English and nineteen native speakers of English participated in the study. The L2 subjects had lived in the United States for an average of ten years and 5 months at the time of the experiments. The subjects were tested in four experiments: the Guided Production (GP) test, the Clause-combining (CC) test, the Grammaticality Judgment (GJ) test, and the Interpretation (IT) test. Results were processed through t-tests, one-way ANOVA, and factorial ANOVA procedures. Important findings emerged. First, L 2 subjects showed knowledge of both English resultatives and depictives, indistinct from that of the controls in some, but not all, tests. Second, while their knowledge of the canonical constructions resembled that of the controls, L2 subjects were more reluctant to construct resultatives and depictives than the native counterparts in some tests. We attribute such irregularities to the modality of measurements, which affected the L 2 subjects' performance, but not their grammatical knowledge. This speculation was confirmed in experiments (i.e., the CC, GJ, and IT tests), where L 2 subjects, when specifically directed to produce resultatives and depictives, performed just like the controls. We therefore conclude that the final L 2 state coincides with the final state attained by the native speakers. We further claim that it is logical to speculate that the linguistic and acquisitional mechanisms that led to the final L2 state must constitute exactly the same set as the one employed by the native speakers. Therefore, we conclude that the CUH (CHL2 Uniformity Hypothesis) is true of late L 2 speakers. By the same token, we also conclude that the RTC (Relativized Transfer Condition) consists of adult L2 development.

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Li, Suogui. "A cognitive approach to foreign-inspired Chinese terms." View thesis, 2008. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/26322.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, 2008.
A thesis submitted to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Humanities and Languages in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliographical references.

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Kuperberg, Gina Rosalind. "The cognitive neuroscience of language processing : towards an understanding of language dysfunction in schizophrenia." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.272382.

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Hayiou-Thomas, Marianna. "Perceptual and cognitive processing limitations in specific language impairment." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2002. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0a3c8903-a93a-4473-9fc5-fe1ef87656c9.

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The experiments presented in this thesis explored the possibility that an underlying cause of specific language impairment (SLI) may be a deficit in perceptual or cognitive information processing. The first three studies tested the hypothesis that children with SLI have impaired perception of the dynamic elements of visual and auditory stimuli, as proposed in the magnocellular hypothesis for developmental dyslexia. The experimental predictions were that a) children with SLI would have poor sensitivity to coherent motion (but not coherent form) stimuli relative to chronological-age matched controls; b) children with SLI would have poorer sensitivity than controls to slow (but not fast) rates of frequency modulation in a tone; c) sensitivity to slow rates of frequency modulation (FM) would correlate with children's performance on a set of tests of phonological skill. Overall, these predictions were not corroborated by the results, and the conclusion drawn from this set of studies is that a magnocellular impairment of the type reported in dyslexia is unlikely to be a causal factor in SLI. The second three studies used a grammaticality judgement task to focus on inflectional morphology, an area of language which poses particularly marked difficulty for many children with SLI. The findings from Study 4 suggested that children's performance on the grammaticality judgement task overall was strongly related to phonological discrimination ability, but was unaffected by the specific inflectional allomorph tested. The final two studies manipulated the information processing load of the grammaticality judgement task, in Study 5 to simulate (successfully) SLI-like performance in a group of typically developing children, and in Study 6 to attempt (unsuccessfully) to improve performance in a group of children with SLI. These results are compatible with the idea that the profile of language difficulties experienced by many children with SLI is due to a processing deficit in the early stages of language acquisition which interrupts the establishment of robust linguistic representations. The nature of this processing deficit is as yet unclear, though the current findings do not support the suggestion of a central auditory impairment. It is possible that a number of distinct deficits, such as poor phonological memory or reduced speed of processing, may produce a broadly similar linguistic profile in different individuals.

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Gomes, Marc Andrew. "Cognitive science approaches to actor training| Interrogating conceptual language." Thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 2017. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10255101.

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This thesis explores the ways in which the fields of neurobiology and cognitive science impact concepts of performer processes, and how the findings of this research can help actors and actor trainers to examine assumptions that inform how they frame and describe performer practices. Cognitive science research provides a precise understanding of the embodied processes of “self”, “consciousness”, “emotion” and “perceiving”, and I argue that it is productive to interrogate these terms as they pertain to descriptions of the actor’s practice and performer training.

