Recent uci_langsci_oapdeposits items

What Explains the Relations Between Reading Comprehension and Written Composition? Findings from a Longitudinal Study

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This study investigated the relation between reading comprehension and written composition in Grade 2, as well as how language and literacy skills explain this connection. Additionally, it explored how kindergarten language, cognitive, and literacy skills relate to Grade 2 reading comprehension and written composition through Grade 2 language and literacy skills. The study followed 261 English-speaking students (55% boys) from kindergarten through grade 2 in the US. The sample’s racial composition in kindergarten was 53% white, 33% African American, 3% Hispanic, and 5% mixed race. Grade 2 skills included reading comprehension, written composition, oral discourse skills, lexical literacy skills, and handwriting fluency. Kindergarten assessments covered a broader range of language, cognitive, and literacy skills. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a strong correlation (.82) between reading comprehension and written composition. Structural equation modeling showed that grade 2...

Learning to Read in Korean: An Application of the Direct and Indirect Effect Model of Reading (DIER)

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In this chapter I introduce the Direct and Indirect Effect Model of Reading (DIER), an integrative theoretical framework designed to explain reading development across languages, and examine its application in Korean. DIER posits that successful reading comprehension relies on a multitude of interdependent skills and knowledge, including executive functions, orthography, phonology, morphology, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, higher-order cognitive abilities, background knowledge, and socio-emotional aspects. A review of evidence from Korean-speaking children supports the model's component skills hypothesis and hierarchical relations hypothesis. Despite substantial research on reading development in Korean, however, gaps also remain, particularly in understanding text-level reading and the structural relations among component skills. I also discuss the implications of DIER for assessment and teaching, emphasizing the need for targeted, integrated instruction tailored to individual...

Developmental relations of Spanish and English spelling in emergent bilinguals between grade 1 and grade 3: exploring scoring methods and instructional contexts

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This study aimed to enhance our understanding of Spanish-English emergent bilingual children's spelling development by examining the relation between their spelling skills in both languages over time. We also investigated two different scoring methods for spelling and how the language of instruction influenced these relations. The study included 209 Spanish-English bilingual children in the U.S. assessed in Grades 1 and 3. Results showed that children's spelling performance in Spanish and English significantly differed depending on their instructional programs. Using correctness scores, Spanish spelling positively predicted later English spelling, whereas English spelling showed an initial negative relation to future Spanish spelling. This negative relation was not observed when text distance scores were used or when instructional program was explicitly modeled, suggesting the initial negative finding likely reflected measurement limitations in correctness scoring and instructional...

Language Variation in Elementary Students’ Writing

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Language varieties such as African American English and Southern American English are well-established dialects of English with historic importance and modern cultural capital. While features of language varieties, such as nonmainstream dialects, are well documented in children’s spoken language, less has been studied about child dialect speakers’ writing in academic settings. In this study, we explored the features and frequency of use of African American English and Southern American English in a sample of 250 second- and third-grade students located in the southeastern part of the US. We analyzed and compared nonmainstream dialect production in an oral narrative task and between 2 different written language samples, one elicited by a narrative prompt and the other by an expository prompt. Importantly, we discuss implications for teachers and other practitioners to consider when working with diverse students.

Evaluating synthesized speech intelligibility in noise

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Humans can modify their speech to improve intelligibility in noisy environments. With the advancement of speech synthesis technology, machines may also synthesize voices that remain highly intelligible in noise condition. This study evaluates both the subjective and objective intelligibility of synthesized speech in speech-shaped noise from three major speech synthesis platforms. It was found that synthesized voices have a similar intelligibility range to human voices, and some synthesized voices were more intelligible than human voices. It was also found that two modern automatic speech recognition systems recognized 10% more words than human listeners.

NUDGING: Inference-time Alignment of LLMs via Guided Decoding

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Large language models (LLMs) require alignment to effectively and safely follow user instructions. This process necessitates training an aligned version for every base model, resulting in significant computational overhead. In this work, we propose NUDGING, a simple, training-free algorithm that aligns any base model at inference time using a small aligned model. NUDGING is motivated by recent findings that alignment primarily alters the model's behavior on a small subset of stylistic tokens (e.g., discourse markers). We find that base models are significantly more uncertain when generating these tokens. Building on this insight, NUDGING employs a small aligned model to generate nudging tokens to guide the base model's output during decoding when the base model's uncertainty is high, with only a minor additional inference overhead. We evaluate NUDGING across 3 model families on a diverse range of open-instruction tasks. Without any training, nudging a large base model with a 7×-14×...

