During 24 silent and oral readings of Guy de Maupassant and Arthur C. Clarke short stories (1294 and 1516 words) by proficient multilinguals, movement of the left eye was tracked and utterances were recorded. Three hypotheses investigate universality in the reading process: reading in English is similar in reading speed, miscues, and eye movements to reading in French (chapter 4); reading in a first, or native language (L1), is similar in reading speed, miscues, and eye movements to reading in a second, or later acquired, language (L2) (chapter 5); silent reading is similar to oral reading in reading speed and eye movements (chapter 6). Hypothesis are partially confirmed; implications are drawn for teaching and research.Silent reading is consistently faster than oral reading, with a mean difference of 28.7%. Reading speed is similar in English and French, but interacts differently with language experience: L2 readers of English read 50% slower than L1 readers, while in French, L2 readers read 13% faster.Retelling scores demonstrate a slight comprehension advantage for oral reading over silent, a wider range after oral than after silent, L1 readers having a slight advantage over L2 readers, and improved scores after second readings. Proscribing rereading to increase oral accuracy may disadvantage some readers: Second oral readings in English (but not in French) produced more miscues than first oral readings. This requires further study with tightly controlled groups. Overall, English readings produced 36% more miscues than French readings.Mean fixation durations are slightly longer during silent than oral reading, and show little variation between English and French reading. Wide variation in reading speed (L1/L2, silent/oral) is not reflected in mean eye fixation durations, although language dominance show an effect in French, where fixations during L1 readings are 18.6% shorter than during L2 readings.Individual variation is a factor. Emotional affect, poetic style, construction of syntax, and attention to metaphor are all observed in this EMMA data. Future analysis of this database may look at anaphoric relations, metaphor, how texts teach; and how readers develop narrative, verb phases, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic relations in complete textual discourse.

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This manuscript-based thesis explores the relationship between learning and development. The first manuscript reviews the important empirical regularities identified in human discrimination shift learning, including a qualitative age-related change in performance observed in childhood. Leading theoretical accounts of the empirical data are discussed, suggesting that none provides a comprehensive interpretation. The manuscript presents the novel, spontaneous overtraining interpretation. It hypothesizes that age-related changes in human shift learning stem from differences in amount of processing. Successful neural network simulations of the reversal and nonreversal shift tasks and of the optional shift task are reported as tests of the hypothesis. / The second manuscript reports simulations of additional discrimination shift tasks. These are the intradimensional and extradimensional shift tasks, in which novel stimuli are introduced in the relearning phase. Preschoolers and adults exhibit the same pattern of behavior in this variant of shift learning. Simulation results show that the spontaneous overtraining hypothesis captures this effect. / The third chapter reports an empirical validation of the shift learning model. If the shift learning performance of adults is a consequence of more extensive processing, it follows that adults in whom such processing is prevented should perform as preschoolers. Sixty adults took part in a shift learning experiment with a Brown-Peterson task as a cognitive load. Results mirror those observed with preschoolers. As a control, 40 adults performed the shift learning experiment without the cognitive load. These results replicate the typical adult performance. Overall, these experiments lend additional support to the model developed in Manuscript 1. / The final manuscript is a theoretical discussion of the relationship between learning and development. Two classes of neural networks are discussed, and their underlying assumptions about learning and development are highlighted. These are static architecture and generative architecture networks. It is argued that only generative algorithms, such as used in the shift learning simulations, qualify as developmental models. Both classes of networks are further contrasted with respect to innateness. The comparison suggests that only generative networks can acquire genuinely new representations. The manuscript proposes a novel formulation of Piaget's constructivism from the generative neural network perspective.

The purpose of this research is to further investigate the ongoing debate between the Dual Mechanism Model and the Connectionist Model of language processing by investigating how knowledge of second language (L2) inflectional morphology is represented and processed by learners of English. Specifically, do second language learners of English use the same Dual Mechanism Model that Prasada and Pinker (1993) have argued is a universally applicable model, or does the Connectionist Model of language processing better explain L2 learning and language processing? / The participants in this study were students in a Montreal area CEGEP. The instrument used to gather data was the Prasada and Pinker pseudo-verb list, with modifications suggested by Lee (1994) to create a revised list. Participants were asked to create past tense forms of pseudo verbs. In addition to this task, four participants were asked to do a simultaneous verbal think aloud, orally explaining their responses to the stimulus presented in the study. / The results of the studies indicate that English second language learners used both a rule based mechanism and an associative mechanism in the formation of both regular and irregular English verbs. This result provides support for the claims of the Connectionist model of past tense formation of English verbs, but also supports some of the claims of the Dual Mechanism Model. There are possible implications for the teaching and learning of English as a Second Language (ESL). This study also raises further research questions involving rule vs. associative learning in the teaching and learning of language. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

In the McGurk Effect (McGurk & MacDonald, 1976), a visual depiction of a speaker silently mouthing the syllable [ga]/[ka] is presented concurrently with the auditory input [ba]/[pa], resulting in “fused” [da]/[ta] being heard. Deonarine (2010) found that increasing the intensity (volume) of the auditory input changes the perception of the auditory input from [ga] (at quiet volume levels) to [da], and then to [ba] (at loud volume levels). The present experiments show that reducing both ambient noise (additional frequencies in the environment) and stimulus noise (excess frequencies in the sound wave which accompany the intended auditory signal) prevents the illusory percept. This suggests that noise is crucial to audiovisual integration and that the McGurk effect depends on the existence of auditory ambiguity.

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1986. / Bibliography: leaves 243-252. / Photocopy. / Microfilm. / xiv, 252 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1974. / Bibliography: leaves 83-86. / viii, 86 leaves

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed January 9, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 258-271).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Full text release at OhioLINK's ETD Center delayed at author's request

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Full text release at OhioLINK's ETD Center delayed at author's request