In this thesis I describe the relevance of cognitive science findings to theatre with respect to concepts commonly advanced in actor training in the United States, namely the “self,” “truth,” and “authentic.” I offer a reconsideration of these concepts through a cognitive science lens that opens up possibilities for emerging dramatic and performance paradigms. I then propose the development of a “corporeal intelligence,” that enables an actor to propose gestures, movement, vocal strategies, and action

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Janjua, Fatima. "Language and cognitive development in very young deaf children." Thesis, University of Bristol, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1983/68cb555b-3d31-49da-be84-e71d5b01bcd5.

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Reichgelt, Han. "Reference and quantification in the cognitive view of language." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/20138.

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Alasmari, Abdullah. "Language switching and cognitive control in Arabic-English bilinguals." Thesis, University of Essex, 2015. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.702434.

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Language control studies generally and specifically on bilingualism has been studied by many researchers in different disciplines and on many languages. Although Cattell started the psychological research on bilingualism as early as 1887, there are really scarce studies that have exclusively investigated the language control on Arabic bilinguals. This thesis examines two important aspects of bilingual language control: language switching and word translation, which are two situations where bilinguals must be able to "release" inhibition applied to a previously used language. It reports nine experiments that investigate language switching in Arabic- English adult bilinguals in four tasks: object naming, word reading, digit naming, and word (and digit) translation: In each experiment, there were four main conditions: (a) Non-switch L1 (L1-then-L1); (b) Non-switch L2 (L2- then-L2); (c) Switch L1 (L2-theri-L1); and (d) Switch L2 (Ll-then-L2). Language switch costs were found in all experiments, and the magnitudes of these effects varied with the nature of the task: they were larger for naming objects (which are bivalent stimuli) than for reading aloud words and naming digits (which for Arabic-English bilinguals are univalent stimuli), and were larger for translating words and for producing translation equivalent names of a repeated object. However, the switch costs generally were similar for L2-to-L1 and L1-to-L2 switching. The results are interpreted within the inhibitory control model (Green, 1998), but suggest that inhibition is applied "locally" to the lexical representations of competing responses rather than "globally" to a language as a whole.

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Powell, Deborah Sue. "Increasing cognitive functioning in science for English language learners." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 1997. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/3024.

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Shimono, Torrin Robert. "The Dynamic Cognitive Processes of Second Language Reading Fluency." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2019. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/586672.

