Psycho-Linguistic Research

The Voice and Speech Quality Correlates of Psychological Observations in Jungian Active Imagination Experiment Abstract Jungian active imagination is a well known and valuable method in analytical psychology and psychotherapy. The present study assessed, for the first time, psychological and psycho-acoustical (voice and speech quality) effects of active imagination experiment in outdoor, forest, ambient. In order to analyse the voice and speech quality, participants' verbal expressions were recorded before and after the experiment. Psychological observations were based on the thirteen features and were rated according to the bipolar Comparison Mean Opinion Score scale. The results showed a noticeable positive participants' experiences after the experiment, connected with themselves, others, their behaviour, other verbal and non-verbal expressions and relations towards nature. Voice and speech quality analysis, based on the speech signal processing approach, was done based on the fourteen acoustic features. The results showed a statistically significantly better voice and speech quality of the participants at the end of the experiment (p < 0.05). Applying the averaging model from the Information Integration Theory, we obtained integral evaluative ratings in active imagination for psychological observations EAI and voice and speech quality observations EVQ, for each participant. The value of Pearson's correlation coefficient R = 0.6385 (p < 0.05) has shown a significant correlation between these two ratings. Overall results highlight starting hypothesis that exist some strong voice and speech correlates of psychological observations in Jungian active imagination experiment.

Academic Vocabulary Knowledge and Reading Comprehension Skills Among Seventh-Graders in Arabic as L1 Abstract The current study attempted to investigate the contribution of an intervention program to fostering Arabic academic vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension skills among seventh grade Arabic native speaking pupils. For this purpose, 247 pupils from four schools in northern Israel have participated in the study. Arabic literacy units that targeted academic vocabulary and reading comprehension skills were administrated for a period of 5 months. To assess the efficacy of the intervention program, academic vocabulary tests (receptive and productive) as well as reading comprehension test were administrated. As indicated by the results, the interventional group showed significantly higher performance in reading comprehension and productive academic vocabulary when compared to the control group. In contrast, no significant improvement was noted in receptive academic vocabulary knowledge. Taken together, the study results point to the contribution of comprehensive and direct academic vocabulary instructional approaches to promoting academic vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension of academic texts. Moreover, it stresses the need for policy change and curricular adjustments in Arabic language instruction, acknowledging the importance of fostering academic language skills in the road to academic success.

On the Implicit Anaphoric Argument of Relational Nouns in Mandarin Chinese Abstract This paper provides experimental and theoretical evidence for the syntactic realization of an implicit possessor argument in Relational Nouns (RNs, e.g. father) in Mandarin Chinese. The results of Experiment 1 show that the antecedent of the implicit argument in RNs must be a noun phrase (NP) in the sentence where the RN is located, rather than an NP in the discourse context. Experiment 2 shows that the implicit argument of RNs must be bound by a c-commanding NP. The results exclude the possibility that the RNs' implicit argument is a pronominal that would link to a contextually salient NP and would not require a c-commanding referential antecedent. Rather, the experimental results show that the identification of the antecedent of the RNs' implicit argument is constrained by the same principle of binding theory that constrains the reflexive zìjǐ 'self', specifically requiring a c-commanding antecedent.

The Effects of Vocabulary Enhancement Exercises and Group Dynamic Assessment on Word Learning Through Lexical Inferencing Abstract The study aimed to explore the effect of group dynamic assessment on word learning through lexical inferencing and to compare it to that of vocabulary enhancement exercises. Through purposive sampling, 45 intermediate EFL learners were selected as participants and randomly assigned to three groups. The participants read six texts over a 6-day period and answered comprehension questions for each text. In the second phase of each treatment session, the first group engaged in lexical inferencing of the underlined words within group dynamic assessment framework. The second group did two vocabulary exercises for each target word. The third group engaged in lexical inferencing of target words through group dynamic assessment framework and also did one vocabulary exercise for each target word. Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (Wesche and Paribakht in Can Mod Lang Rev 53:13–40, 1996) was used to measure learners' knowledge of the target words 1 day prior to the treatment and 1 day and 28 days after the treatment. The results showed that in terms of gains in depth and size of vocabulary knowledge the first and the second groups were not significantly different. However, the third group significantly outperformed the first and the second groups. It was concluded that group dynamic assessment is as effective as vocabulary exercises in enhancing word learning through lexical inferencing and that the combination of group dynamic assessment and vocabulary exercises could enhance word learning through lexical inferencing even more.

Subject–Aux Inversion in Children with SLI Abstract An elicited production study investigated subject–aux inversion in 5-year-old children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 2 control groups, typically-developing 5-year-old children and 3-year-old children matched by mean length of utterance. The experimental findings showed that children with specific language impairment produced subject–aux inversion in yes/no questions significantly less often than either of the control groups. However, the fact that lack of inversion is reflected in the input led to the proposal that children with specific language impairment choose the most economical grammatical option. For main clause wh-questions, children with SLI carried out subject–aux inversion at a rate that was not significantly different from the control groups. This finding suggests that these children have access to hierarchical phrase structure representations for questions and the relevant movement operations. In embedded wh-questions, where subject–aux inversion is not permitted, children with SLI implemented SAI more frequently than the control groups. Our interpretation of this finding is that once children with SLI acquire the subject–aux inversion rule, that they are slower to learn that embedded clauses present an exception to the rule.