The acquisition of L2 English complex onsets by L1 Farsi speakers

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Much previous work has shown that sibilant-initial complex onsets (SC onsets) differ in their typological, phonological, articulatory, and acquisitional properties from other onsets. The exact mechanism(s) underlying these differences are poorly understood. In this study, we investigate the acquisition and production of L2 English complex onsets by L1 Farsi speakers, focusing on differences between SC onsets and other onset types. Results from an experimental study corroborate past reports that Farsi speakers repair most SC onsets using epenthesis before the cluster and other onsets using epenthesis into the cluster. The results also support the claim that SC onsets are more difficult to produce and are acquired more slowly than other onsets. A phonological modeling study suggests that the epenthesis asymmetries observed in the experimental study are best accounted for by a pressure to maximize perceptual similarity to the unepenthesized forms. We close with speculation on how...

Uniformity in speech: The economy of reuse and adaptation across contexts

Tue, 2 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Uniformity in speech: The economy of reuse and adaptation across contexts

Disentangling Words, Clitics, and Suffixes in Uyghur

Tue, 2 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Turkic languages have been shown to form words using a wide range of word-formation strategies, such as suffixation, cliticization, and auxiliaries. The present paper offers a detailed description of word formation in Uyghur, compares the patterns in Uyghur with the prior literature on Turkic, offers explicit diagnostics for suffixes and clitics, and proposes a morpho-syntactic analysis for each strategy.

The UCI Phonotactic Calculator: An online tool for computing phonotactic metrics

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper presents the UCI Phonotactic Calculator (UCIPC), a new online tool for quantifying the occurrence of segments and segment sequences in a corpus. This tool has several advantages compared to existing tools: it allows users to supply their own training data, meaning it can be applied to any language for which a corpus is available; it computes a wider range of metrics than most existing tools; and it provides an accessible point-and-click interface that allows researchers with more modest technical backgrounds to take advantage of phonotactic models. After describing the metrics implemented by the calculator and how to use it, we present the results of a proof-of-concept study comparing how well different types of metrics implemented by the UCIPC predict human responses from eight published nonce word acceptability judgment studies across four different languages. These results suggest that metrics that take into account the relative position of sounds and include word...

Comparing the quality of human and ChatGPT feedback of students’ writing

Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Background: Offering students formative feedback on their writing is an effective way to facilitate writing development. Recent advances in AI (i.e., ChatGPT) may function as an automated writing evaluation tool, increasing the amount of feedback students receive and diminishing the burden on teachers to provide frequent feedback to large classes. Aims: We examined the ability of generative AI (ChatGPT) to provide formative feedback. We compared the quality of human and AI feedback by scoring the feedback each provided on secondary student essays. We scored the degree to which feedback (a) was criteria-based, (b) provided clear directions for improvement, (c) was accurate, (d) prioritized essential features, and (e) used a supportive tone. Sample: 200 pieces of human-generated formative feedback and 200 pieces of AI-generated formative feedback for the same essays. Methods: We examined whether ChatGPT and human feedback differed in quality for the whole sample, for compositions...

Incorporating generative AI into a writing-intensive undergraduate course without off-loading learning

Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As generative AI becomes ubiquitous, writers must decide if, when, and how to incorporate generative AI into their writing process. Educators must sort through their role in preparing students to make these decisions in a quickly evolving technological landscape. We created an AI-enabled writing tool that provides scaffolded use of a large language model as part of a research study on integrating generative AI into an upper division STEM writing-intensive course. Drawing on decades of research on integrating digital tools into instruction and writing research, we discuss the framework that drove our initial design considerations and instructional resources. We then share our findings from a year of design-based implementation research during the 2023–2024 academic year. Our original instruction framework identified the need for students to understand, access, prompt, corroborate, and incorporate the generative AI use effectively. In this paper, we explain the need for students...

The affordances and contradictions of AI-generated text for writers of english as a second or foreign language

Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The affordances and contradictions of AI-generated text for writers of english as a second or foreign language

“ChatGPT seems too good to be true”: College students’ use and perceptions of generative AI

Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This study investigates how U.S. college students (N = 1001) perceive and use ChatGPT, exploring its relationship with societal structures and student characteristics. Regression results show that gender, age, major, institution type, and institutional policy significantly influenced ChatGPT use for general, writing, and programming tasks. Students in their 30s–40s were more likely to use ChatGPT frequently than younger students. Non-native English speakers were more likely than native speakers to use ChatGPT frequently for writing, suggesting its potential as a support tool for language learners. Institutional policies allowing ChatGPT use predicted higher use of ChatGPT. Thematic analysis and natural language processing of open-ended responses revealed varied attitudes towards ChatGPT, with some fearing institutional punishment for using ChatGPT and others confident in their appropriate use of ChatGPT. Computer science majors expressed concerns about job displacement due to...