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Teaching & Learning
Ph.D.
Second language (L2) reading fluency has not received sufficient attention in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) and applied linguistics, especially regarding the types of treatments that promote reading fluency (Grabe, 2009). Hence, this study was a longitudinal, quasi-experimental investigation of the effects of timed reading, repeated oral reading, and extensive reading on the development of reading fluency among Japanese university students. The eight purposes of this study were to: (a) better understand how timed reading, repeated oral reading, and extensive reading treatments contribute to reading fluency in terms of reading rate and comprehension over one academic year; (b) distinguish how extensive reading, timed reading, and repeated oral reading treatments differentially promote reading fluency; (c) elucidate on how timed reading, repeated oral reading, and extensive reading treatments affect the automatization of word recognition sub-processes over time; (d) investigate differences between the reading fluency treatment groups in terms of their word recognition sub-processes; (e) further understand how reading fluency treatments contribute to oral reading fluency; (f) examine differences in oral reading fluency between the reading fluency treatment groups; (g) determine how reading fluency training affects learners’ perception of their L2 reading self-efficacy; and (h) shed light on differences in L2 reading self-efficacy between reading fluency treatment groups. This study was conducted in a private university in western Japan. The participants (N = 101) were first- and second-year Japanese university students. These participants formed four quasi-experimental groups: (a) Group 1, labeled as the oral reading group, received a reading fluency treatment consisting of extensive reading, timed reading, and repeated oral reading; (b) Group 2, the timed reading group, participated in extensive reading and timed reading; (c) Group 3, the extensive reading group, did extensive reading only; and (d) Group 4, the comparison group, practiced speaking and communication activities. Data for this study were obtained using the following instruments: a vocabulary size test, timed reading tests, timed reading practice passages used throughout the treatment period, an extensive reading test, a lexical decision task, an antonym semantic decision task, a pseudoword homophone judgment task, an oral reading task, and an L2 reading self-efficacy questionnaire, a utility of the reading fluency treatments questionnaire, as well as individual interviews with 20 of the participants. Excluding the vocabulary size test, the timed reading treatment passages, the utility of the reading fluency treatments questionnaire, and the interviews, the other measures were administered three times over the course of one academic year—once prior, once in the middle, and once at the end of the reading fluency treatment period. Prior to conducting quantitative analyses on the data gathered with the instruments mentioned above, the L2 reading self-efficacy questionnaire data were analyzed using the Rasch rating-scale model in order to confirm the validity and reliability of the instrument as well as to transform the raw scores into equal interval measures. In addition, the Rasch model was used to check for interrater reliability and rater severity of the scores of the oral reading task. Data cleaning procedures were also applied to the reaction time and reading rate data. The data were then analyzed using repeated-measures ANOVAs and MAN(C)OVAs in order to ascertain differences in within-subjects and between-subjects measures. The results showed that the three reading fluency treatment groups made significant within-subjects increases in their reading fluency with the oral reading group making the most reading rate gains, followed by the timed reading group, and the extensive reading group. Moreover, the oral reading group generally outperformed the other groups on reading rate measures. However, the extensive reading group did not significantly outperform the comparison group. In addition, while the timed reading group had the fastest word recognition reaction times, the oral reading group made the most gains in orthographic, semantic, and phonological processing. Furthermore, no significant differences were found between the groups on orthographic processing, but the oral reading group, timed reading group had significantly faster semantic and phonological processing reaction times compared to the comparison group. With regards to oral reading fluency, the oral reading group made the most gains and achieved the highest scores, but the timed reading group also made significant gains. Finally, the oral reading groups’ L2 reading self-efficacy increased the most. The results of the study underscore the importance of using a multifaceted approach of extensive reading, timed reading, and repeated oral reading in the development of L2 reading fluency. Through this reading fluency training, the learners not only became more proficient readers in both silent and oral modes, but they also became more self-efficacious in L2 reading tasks. Ultimately, these learners became more empowered to achieve success in their L2 learning endeavors.
Temple University--Theses

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Moxley-Paquette, Elizabeth Ann. "Testing a Structural Equation Model of Language-based Cognitive Fitness." ScholarWorks, 2014. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/1545.

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The normative development of language is often taken for granted, yet problems with language development can result in stress for the individual and family. A challenge with these language development problems lies within the contemporary education system, which assumes that children have appropriate skills when they begin school. The purpose of the study was to test a theoretical model of language readiness known as language-based cognitive fitness, which includes measures associated with structural concepts of language involving receptive language, expressive language, spontaneous narrative speech, and writing fluency. The sample included children from a private school who received an extensive battery of tests at admission and annually thereafter. Scores from a variety of cognitive measures were used in a structural equation modeling framework to test the model. Results demonstrated language-based cognitive fitness to be an interplay of verbal reasoning abilities, visual synthesis, and active analysis broadly representing receptive language, expressive language, spontaneous narrative expression, and writing fluency. Verbal reasoning, visual synthesis, and active analysis explained 91% of the variance in achievement. Implications for positive social change include an improved understanding for those who work with children's language development, specifically of the language structures responsible for language deficits and how these relate to overall cognitive fitness; interventions can be provided to help children more quickly make up language deficits.

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Polzenhagen, Frank. "Cultural conceptualisations in West African English : a cognitive-linguistic approach /." Frankfurt am Main [u.a.] : Lang, 2007. http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&doc_number=016163259&line_number=0004&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA.

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Davy, Belinda. "A cognitive-semantic approach to the acquisition of English prepositions /." view abstract or download file of text, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p9998029.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 281-296). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users. Address: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p9998029.

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Lindes, Peter. "OntoSoar: Using Language to Find Genealogy Facts." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2014. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4133.

