<p><i>Purpose</i>. Sentence production is impaired in many persons with aphasia (PWA). Structural priming, a speaker’s tendency to re-use a previously heard sentence structure, has been shown to facilitate sentence production in PWA. Man et al. (2019), however, found that PWA showed significant priming only in transitive sentences but not in dative sentences when these two different types of sentences were presented in an alternating manner within a session [Man, G., Meehan, S., Martin, N., Branigan, H., Lee, J. (2019). Effects of Verb Overlap on Structural Priming in Dialogue: Implications for Syntactic Learning in Aphasia. <i>Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 62</i>, 1933-1950]. This study sought to examine whether presenting transitive vs. dative stimuli in a blocked format would yield more consistent priming effects in PWA.</p><p><i>Methods. </i>Twelve PWA and twelve healthy older adults (HOA) completed a dialogue-like priming task, where participants took turns describing pictures with the experimenter. Importantly, each participant received two blocks of transitive and dative priming. In addition, we repeated verbs between prime and target items for half of each block to test if lexical overlap boosts priming, i.e., lexical boost. We measured how often the participant re-used the same syntactic structure they heard the experimenter produce previously when they described their own picture. </p><p><i>Results. </i>HOA showed significant priming and lexical boost in the transitive block and significant priming in the dative block, replicating Man et al. (2019). PWA, showed near significant priming in the transitive block. Importantly, the priming effect became significant when the verb was repeated between prime and target, indicating lexical boost. However, PWA failed to show priming in the dative block. </p><p><i>Discussion.</i> Using a blocked stimulus design only modulated lexically-mediated priming in transitives for PWA, different from Man et al. (2019). Findings suggest that while it is feasible to use structural priming to ameliorate sentence production deficits in PWA, the presentation of target stimuli would likely not influence outcomes.</p><p></p><p></p>

Social media as a tool in the classroom is not a concept one hears much about. Being that social media is still a relatively new phenomenon, this is not particularly strange. Research surrounding the subject is sparse, but there are several articles that show there being a possible place for social media in the classroom. These studies find that there is a need for educators to be properly informed and make precise decisions regarding how and why they want to use social media in the classroom. In this paper we found evidence that supports the idea that social media can be useful as a tool in the classroom; however, findings show that there are few if any moments of explicit vocabulary learning, and therefore social media should be used more as a motivational tool, resulting in implicit vocabulary acquisition. In order to get proper usage of social media, educators need to conduct their own research, thereby expanding the knowledge of social media as a tool.

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I investigated the presence, utility, and emergence of tacit knowledge in 9 study participants who used assistive-augmentative technology. I conducted phenomenologic interviews, audio-taping, and transcribed the interview with the written consent of the participants. Sixteen highly trained experts critiqued the final product of the interviews and answered a 25-question survey instrument. Non-parametric statistical processes were chosen to conduct inferential hypotheses testing. Wilcoxon - Mann Whitney U tests and Kruskal - Wallis One-Way ANOVA (alpha level of 0.05) were used for questions 1-10, and a 2 x R (R = 3 or 4) contingency table and Fisher's Exact Chi-Square were used for questions 11- 25. The responses to survey questions showed no statistically significant differences or interaction for the variables gender, expertise, and service (p < 0.0017). Qualitative analysis found discernable heuristics and ideation that was indicative of the presence of implicitly learned tacit knowledge in study participants; the utility of tacit knowledge emerged during direct observation or when participant's engaged in analogy, storytelling, and metaphor. The participants in this study used introspeculation, a learning style framed by reflection and introspection on the validity of one's own knowledge and the value of what is learned from life experience and in the classroom. The introspeculative examined the presence and utility of tacit knowledge in decision-making, and questioned the veracity of sources and resources that guide them on the path of life. The study suggested that tacit knowledge not only informs the practice of therapists and technology users but may assist classroom teachers facing student involvement in individual education plans (IEPs), Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), or section 504 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

This study explored the main effects and interaction effects of implicit learning and explicit instructional approaches on the language acquisition of beginning adult and child learners of Chinese and analyzed the successful adult and child learners' learning styles in their information processing time, second language acquisition techniques, and cognitive strategies. Volunteers from Brigham Young University and Wasatch Elementary School were randomly assigned to either an Explicit Instruction Treatment (EIT) or an Implicit Learning Treatment (ILT). Following the treatment, the participants completed an online survey and a vocabulary application test. Results from a 2 x 2 factorial ANOVA indicated that adults performed significantly better than children on the listening and vocabulary tests scores (F (1, 135) =158.901, p<.001), and the EIT was significantly more effective than the ILT. There was no interaction between maturity and treatment factors. Results from a 3 x 2 factorial MANOVA indicated that in the Learning Phase, adults in the high and mid performance groups spent significantly longer processing information than those in the low performance group, and adults in the EIT also spent a longer time than those in the ILT. Results from the stepwise regression showed that for successful adult and child learners, Phonological Processing was the most frequently used second language strategy for both adults and children, which was strongly correlated with their vocabulary application test scores. Guessing was the most popular cognitive strategy. Successful children spent significantly less time than the low performing children in the Testing Phase.

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<p>Cognitive psychologists have long been interested in the nature of the representations that underlie human behaviours. In the domain of human memory, two main accounts have been forwarded to explain how memory is represented. The multiple memory systems account posits that different phenomenological experiences of memory are the result of separate and distinct representations. In contrast, the processing account posits that there is one memory system, and that different phenomenological experiences of memory are the result of the processes engaged in when probing memory. The explanatory power of these two accounts has been evaluated in a number of domains, where it has been shown that a processing view can accommodate many of the key findings that previously led researchers to propose a separate systems framework. The goal of this thesis was to extend this work by assessing the nature of the representations that underlie implicit sequence learning. The empirical portions of this thesis provide preliminary evidence suggesting that contextual features are incorporated into implicit sequence learning. Overall, the results reported in the empirical chapters of this thesis are consistent with a processing account, as they indicate that the episodic representations that are involved in explicit remembering also support performance in implicit memory tasks.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The purpose of this qualitative study is to compare five teachers’ beliefs about their students’ learning of vocabulary and compare that with current theories and recommended practices in the field. The method for collecting data was semi-structured interviews with teachers who teach English in both lower secondary and upper secondary schools in Sweden. The data from these interviews were then analyzed by way of thematic analysis. The results were then compared with previous research in the field of vocabulary learning drawing on studies and works of researchers such as Stuart Webb and Paul Nation among others. The results reveal a lot of similarities with the latest research on vocabulary learning. The findings of this study also indicate some differences between teacher beliefs and research. Apart from research done in the field of vocabulary learning this study has also taken the proven experience of the teachers into account. Since this study is of a qualitative kind, these results cannot be generalized in regard to Swedish teachers of English as a group but rather what some of them portray when talking on the topic of vocabulary.