Can AI provide useful holistic essay scoring?

Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Researchers have sought for decades to automate holistic essay scoring. Over the years, these programs have improved significantly. However, accuracy requires significant amounts of training on human-scored texts—reducing the expediency and usefulness of such programs for routine uses by teachers across the nation on non-standardized prompts. This study analyzes the output of multiple versions of ChatGPT scoring of secondary student essays from three extant corpora and compares it to quality human ratings. We find that the current iteration of ChatGPT scoring is not statistically significantly different from human scoring; substantial agreement with humans is achievable and may be sufficient for low-stakes, formative assessment purposes. However, as large language models evolve additional research will be needed to continue to assess their aptitude for this task as well as determine whether their proximity to human scoring can be improved through prompting or training.

Customized strategies for managing cochlear implant stimulation side effects

Wed, 7 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

OBJECTIVES: Cochlear implants restore functional hearing but may cause side effects like facial nerve stimulation, sound sensitivity or reactive tinnitus. The present study aimed to establish a general framework for optimizing stimulation parameters to manage these side effects while maximizing speech perception performance. A second objective was to understand how side effect origins impact treatment outcomes. METHODS: Eight adult cochlear implant subjects had intolerable side effects that rendered device usage difficult or even impossible. New maps were created by reducing stimulation levels, increasing pulse duration, reducing stimulation rate, altering channel gains and frequency maps, deactivating problematic electrodes, or a combination of the above. Outcomes were measured in terms of side effect reduction and changes in speech performance. RESULTS: Facial nerve stimulation was reduced or eliminated in five of five subjects. Sound hypersensitivity was eliminated in two of...

Adolescents' meaning making of salient emotional experiences during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

INTRODUCTION: This mixed-method longitudinal study examined American adolescents' meaning making of salient COVID-19 pandemic events. METHOD: Within phone interviews, adolescents (N = 124, M_age = 15.76 years; 46% Latine) narrated their most emotionally impactful pandemic experience at two time points ~30 days apart between July 2020 and March 2021. Narratives were coded for (1) content (i.e., event-type, relation to the pandemic, and the valence of the event [positive or negative]), (2) linguistic markers of subjective event processing (internal state language such as positive emotion, negative emotion, and cognition words), (3) narrative meaning-making, and (4) the outcome of adolescents' meaning-making (i.e., their "meanings made"). RESULTS: About 30% of adolescents spontaneously made meaning of their experience. Negative emotion words within narratives at time 1 positively predicted meaning making at time 2. Meaning making at time 1 predicted increased...

Modifying Curriculum for Novice Computational Thinking Elementary Teachers and English Language Learners

Wed, 9 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The demand for computational thinking (CT) problem solving abilities surge as every aspect of life becomes more dependent on complex digital technologies. Just as in math and language, a strong CT foundation needs to be established in early education in order for students to develop an instinctive CT perspective of the world. The urgent demand for CT instruction in elementary school quickly draws attention to the shortage of elementary school-level teachers qualified and interested in CT. Additionally, with a commitment to equity in the United States education system and knowledge of the high percentage of English language learning (ELL) students in schools, the obligation to create curricula that will provide access to CT knowledge, skills, and practices for elementary-level ELL students is loudly apparent. In response to these two needs, our team has adapted existing Scratch-based CT curriculum to support classroom teachers with minimal CT experience and to be more accessible...

“Todes” and “Todxs”, linguistic innovations or grammatical gender violations?

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This study compared the processing of non-binary morphemes in Spanish (e.g., todxs, todes) with the processing of canonical grammatical gender violations in Spanish pronouns (e.g., Los maestros… todas…). Using self-paced reading, the study examined how individual differences in working memory and gender/sex diversity beliefs affected language processing at three regions of interest (ROI): the pronoun, the pronoun +1, and the pronoun +2. Seventy-eight Spanish-English bilinguals completed two self-paced reading tasks, one with non-binary pronouns and another with grammatical gender violations, as well as a working memory task, a language dominance questionnaire, and a gender/sex diversity beliefs questionnaire. Processing costs were operationalized as longer reaction times (RTs) or inaccurate responses. Results showed overall processing costs for non-binary morphemes at all 3 ROIs, but no processing costs were observed in terms of accuracy or response times to the comprehension...

Assessing Relative Linguistic Impairment With Model-Based Item Selection.