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There is a need to have an automated system that can read family history books or other historical texts and extract as many genealogy facts as possible from them. Embley and others have applied traditional information extraction techniques to this problem in a system called OntoES with a reasonable amount of success. In parallel much linguistic theory has been developed in the past decades, and Lonsdale and others have built computational embodiments of some of these theories using Soar. In this thesis we introduce a system called OntoSoar which combines the Link Grammar Parser using a grammar customized for family history texts with an innovative semantic analyzer inspired by construction grammars to extract genealogical facts from family history books and use them to populate a conceptual model compatible with OntoES with facts derived from the text. The system produces good results on the texts tested so far, and shows promise of being able to do even better with further development.

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Warshaw, Mark. "The cognitive challenge to the truth conditional theory of meaning /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 2005. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p3170238.

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Watson, Duane G. (Duane Girard) 1976. "Intonational phrasing in language production and comprehension." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/32240.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2002.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-150).
The work presented in this thesis was conducted with two aims in mind. The first was to understand where speakers prefer to place intonational boundaries in language production. The second was to understand where listeners prefer to hear boundaries in language comprehension.
by Duane G. Watson.
Ph.D.

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Perfors, Amy (Amy Francesca). "Learnability, representation, and language : a Bayesian approach." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/45601.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2008.
This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-243).
Within the metaphor of the "mind as a computation device" that dominates cognitive science, understanding human cognition means understanding learnability not only what (and how) the brain learns, but also what data is available to it from the world. Ideal learnability arguments seek to characterize what knowledge is in theory possible for an ideal reasoner to acquire, which illuminates the path towards understanding what human reasoners actually do acquire. The goal of this thesis is to exploit recent advances in machine learning to revisit three common learnability arguments in language acquisition. By formalizing them in Bayesian terms and evaluating them given realistic, real-world datasets, we achieve insight about what must be assumed about a child's representational capacity, learning mechanism, and cognitive biases. Exploring learnability in the context of an ideal learner but realistic (rather than ideal) datasets enables us to investigate what could be learned in practice rather than noting what is impossible in theory. Understanding how higher-order inductive constraints can themselves be learned permits us to reconsider inferences about innate inductive constraints in a new light. And realizing how a learner who evaluates theories based on a simplicity/goodness-of-fit tradeoff can handle sparse evidence may lead to a new perspective on how humans reason based on the noisy and impoverished data in the world. The learnability arguments I consider all ultimately stem from the impoverishment of the input either because it lacks negative evidence, it lacks a certain essential kind of positive evidence, or it lacks suffcient quantity of evidence necessary for choosing from an infinite set of possible generalizations.
(cont.) I focus on these learnability arguments in the context of three major topics in language acquisition: the acquisition of abstract linguistic knowledge about hierarchical phrase structure, the acquisition of verb argument structures, and the acquisition of word leaning biases.
by Amy Perfors.
Ph.D.

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Hayes, Rachel L. "How are second language phoneme contrasts learned." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/289939.

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Listeners are sensitive to phonetic differences that correspond to phonemic contrasts in their native language, and they often exhibit difficulty discriminating sounds that are not contrastive in their native language. Although a large literature shows that learners can improve their perception of novel contrasts with exposure to a second language, there is still little understanding of how learners accomplish this. There are at least two possible sources of evidence that learners might use to acquire sensitivity to novel sound contrasts. First, learners might use their knowledge of minimal pairs in the language to determine which sounds are contrastive. For example, knowing the minimal pair toe-doe may provide learners with evidence that /t/ and /d/ are contrastive in English (Lexical-Contrast-Based Evidence). Second, learners might compute the statistical distributions of the acoustic-phonetic properties of their second language input. The logic is that two contrastive speech sounds will be represented by distinct distributions along a of a number of acoustic-phonetic dimensions (Distribution-Based Evidence). Although both are possible sources of the evidence learners use to acquire novel second language sound contrasts, the relative influence of these two types of information is not yet known. Experiments 1 and 2 of this dissertation employ a variety of training techniques to determine the relative influence of Lexical-Contrast-Based and Distribution-Based evidence on participants' sensitivity to a novel contrast. Results indicate that while both kinds of evidence affect sensitivity, Lexical-Contrast-Based evidence had a stronger influence on discrimination performance. While Experiments 1 and 2 tested learners' sensitivity to novel contrasts, it is not yet clear that improved discrimination ability is of benefit in subsequent second language learning. Experiment 3 examined the linguistic relevance of participants' improved discrimination ability by testing learners' lexical representations for new words that differed minimally with respect to the trained contrast. Regardless of training condition, participants did not record the new contrast distinctly in their lexical representations. That participants exhibited sensitivity to the novel contrast but were nonetheless unable to record the contrast lexically suggests a dissociation between learners' acoustic-phonetic knowledge of their second language and their ability to represent that knowledge contrastively in their lexicon.