The Role of Short Vowels in Reading Arabic: A Critical Literature Review Abstract The purpose of the present review is to examine the studies that tested the role of short vowels in reading Arabic. Most of the studies are reviewed in this paper and two contradicted data are presented: data that support positive contribution of short vowels in reading Arabic, and the other data that reject the assumption that short vowels contribute to the quality of reading, and suggest that these short vowels do not add any positive contribution and maybe the opposite; short vowels hinder reading in Arabic orthography. The results are criticized indicating some methodological problems and suggestions for further studies are presented.

A Note on the Voice Mismatch Asymmetry in Ellipsis Abstract Theories of ellipsis differ in the identity condition claimed to hold between an antecedent and an elided constituent. A syntactic identity condition leads to the prediction that syntactic mismatches between an antecedent and elided constituent should give rise to a penalty, and that penalty should be greater than in corresponding examples without ellipsis. Further, if syntactic mismatches are ungrammatical, violating the syntactic identity condition, then in effect they are speech errors and would be expected to be rated higher when a passive clause antecedes an active elided VP than vice versa because people misremember passives as actives more often the reverse. A written acceptability judgment study crossed the voice of the antecedent clause (active/passive), the voice of the ellipsis clause (active/passive) and ellipsis/non-ellipsis in the final clause. Results indicate a syntactic mismatch lowers acceptability in examples with elided VPs but not examples with overt VPs, as predicted by theories with a syntactic identity condition. Passive-active mismatches were rated better than active–passive ones, especially with ellipsis, as predicted by a speech error/repair approach to mismatches. This result eliminates any concern that the appearance of a voice asymmetry might only be due to some incompatibility between VP ellipsis and passive voice.

Grammar, Gender and Demonstratives in Lateralized Imagery for Sentences Abstract We investigated biases in the organization of imagery by asking participants to make stick-figure drawings of sentences containing a man, a woman and a transitive action (e.g. she kisses that guy). Previous findings show that prominent features of meaning and sentence structure are placed to the left in drawings, according to reading direction (e.g. Stroustrup and Wallentin in Lang Cogn 10(2):193–207, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2017.19). Five hundred thirty participants listened to sentences in Danish and made eight drawings each. We replicated three findings: (1) that the first mentioned element is placed to the left more often, (2) that the agent in the sentence is placed to the left, and (3) that the grammatical subject is placed to the left of the object. We further tested hypotheses related to deixis and gender stereotypes. By adding demonstratives (e.g. Danish equivalents of this and that), that have been found to indicate attentional prominence, we tested the hypothesis that this is also translated into a left-ward bias in the produced drawings. We were unable to find support for this hypothesis. Analyses of gender biases tested the presence of a gender identification and a gender stereotype effect. According to the identification hypothesis, participants should attribute prominence to their own gender and draw it to the left, and according to the stereotype effect participants should be more prone to draw the male character to the left, regardless of own gender. We were not able to find significant support for either of the two gender effects. The combination of replications and null-findings suggest that the left-ward bias in the drawing experiment might be narrowly tied to left-to-right distribution in written language and less to overall prominence. No effect of handedness was observed.

Willingness to Communicate: A Predictor of Pushing Vocabulary Knowledge from Receptive to Productive Abstract The issue of moving vocabulary knowledge from receptive to productive mode is among the most important but less studied strands of second or foreign language learning. The present study served as an attempt to shed light on this issue by taking into account the trait of willingness to communicate as an indicator of learners' capability in promoting their lexical knowledge from receptive to productive status. It, in fact, sought to examine the role of willingness to communicate, as a type of individual difference, in the receptive/productive vocabulary knowledge of learners. The hypothesis underlying the study is that WTC can be regarded as a good predictor for not only the degree of learners' receptive and productive lexical knowledge size, but also as an indication of learners' success in transition of their word knowledge from receptive to productive mode. To accomplish this, 104 Iranian EFL learners were chosen to act as the study participants. They were given three different instruments (one to identify their willingness to communicate degree, one for measuring receptive vocabulary knowledge, and one for calculating their productive knowledge). Having gathered and analyzed the intended data, the study showed that high and low willingness to communicate learners had almost the same receptive lexical knowledge. Furthermore, it was revealed that learners with high level of willingness to communicate had more productive vocabulary knowledge than those with low level of willingness to communicate. Lastly, the study implied that willingness to communicate might be taken as a predictor of learners' transition of lexical knowledge from receptive to productive mode.

The Development of Anaphora Resolution in Spanish Abstract The present study focuses on the development of Spanish pronominal processing. We investigate whether the pronoun interpretation problem (i.e., reflexive pronouns comprehension is resolved at an earlier age than that of personal pronouns, also known as the Delay of the Principle B Effect), which has been documented in other languages, also occurs in Spanish. For this purpose, we conducted two experiments including pronoun resolution tasks. In Experiment 1, a task adapted from the experimental paradigm proposed by Love et al. (J Psycholinguist Res 38:285–304, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-009-9103-9) was used, which examines the off-line processing of the Spanish pronouns se and le. In Experiment 2, on-line processing of the same pronouns was evaluated with eye-tracking, using a paradigm developed by Thompson and Choy (J Psycholinguist Res 38:255–283, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-009-9105-7). Forty-three participants aged 4–16 years completed both experiments. Results indicated that there is no developmental asymmetry in the acquisition of successful resolution of the two types of anaphora in Spanish: from age 4, reflexive and clitic pronouns are processed with the same degree of accuracy.

Alexandros Sfakianakis
Anapafseos 5 . Agios Nikolaos
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6948891480

alsfakia@gmail.com