Sat, 8 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

PURPOSE: A picture naming test is presented that reveals impairment to specific mechanisms involved in the naming process, using accuracy scores on curated item sets. A series of psychometric validation experiments are reported. METHOD: Using a computational model that enables estimation of item difficulty at the lexical and sublexical stages of word retrieval, two complimentary sets of items were constructed that challenge the respective psycholinguistic levels of representation. The difference in accuracy between these item sets yields the relative linguistic impairment (RLI) score. In a cohort of 91 people with chronic left-hemisphere stroke who enrolled in a clinical trial for anomia, we assessed psychometric properties of the RLI score and then used the new scale to make predictions about other language behaviors, lesion distributions, and functional activation during naming. RESULTS: RLI scores had adequate psychometric properties for clinical significance. RLI scores contained...

Promoting Adolescents' Social Responsibility through Parent-Adolescent Conversations about the COVID-19 Pandemic

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

PURPOSE: This longitudinal mixed-method study examined the content and qualities of parent-adolescent conversations about the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether discourse about social responsibility (i.e., care for others and health protective behaviors [HPBs]) within conversations predicted changes in adolescents' socially responsible behavior across the first year of the pandemic. METHODS: Participants were 122 ethnically/racially diverse parent-adolescent dyads from Southern California. In spring 2020 (Time 1), adolescents completed an online survey measuring their engagement in HPBs (e.g., social distancing) and prosociality (both pandemic-specific and global). A few months following survey completion (Time 2), parent-adolescent dyads engaged in an audio-recorded conversation about the pandemic. In winter 2020 (Time 3), adolescents' engagement in HPBs and prosociality were reassessed via an online survey. RESULTS: Dyads spent 25% of conversational turns, on average, discussing...

Advancing the Science of Teaching Reading: Introduction to the Special Issue

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Advancing the Science of Teaching Reading: Introduction to the Special Issue

Self‐regulation and comprehension in shared reading: The moderating effects of verbal interactions and E‐book discussion prompts

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The study examined how children's self-regulation skills measured by the strengths and weaknesses of ADHD symptoms and normal behavior rating are associated with story comprehension and how verbal engagement and e-book discussion prompts moderate this relation. Children aged 3-7 (N = 111, 50% female, Chinese as first language) read an interactive Chinese-English bilingual story e-book with or without discussion prompts twice with their parents (2020-2021). Results demonstrated that the lower children's self-regulation skills, the more they struggled with story comprehension. Critically, our data suggest that embedding e-book discussion prompts and more verbalization in English can mitigate this negative association for children with inattention/hyperactivity. These findings have critical implications for future e-book design, interventions, and home reading practice for children with inattention/hyperactivity and those at risk for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Developmental trajectories of eye movements in oral and silent reading for beginning readers: a longitudinal investigation

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Eye movements provide a sensitive window into cognitive processing during reading. In the present study, we investigated beginning readers’ longitudinal changes in temporal and spatial measures of eye movements during oral versus silent reading, the extent to which variation in eye movements is attributable to individual differences and text differences, and the functional form of growth trajectories of eye-movement variables. Data were from 363 English-speaking children (52% male; 59.8% White) in the US who were followed longitudinally from Grade 1 to Grade 3. Results showed a rapid decrease in temporal eye-movement measures (e.g., first fixation) and an increase in spatial eye-movement measures (initial landing position) in both oral and silent reading. The majority of variance in eye movements was attributable to individual differences whereas some variance in initial landing position was due to text differences. Most eye-movement measures had nonlinear growth trajectories...

Do Spelling and Vocabulary Improve Classification Accuracy of Children's Reading Difficulties Over and Above Word Reading?

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It is widely recognized that individuals with dyslexia have difficulties with word reading and spelling, and individuals with reading comprehension difficulties have low vocabulary knowledge. However, little is known about the extent to which spelling and vocabulary are informative of reading difficulties. In the present study, we investigated whether information on students' spelling and vocabulary in kindergarten increases the precision of identifying students with reading difficulties, using longitudinal data from kindergarten to Grade 2. The sample was composed of 247 kindergartners (55% boys; 56% White children, 35% African American children, and 5% mixed-race children; 72% from low SES) who were followed to Grade 2. Spelling improved the accuracy of identifying students who experienced word reading difficulties in kindergarten and Grade 1. In contrast, vocabulary did not improve the accuracy of identifying students with reading difficulties over and above word reading and...