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Caissie, Roland. "English verb phrase grammar prototypes for speakers of other languages : a cognitive approach to facilitate second language English composition /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9351.

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Kirk, Neil W. "When do dialects become languages? : a cognitive perspective." Thesis, Abertay University, 2016. https://rke.abertay.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/4a0ecc3d-25f3-4cf4-81b0-f71d7702ec0e.

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Several definitions exist that offer to identify the boundaries between languages and dialects, yet these distinctions are inconsistent and are often as political as they are linguistic (Chambers & Trudgill, 1998). A different perspective is offered in this thesis, by investigating how closely related linguistic varieties are represented in the brain and whether they engender similar cognitive effects as is often reported for bilingual speakers of recognised independent languages, based on the principles of Green’s (1998) model of bilingual language control. Study 1 investigated whether bidialectal speakers exhibit similar benefits in non-linguistic inhibitory control as a result of the maintenance and use of two dialects, as has been proposed for bilinguals who regularly employ inhibitory control mechanisms, in order to suppress one language while speaking the other. The results revealed virtually identical performance across all monolingual, bidialectal and bilingual participant groups, thereby not just failing to find a cognitive control advantage in bidialectal speakers over monodialectals/monolinguals, but also in bilinguals; adding to a growing body of evidence which challenges this bilingual advantage in non-linguistic inhibitory control. Study 2 investigated the cognitive representation of dialects using an adaptation of a Language Switching Paradigm to determine if the effort required to switch between dialects is similar to the effort required to switch between languages. The results closely replicated what is typically shown for bilinguals: Bidialectal speakers exhibited a symmetrical switch cost like balanced bilinguals while monodialectal speakers, who were taught to use the dialect words before the experiment, showed the asymmetrical switch cost typically displayed by second language learners. These findings augment Green’s (1998) model by suggesting that words from different dialects are also tagged in the mental lexicon, just like words from different languages, and as a consequence, it takes cognitive effort to switch between these mental settings. Study 3 explored an additional explanation for language switching costs by investigating whether changes in articulatory settings when switching between different linguistic varieties could - at least in part – be responsible for these previously reported switching costs. Using a paradigm which required participants to switch between using different articulatory settings, e.g. glottal stops/aspirated /t/ and whispers/normal phonation, the results also demonstrated the presence of switch costs, suggesting that switching between linguistic varieties has a motor task-switching component which is independent of representations in the mental lexicon. Finally, Study 4 investigated how much exposure is needed to be able to distinguish between different varieties using two novel language categorisation tasks which compared German vs Russian cognates, and Standard Scottish English vs Dundonian Scots cognates. The results showed that even a small amount of exposure (i.e. a couple of days’ worth) is required to enable listeners to distinguish between different languages, dialects or accents based on general phonetic and phonological characteristics, suggesting that the general sound template of a language variety can be represented before exact lexical representations have been formed. Overall, these results show that bidialectal use of typologically closely related linguistic varieties employs similar cognitive mechanisms as bilingual language use. This thesis is the first to explore the cognitive representations and mechanisms that underpin the use of typologically closely related varieties. It offers a few novel insights and serves as the starting point for a research agenda that can yield a more fine-grained understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that may operate when speakers use closely related varieties. In doing so, it urges caution when making assumptions about differences in the mechanisms used by individuals commonly categorised as monolinguals, to avoid potentially confounding any comparisons made with bilinguals.