Yes, they can: Developing transcription skills and oral language in tandem with SRSD instruction on close reading of science text to write informative essays at grades 1 and 2

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yes, they can: Developing transcription skills and oral language in tandem with SRSD instruction on close reading of science text to write informative essays at grades 1 and 2

Dimensionality of Writing Skills in English and Spanish, and the Relations of Language and Cognitive Skills to Written Composition for English‐Spanish Emergent Bilingual Children in Grade 1

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We examined the relations of language skills (vocabulary, listening comprehension, and oral retell), transcription skills (spelling and handwriting fluency), and domain-general cognitions/executive functions (working memory and attentional control) to writing quality for English-Spanish emergent bilingual children in Grade 1. Data were from a convenience sample of 211 children (57% girls; 82% Hispanic, 9.5% White, 4% Asian American children) who were assessed on written composition, vocabulary, listening comprehension, oral retell, and spelling in English and Spanish; handwriting fluency and working memory in English; and attentional control rated by their teachers. Confirmatory factor analysis results showed that writing quality in English and Spanish in narrative and opinion genres was best described as a unidimensional skill. Structural equation model results showed that English oral language, English spelling, and Spanish spelling skills, but not Spanish oral language skill,...

The Relations of Morphological Awareness with Language and Literacy Skills Vary Depending on Orthographic Depth and Nature of Morphological Awareness

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We examined the relation of morphological awareness with language and literacy skills, namely phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, vocabulary, word reading, spelling, text reading fluency, and reading comprehension. We also examined potential moderators of the relations (grade level, orthographic depth of language, receptive vs. productive morphological awareness, inflectional vs. derivational vs. compound morphological awareness, and L1/L2 status). After systematic search, a total of 232 articles (965 unique samples, N = 49,936 participants, and 2,765 effect sizes in 17 languages) met inclusion criteria. Morphological awareness was, on average, moderately related to phonological awareness (r =.41), orthographic awareness (r =.39), vocabulary (r =.50), word reading (r =.49), spelling (r =.48), text reading fluency (r =.53), and reading comprehension (r =.54). Importantly, morphological awareness had a stronger relation with word reading in orthographically deep languages...

The relations of morphological awareness with vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension for Korean-speaking middle school students

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The relations of morphological awareness with vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension for Korean-speaking middle school students

The influence of parent conversation goal and structure on children’s event reports

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Parents vary in conversational goals and style when discussing events with their children-two aspects of parent socialization that may be related, or exert opposing influence on the development of young children's report accuracy (a critical factor in children's eyewitness reports). In a sample of 116 parent-child dyads (M _age = 53.17 months, range: 36-72 months), we examined the roles of parent social conversation goals (parent-reported and experimentally manipulated) and parent cognitive elaboration in children's ability to accurately report about a laboratory event. Parent cognitive elaboration varied by conversation goal and was positively associated with child accuracy across age but only when parents strongly endorsed social conversation goals. Parent questioning strategies and children's response accuracy varied with age. This work has implications for how we understand short- and long-term impacts caregivers exert on children's event reporting and suggests...

Diversity and the Transition to Adulthood in America

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Diversity and the Transition to Adulthood in America

Effective writing instruction for students in grades 6 to 12: a best evidence meta-analysis

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The current best evidence meta-analysis reanalyzed the data from a meta-analysis by Graham et al. (J Educ Psychol 115:1004–1027, 2023). This meta-analysis and the prior one examined if teaching writing improved the writing of students in Grades 6 to 12, examining effects from writing intervention studies employing experimental and quasi-experimental designs (with pretests). In contrast to the prior meta-analysis, we eliminated all N of 1 treatment/control comparisons, studies with an attrition rate over 20%, studies that did not control for teacher effects, and studies that did not contain at least one reliable writing measure (0.70 or greater). Any writing outcome that was not reliable was also eliminated. Across 148 independent treatment/control comparisons, yielding 1,076 writing effect sizes (ESs) involving 22,838 students, teaching writing resulted in a positive and statistically detectable impact on students’ writing (ES = 0.38). Further, six of the 10 writing treatments...

A Meta-Analysis of Writing Treatments for Students in Grades 6–12

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

There is considerable concern that many adolescents do not attain the writing competence needed to be successful in school, their personal lives, or the workplace. Ensuring that students acquire this competence is a basic responsibility of schools. In order to meet this objective, teachers need access to effective practices for teaching writing. In this meta-analysis, we examined if teaching writing improved the writing and reading of students in Grades 6–12, and what specific writing treatments enhanced students’ writing. Our review included writing treatments tested using an experimental or quasi-experimental design (with pretests) and published and unpublished studies, and computed effect sizes (ESs) for all writing and reading outcomes assessed. Across 406 independent comparisons, yielding 3,514 ESs involving 52,529 students, teaching writing had a positive and statistically detectable impact on students’ writing (ES=0.47) and reading (ES= 0.22). Moreover, a variety of different...

Linguistic Features of Secondary School Writing: Can Natural Language Processing Shine a Light on Differences by Sex, English Language Status, or Higher Scoring Essays?