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Mercier, Julie. "The role of inhibitory control in bilingual spoken language processing." Thesis, McGill University, 2013. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=116916.

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This thesis investigates the relation between bilingual spoken language comprehension and domain-general inhibitory control. There are potentially two ways in which inhibitory control may support bilingual spoken language processing. First, inhibitory control may help suppress specific word competitors activated in the course of lexical competition (e.g., "feet" or "fille", girl in French, given the target word "field"). Second, inhibitory control may support the global suppression of a non-target language such that bilinguals can focus on a particular language. Thus, in three studies, we examined the influence of inhibitory control among native English and native French English-French bilinguals differing in inhibitory control abilities (Chapter 2), varying in age (a factor known to affect inhibitory control abilities; Chapter 3), and differing in the language they used prior to their performance of the spoken word recognition task (Chapter 4).In Chapter 2 (Mercier, Pivneva, & Titone, 2013), we found that different kinds of inhibitory control were involved in bilingual spoken comprehension. Increased cognitive inhibitory control, as measured by a composite measure derived from participants' performance on non-verbal Simon and Stroop tasks, was associated with less within-language competition (e.g., "feet" given "field") in bilingual young adults regardless of their native language, and less cross-language competition (e.g., "fille" given "field") in bilinguals performing the language task in L2. However, increased oculomotor inhibitory control, as measured by a composite measure derived from an antisaccade task, was related to the size of within- and cross-language competition in bilinguals performing the language task in L2.In Chapter 3 (Mercier, Sudarshan, Pivneva, Baum, & Titone, in revision), we found that bilingual older adults showed a larger spread of activation to within-language competitors than bilingual younger adults, and greater cross-language competition, especially when tested in their L2. Given that bilingual older adults also showed less efficient cognitive control than bilingual younger adults on working memory and Stroop tasks, these results suggest that declining inhibitory control in healthy bilingual older adults may underlie this increase in lexical competition during spoken language comprehension.In Chapter 4, we found that bilingual young adults who spoke a different language prior to the spoken word recognition task showed less evidence of cross-language competition than bilingual young adults who spoke the same language prior to the task. The findings were consistent with the notion that bilinguals can actively inhibit a language, but that doing so may involve a cost to the task at hand such that more within-language competition is experienced.Taken together the results suggest that individual differences in different types of inhibitory control relate to within- and cross-language competition during spoken language comprehension in young bilingual adults. As well, advancing age, with its associated poorer inhibitory control, is associated with more within- and cross-language competition. Finally, speaking a different language prior to performing a bilingual spoken language comprehension task can lead to the adoption of a global inhibition of the irrelevant language. We discuss the implications of these findings for current models of bilingual language processing and the field of bilingualism more generally, as well as avenues for future research.
Cette thèse porte sur la relation, chez les bilingues, entre la compréhension du langage oral et le contrôle inhibiteur (CI) général (par opposition à un contrôle de nature plus linguistique). Chez les bilingues, cette forme de contrôle peut exercer son influence de deux manières différentes. Premièrement, le CI peut être impliqué dans la suppression de mots compétiteurs spécifiques activés durant le processus de compétition lexical (par exemple, l'inhibition des compétiteurs "feet" ou "fille" lors de la présentation du mot anglais "field"). Deuxièmement, le CI peut favoriser une suppression plus globale de la langue non ciblée. Nous avons donc examiné l'influence du CI chez des bilingues anglais-français ayant comme langue maternelle (L1) l'anglais ou le français, mais différant dans leurs habiletés de CI (Chapitre 2), variant en âge (un facteur reconnu comme affectant les habiletés de CI; Chapitre 3), et différant dans la langue utilisée avant leur participation à une tâche de reconnaissance de mots à l'oral (Chapitre 4).Dans le Chapitre 2 (Mercier, Pivneva, & Titone, 2013), nous avons démontré que différents types de CI sont impliqués dans la compréhension du langage oral chez les bilingues. Un meilleur CI cognitif, tel que mesuré par une mesure composite dérivée de la performance des participants à des tâches non verbales de Simon et Stroop, était associé à une diminution de la compétition intra-linguistique (activation de "feet" lorsque "field" est présenté) durant la tâche langagière chez les jeunes adultes bilingues, peu importe leur L1, et une diminution de la compétition inter-linguistique (activation de "fille" lorsque field est présenté) chez les bilingues performant la tâche langagière dans leur langue seconde (L2). Cependant, un meilleur CI oculomoteur, tel que mesuré par une mesure composite dérivée d'une tâche antisaccade, était lié à une diminution de la compétition inter- et intra-linguistique chez les bilingues performant la tâche langagière dans leur L2.Dans le Chapitre 3 (Mercier, Sudarshan, Pivneva, Baum, & Titone, en révision), nous avons montré que les adultes bilingues plus âgés présentaient une étendue d'activation intra-linguistique plus large que celle d'adultes bilingues plus jeunes, ainsi qu'une plus importante compétition inter-linguistique, particulièrement pour les bilingues évalués dans leur L2. Puisque les adultes bilingues plus âgés montraient un contrôle cognitif moins efficace que les adultes bilingues plus jeunes dans des tâches de mémoire de travail et de Stroop, ces résultats suggèrent que l'érosion du CI chez les adultes bilingues plus âgés en santé peut être à l'origine de l'augmentation de la compétition lexicale durant la compréhension du langage oral observée chez ceux-ci. Dans le Chapitre 4, nous avons démontré que la langue parlée avant de prendre part à une tâche de reconnaissance de mots oraux influence la performance des jeunes adultes bilingues. En effet, les participants ayant utilisé une langue autre que celle sur laquelle portait la tâche montraient moins de compétition inter-linguistique que ceux ayant utilisé la langue de la tâche. Ces résultats supportent l'idée que les bilingues peuvent activement inhiber une langue. Ces résultats suggèrent que 1) les différences individuelles en terme de différents types de CI sont reliées à la compétition inter- et intra-linguistique durant la compréhension du langage oral chez les jeunes adultes bilingues; 2) le vieillissement, et le CI plus limité qui lui est associé, entraine des niveaux de compétition intra- et inter-linguistique plus élevés, et 3) parler une langue différente de celle qui sera utilisée dans une tâche de compréhension du langage oral subséquente peut entrainer l'inhibition globale de la langue non ciblée. Nous abordons les implications de ces résultats pour les modèles de traitement du langage bilingue et le domaine du bilinguisme de façon plus générale, et suggérons quelques pistes de recherche future.