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article provides three major contributions to the literature: we provide granular information on the development of student argumentative writing across secondary school; we replicate the MacArthur et al. model of Natural Language Processing (NLP) writing features that predict quality with a younger group of students; and we are able to examine the differences for students across language status. In our study, we sought to find the average levels of text length, cohesion, connectives, syntactic complexity, and word-level complexity in this sample across Grades 7-12 by sex, by English learner status, and for essays scoring above and below the median holistic score. Mean levels of variables by grade suggest a developmental progression with respect to text length, with the text length increasing with grade level, but the other variables in the model were fairly stable. Sex did not seem to affect the model in meaningful ways beyond the increased fluency of women writers. We saw...

Expanding the Direct and Indirect Effects Model of Writing (DIEW): Reading–Writing Relations, and Dynamic Relations as a Function of Measurement/Dimensions of Written Composition

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Within the context of the Direct and Indirect Effects model of Writing, we examined a dynamic relations hypothesis, which contends that the relations of component skills, including reading comprehension, to written composition vary as a function of dimensions of written composition. Specifically, we investigated (a) whether higher order cognitive skills (i.e., inference, perspective taking, and monitoring) are differentially related to three dimensions of written composition-writing quality, writing productivity, and correctness in writing; (b) whether reading comprehension is differentially related to the three dimensions of written composition after accounting for oral language, cognition, and transcription skills; and whether reading comprehension mediates the relations of discourse oral language and lexical literacy to the three dimensions of written composition; and (c) whether total effects of oral language, cognition, transcription, and reading comprehension vary for the...

Crosslinguistic Transfer of Higher Order Cognitive Skills and Their Roles in Writing for English-Spanish Dual Language Learners

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We investigated the dimensionality and relations between L1 and L2 writing skills in narrative and informational genres, and higher order cognitive skills-inference, perspective taking, and comprehension monitoring-for Spanish-English dual language learners in primary grades. Dimensions of written composition and higher order cognitive skills were examined, comparing nine alternative models. Data from 317 dual language learners in Grades 1 and 2 were used in confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. For the dimensionality of written composition, a unidimensional model, where writing was characterized as a single underlying construct across languages (Spanish and English) and genres (narrative & opinion), fit the data best. With regard to the dimensionality of higher order cognitive skills, data supported a bifactor model with (a) a general factor that captures common variance across languages and across inference, perspective taking, and comprehension...

Relations between reading and writing: a longitudinal examination from grades 3 to 6

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We investigated developmental trajectories of and the relation between reading and writing (word reading, reading comprehension, spelling, and written composition), using longitudinal data from students in Grades 3–6 in the US. Results revealed that word reading and spelling were best described as having linear growth trajectories whereas reading comprehension and written composition showed nonlinear growth trajectories with a quadratic function during the examined developmental period. Word reading and spelling were consistently strongly related (.73 ≤ rs ≤ .80) whereas reading comprehension and written composition were weakly related (.21 ≤ rs ≤ .37). Initial status and linear slope were negatively and moderately related for word reading (− .44) whereas they were strongly and positively related for spelling (.73). Initial status of word reading predicted initial status and growth rate of spelling; and growth rate of word reading predicted growth rate of spelling. In contrast,...

Co-Occurrence of Reading and Writing Difficulties: The Application of the Interactive Dynamic Literacy Model

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article presents the application of the interactive dynamic literacy (IDL) model (Kim, 2020b) toward understanding difficulties in learning to read and write. According to the IDL model, reading and writing are part of communicative acts that draw on largely shared processes and skills as well as unique processes and skills. As such, reading and writing are dissociable but interdependent systems that have hierarchical, interactive, and dynamic relations. These key tenets of the IDL model are applied to the disruption of reading and writing development to explain co-occurrence of reading-writing difficulties using a single framework. The following hypotheses are presented: (a) co-occurrence between word reading and spelling and handwriting difficulties; (b) co-occurrence of dyslexia with written composition difficulties; (c) co-occurrence between reading comprehension and written composition difficulties; (d) co-occurrence of language difficulties with reading difficulties...

What is Text Reading Fluency and Is It a Predictor or an Outcome of Reading Comprehension? A Longitudinal Investigation

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Text reading fluency refers to the ability to read connected texts with accuracy, speed, and expression (prosody), and has garnered substantial attention as an important skill for reading comprehension. However, two fundamental questions remain-the dimensionality of text reading fluency including text reading efficiency (accuracy and speed) and reading prosody, and the directionality of the relation between text reading fluency and reading comprehension. These questions were addressed using longitudinal data from Grade 1 (M_age = 6.36 years) to Grade 3 (M_age = 8.34 years). Majority of children were White (approximately 60%) and African American (26%) with 39% to 52% from low-SES backgrounds, depending on the grade. Text reading fluency, word reading, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension were measured. Results from confirmatory factor analysis revealed that text reading fluency is a multidimensional construct with a trifactor structure,...