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Wang, Fu-Chuan. "An integration of cognitive academic language proficiency and content-based instruction." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2003. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2297.

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Ferdinand, Vanessa Anne. "Inductive evolution : cognition, culture, and regularity in language." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/11741.

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Cultural artifacts, such as language, survive and replicate by passing from mind to mind. Cultural evolution always proceeds by an inductive process, where behaviors are never directly copied, but reverse engineered by the cognitive mechanisms involved in learning and production. I will refer to this type of evolutionary change as inductive evolution and explain how this represents a broader class of evolutionary processes that can include both neutral and selective evolution. This thesis takes a mechanistic approach to understanding the forces of evolution underlying change in culture over time, where the mechanisms of change are sought within human cognition. I define culture as anything that replicates by passing through a cognitive system and take language as a premier example of culture, because of the wealth of knowledge about linguistic behaviors (external language) and its cognitive processing mechanisms (internal language). Mainstream cultural evolution theories related to social learning and social transmission of information define culture ideationally, as the subset of socially-acquired information in cognition that affects behaviors. Their goal is to explain behaviors with culture and avoid circularity by defining behaviors as markedly not part of culture. I take a reductionistic approach and argue that all there is to culture is brain states and behaviors, and further, that a complete explanation of the forces of cultural change can not be explained by a subset of cognition related to social learning, but necessarily involves domain-general mechanisms, because cognition is an integrated system. Such an approach should decompose culture into its constituent parts and explore 1) how brains states effect behavior, 2) how behavior effects brain states, and 3) how brain states and behaviors change over time when they are linked up in a process of cultural transmission, where one person's behavior is the input to another. I conduct several psychological experiments on frequency learning with adult learners and describe the behavioral biases that alter the frequencies of linguistic variants over time. I also fit probabilistic models of cognition to participant data to understand the inductive biases at play during linguistic frequency learning. Using these inductive and behavioral biases, I infer a Markov model over my empirical data to extrapolate participants' behavior forward in cultural evolutionary time and determine equivalences (and divergences) between inductive evolution and standard models from population genetics. As a key divergence point, I introduce the concept of non-binomial cultural drift, argue that this is a rampant form of neutral evolution in culture, and empirically demonstrate that probability matching is one such inductive mechanism that results in non-binomial cultural drift. I argue further that all inductive problems involving representativeness are potential drivers of neutral evolution unique to cultural systems. I also explore deviations from probability matching and describe non-neutral evolution due to inductive regularization biases in a linguistic and non-linguistic domain. Here, I offer a new take on an old debate about the domain-specificity vs -generality of the cognitive mechanisms involved in language processing, and show that the evolution of regularity in language cannot be predicted in isolation from the general cognitive mechanisms involved in frequency learning. Using my empirical data on regularization vs probability matching, I demonstrate how the use of appropriate non-binomial null hypotheses offers us greater precision in determining the strength of selective forces in cultural evolution.