Executive Functions and Morphological Awareness Explain the Shared Variance between Word Reading and Listening Comprehension

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Purpose: A large body of literature showed that word reading and listening comprehension-two proximal predictors of reading comprehension according to the simple view of reading-are related. Grounded on the direct and indirect effects model of reading (Kim, 2020a, 2020b, 2023), we examined the extent to which the relation is explained by domain-general cognitions or executive functions (working memory and attentional control) and emergent literacy skills (language and code-related skills including morphological awareness, phonological awareness, orthographic pattern recognition, letter naming fluency, and rapid automatized naming). Method: Data were from English-speaking children in Grade 1 (N = 372; 52% boys; 60% White children, 26% African American children, 6% multiracial children, 6% Hispanic children, and 2% Asian American children). Results: Results from structural equation models showed that word reading and listening comprehension were moderately related (.54)....

Crosslinguistic influence on spelling in written compositions: Evidence from English-Spanish dual language learners in primary grades

Wed, 8 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: We investigated spelling errors in English and Spanish essays by Spanish-English dual language learners in Grades 1, 2, and 3 (N = 278; 51% female) enrolled in either English immersion or English-Spanish dual immersion programs. We examined what types of spelling errors students made, whether they made spelling errors that could be due to crosslinguistic influence, and whether errors were associated with instructional program, English learner status, and grade level. Compositions were transcribed and coded using the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software. Spelling errors were suggestive of crosslinguistic influence that was mostly unidirectional from one language to the other rather than bidirectional. Spelling errors were related to instructional program such that students in Spanish-English dual immersion made more English spelling errors in English compositions due to Spanish influence, and students in English immersion made more spelling errors...

How syllabi relate to outcomes in higher education: A study of syllabi learner-centeredness and grade inequities in STEM

Thu, 2 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Fostering equity in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs can be accomplished by incorporating learner-centered pedagogies, resulting in the closing of opportunity gaps (defined here as the difference in grades earned by minoritized and non-minoritized students). We assessed STEM courses that exhibit small and large opportunity gaps at a minority-serving, research-intensive university, and evaluated the degree to which their syllabi are learner-centered, according to a previously validated rubric. We specifically chose syllabi as they are often the first interaction students have with a course, establish expectations for course policies and practices, and serve as a proxy for the course environment. We found STEM courses with more learner-centered syllabi had smaller opportunity gaps. The syllabus rubric factor that most correlated with smaller gaps was Power and Control, which reflects Student's Role, Outside Resources, and Syllabus Focus....

Using implicit encouragement to increase narrative productivity in children: Preliminary evidence and legal implications

Sun, 7 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Statements made by children in a range of legal settings can irrevocably impact their family structure, relationships, and living environment. Because these statements can fundamentally alter children's futures, efforts have been made to identify methods to enhance children's reports by increasing comprehensiveness, completeness, and accuracy. Interviewer support has broadly been considered a method of interest, but variations in what constitutes "support" have highlighted the need for greater specificity in documenting how different facets of supportive behaviors relate to children's reporting tendencies. In this review, we describe work focused on the effects of interviewer support, on children's memory completeness and accuracy. We then describe to a subset of interviewer behaviors that encourage elaboration in dyadic interactions: back-channeling and vocatives. We present preliminary evidence suggesting that these utterances, referred to as implicit encouragement, can increase...

English only? Monolinguals in linguistically diverse contexts have an edge in language learning

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Accumulating evidence shows how language context shapes bilingual language use and its cognitive consequences. However, few studies have considered the impact of language context for monolinguals. Although monolinguals' language processing is assumed to be relatively stable and homogeneous, some research has shown novel learning through exposure alone. Monolinguals living in linguistically diverse contexts regularly overhear languages they do not understand, and may absorb information about those languages in ways that shape their language networks. The current study used behavioral and ERP measures to compare monolinguals living in a linguistically diverse environment and a unilingual environment in their ability to learn vowel harmony in Finnish. Monolinguals in both contexts demonstrated similar learning of studied words; however, their ERPs differed for generalization. Monolinguals in the diverse context revealed an anterior late positivity, whereas monolinguals in the unilingual...

Cognitive control ability mediates prediction costs in monolinguals and bilinguals

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this study, we examined the role that cognitive control and language regulation ability play in mediating readers' susceptibility to prediction error costs when reading in the native language (L1) or a second language (L2). Twenty-four English monolinguals (Experiment 1) and 28 Chinese-English bilinguals (Experiment 2) read sentences in English while their EEG was recorded. The sentences varied in the predictability of an upcoming expected word and in whether that prediction was confirmed. Monolinguals showed sensitivity to sentence contexts in which expectations were not met (i.e., when unexpected words were encountered) in the form of a late, frontally-distributed positivity, but for bilinguals this effect was more complex. For both groups, performance on the prediction task was modulated by individual differences on the AX-CPT, a measure of inhibitory control. However, the bilinguals' reading performance in the L2 was affected not only by inhibitory control, but also by...

Cognitive Control Facilitates Attentional Disengagement during Second Language Comprehension

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Bilinguals learn to resolve conflict between their two languages and that skill has been hypothesized to create long-term adaptive changes in cognitive functioning. Yet, little is known about how bilinguals recruit cognitive control to enable efficient use of one of their languages, especially in the less skilled and more effortful second language (L2). Here we examined how real-time cognitive control engagement influences L2 sentence comprehension (i.e., conflict adaptation). We tested a group of English monolinguals and a group of L2 English speakers using a recently-developed cross-task adaptation paradigm. Stroop sequences were pseudo-randomly interleaved with a visual-world paradigm in which participants were asked to carry out spoken instructions that were either syntactically ambiguous or unambiguous. Consistent with previous research, eye-movement results showed that Stroop-related conflict improved the ability to engage correct-goal interpretations, and disengage incorrect-goal...

Cortical field maps across human sensory cortex

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Cortical processing pathways for sensory information in the mammalian brain tend to be organized into topographical representations that encode various fundamental sensory dimensions. Numerous laboratories have now shown how these representations are organized into numerous cortical field maps (CMFs) across visual and auditory cortex, with each CFM supporting a specialized computation or set of computations that underlie the associated perceptual behaviors. An individual CFM is defined by two orthogonal topographical gradients that reflect two essential aspects of feature space for that sense. Multiple adjacent CFMs are then organized across visual and auditory cortex into macrostructural patterns termed cloverleaf clusters. CFMs within cloverleaf clusters are thought to share properties such as receptive field distribution, cortical magnification, and processing specialization. Recent measurements point to the likely existence of CFMs in the other senses, as well, with topographical...

A Framework of Rapid Regional Tsunami Damage Recognition From Post-event TerraSAR-X Imagery Using Deep Neural Networks

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Near real-time building damage mapping is an indispensable prerequisite for governments to make decisions for disaster relief. With high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems, such as TerraSAR-X, the provision of such products in a fast and effective way becomes possible. In this letter, a deep learning-based framework for rapid regional tsunami damage recognition using post-event SAR imagery is proposed. To perform such a rapid damage mapping, a series of tile-based image split analysis is employed to generate the data set. Next, a selection algorithm with the SqueezeNet network is developed to swiftly distinguish between built-up (BU) and nonbuilt-up regions. Finally, a recognition algorithm with a modified wide residual network is developed to classify the BU regions into wash away, collapsed, and slightly damaged regions. Experiments performed on the TerraSAR-X data from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan show a BU region extraction accuracy of 80.4%...

Semantic Compression for Edge-Assisted Systems

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A novel semantic approach to data selection and compression is presented for the dynamic adaptation of IoT data processing and transmission within 'wireless islands', where a set of sensing devices (sensors) are interconnected through one-hop wireless links to a computational resource via a local access point. The core of the proposed technique is a cooperative framework where local classifiers at the mobile nodes are dynamically crafted and updated based on the current state of the observed system, the global processing objective and the characteristics of the sensors and data streams. The edge processor plays a key role by establishing a link between content and operations within the distributed system. The local classifiers are designed to filter the data streams and provide only the needed information to the global classifier at the edge processor, thus minimizing bandwidth usage. However, the better the accuracy of these local classifiers, the larger the energy necessary...

Improving Differentially Private Models with Active Learning

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Broad adoption of machine learning techniques has increased privacy concerns for models trained on sensitive data such as medical records. Existing techniques for training differentially private (DP) models give rigorous privacy guarantees, but applying these techniques to neural networks can severely degrade model performance. This performance reduction is an obstacle to deploying private models in the real world. In this work, we improve the performance of DP models by fine-tuning them through active learning on public data. We introduce two new techniques - DIVERSEPUBLIC and NEARPRIVATE - for doing this fine-tuning in a privacy-aware way. For the MNIST and SVHN datasets, these techniques improve state-of-the-art accuracy for DP models while retaining privacy guarantees.

Do Cross-Language Script Differences Enable Bilinguals to Function Selectively When Speaking in One Language Alone?