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Briscoe, Josephine Mary. "Cognitive development after preterm birth." Thesis, University of Bristol, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.266900.

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Warren, Deborah Kay. "Nonlinguistic Cognitive Performance and Expressive and Receptive Language Scores in Children with Expressive Language Delay." PDXScholar, 1994. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4884.

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This study was part of the Portland Language Development Project. The purpose was to establish reliability for the Goodenough Draw-A-Man Test. Additionally, nonlinguistic cognitive performance scores were correlated with soores from expressive and receptive language test soores. Finally, scores of overall cognitive function and of nonlinguistic cognitive function in children with normally developing language (NL) and with expressive language delay (ELD) were compared. The original group size was 60 children, 30 with ELD at the age of 20 months, and 30 who were a matched control group. These subjects were reevaluated during Kindergarten. The Draw-A-Man Test was administered to assess the subjects' nonlinguistic cognitive functioning. The McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities CMCSA) was administered to assess the subjects' overall cognitive functioning. A free speech sample was analyzed using the Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) criteria to assess expressive language skills, and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales

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Wolf, Florian 1975. "Coherence in natural language : data structures and applications." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/28854.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, February 2005.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves [143]-148).
(cont.) baseline, and that some coherence-based approaches best predict the human data. However, coherence-based algorithms that operate on trees did not perform as well as coherence-based algorithms that operate on more general graphs. It is suggested that that might in part be due to the fact that more general graphs are more descriptively adequate than trees for representing discourse coherence.
The general topic of this thesis is coherence in natural language, where coherence refers to informational relations that hold between segments of a discourse. More specifically, this thesis aims to (1) develop criteria for a descriptively adequate data structure for representing discourse coherence; (2) test the influence of coherence on psycholinguistic processes, in particular, pronoun processing; (3) test the influence of coherence on the relative saliency of discourse segments in a text. In order to address the first aim, a method was developed for hand-annotating a database of naturally occurring texts for coherence structures. The thus obtained database of coherence structures was used to test assumptions about descriptively adequate data structures for representing discourse coherence. In particular, the assumption that discourse coherence can be represented in trees was tested, and results suggest that more powerful data structures than trees are needed (labeled chain graphs, where the labels represent types of coherence relations, and an ordered array of nodes represents the temporal order of discourse segments in a text). The second aim was addressed in an on-line comprehension and an off-line production experiment. Results from both experiments suggest that only a coherence-based account predicted the full range of observed data. In that account, the observed preferences in pronoun processing are not a result of pronoun-specific mechanisms, but a byproduct of more general cognitive mechanisms that operate when establishing coherence. In order to address the third aim, layout-, word-, and coherence-based approaches to discourse segment ranking were compared to human rankings. Results suggest that word-based accounts provide a strong
by Florian Wolf.
Ph.D.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Cognitive Language'

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