Journal of Psycholinguistic Research最新文献

{"title":"The Constraining Role of Information Structure in Resolving English PP Attachment Ambiguity: A Large-Scale Corpus Study of Film Subtitles.","authors":"Pengfei Bao","doi":"10.1007/s10936-026-10239-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10936-026-10239-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study integrates experimental psycholinguistics and usage-based corpus linguistics to investigate how pragmatic and prosodic cues constrain syntactic parsing in natural discourse. Focusing on the resolution of prepositional phrase (PP) attachment ambiguity (e.g., \"I saw the man with the telescope\"), we examine the role of information structure. Using the large-scale OpenSubtitles corpus, we manually disambiguated and annotated thousands of instances for the givenness/newness of referents and the presence of commas as orthographic prosodic boundaries. Mixed-effects logistic regression analyses reveal that both information status and commas are robust predictors of attachment preferences. A contextually Given NP within the PP significantly promotes NP-attachment, while a comma preceding the PP strongly favors VP-attachment. These findings extend laboratory-based results by demonstrating the potent role of pragmatic and orthographic prosodic cues in ecologically valid language processing, underscoring the necessity of integrating discourse context into models of the syntax-pragmatics interface.</p>","PeriodicalId":47689,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psycholinguistic Research","volume":"55 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148139368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Motivational Factors Influencing English Language Learning Among Saudi EFL Students: A Structural Equation Model of Internal Relationships.","authors":"Mohammad Hamad Al-Khresheh, Abdo Hasan Al-Qadri, Sami Mohammed Alanazi, Dalia Abdelwahab","doi":"10.1007/s10936-026-10236-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10936-026-10236-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study investigates the role of key motivational factors and their interrelationships in shaping English language learning among Saudi EFL students. A quantitative correlational research design was employed to develop and test a structural model that included six main factors: Career Economic Need, Communicative-Affiliative Need, Self-Efficacy, Self-Satisfaction with Learning, Need for Cultural Integration, and Need for Cultural Understanding. 410 university EFL students participated in the study, selected using stratified random sampling. Data were collected using the 'Foreign Language Learning Motivation Questionnaire', which was validated through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Structural equation modelling was used to examine the hypothesised relationships. The results revealed significant direct effects of Career Economic Need on Communicative-Affiliative Need, and of Communicative-Affiliative Need on both Self-Efficacy and Need for Cultural Integration. An indirect effect was also found from Communicative-Affiliative Need to Self-Satisfaction with Learning, mediated by Self-Efficacy. However, no significant direct effect was observed between Need for Cultural Integration and Need for Cultural Understanding, nor was there an indirect effect of Communicative-Affiliative Need on Cultural Integration mediated by Self-Satisfaction with Learning. These findings suggest that aligning language instruction with career-oriented goals, encouraging meaningful communicative experiences, and supporting learners' self-efficacy may foster greater satisfaction and engagement. This model contributes to a deeper understanding of how context-specific motivational factors interact, offering a more targeted framework for EFL motivation research in Saudi Arabia. The study provides practical implications for designing instructional strategies responsive to the motivational profiles of Saudi EFL learners.</p>","PeriodicalId":47689,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psycholinguistic Research","volume":"55 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148139385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Predicting the Use of Blog for Teaching English as a Foreign Language by Serbian Teachers.","authors":"Verica Milutinović, Timothy Teo, Vera Savić","doi":"10.1007/s10936-026-10257-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10936-026-10257-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The goal of this study is to investigate the variables that may predict Serbian English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' acceptance of blogs for language learning purposes. Despite widespread support of the use of blog in EFL education, empirical research on EFL teachers' adoption of blog in Serbia is scarce. Building on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), this study extends the model by incorporating subjective norm (SN), referring to perceived social pressure from colleagues and important others, as a key external factor influencing blog acceptance. On the basis of the TAM, mutual relationships of six variables were examined: SN, attitude towards blog use, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, behavioural intention (BI), and actual use of blog in teaching practice (USE). Structural equation modelling was used for testing the hypothesized model with data obtained from 300 primary school EFL teachers in Serbia. The proposed model had a good fit for explaining EFL teachers' BI and USE, and accounted for 25.4% of the variance in USE and 70.9% of the variance in BI. The results highlight the substantial role of SN, which significantly influenced teachers' perceptions of usefulness, ease of use, attitudes, and BI. The findings also reveal a gap between teachers' intentions to use blog and their actual classroom use. These results suggest that social and contextual influences play an important role in technology adoption, while positive intentions may not ensure actual integration of blog into teaching practice. The implications for theory and practice are addressed.</p>","PeriodicalId":47689,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psycholinguistic Research","volume":"55 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148139319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Processing Negation and Mood in Afaan Oromoo: Morphosyntax and Cognitive Implications.","authors":"Eba Teresa Garoma","doi":"10.1007/s10936-026-10235-y","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10936-026-10235-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study examines the interaction of negation and mood in Afaan Oromoo, a Cushitic language in the Afroasiatic phylum. It focuses on the morphosyntactic features of negation and mood about the perfective and imperfective aspects. The data sources include written web corpora, native speakers of Western (Macha) variety and introspection. In the language, the distinct nature of negation is showcased through morphological negation, negative verbs and lexical elements. This highlights the language’s direct approach to conveying negation within clauses. For mood/modality, the study classifies the types as imperative, interrogative and jussive, which have different inflectional properties. Furthermore, it reveals the use of modal auxiliaries, such as k’aba ‘should be’, taɁa ‘could be’, taɁinnaa ‘may become’, laata ‘may be’, dandaɁa ‘can/be able’, mala ‘must be’, etc., in the expression of modality in everyday practice. The study has great contribution to the fields of language documentation, typological studies, and theoretical linguistics, serving as a critical resource for scholars, educators and language enthusiasts interested in the exploration and preservation of Afaan Oromoo. The study shows that certain negated structures involving double negation trigger mitigated interpretations and may influence processing complexity. This contributes to debates on how languages encode polarity and modality, and how such systems impact cognitive processing and language comprehension.</p>","PeriodicalId":47689,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psycholinguistic Research","volume":"55 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148139370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On the Contextual Constraints of Counter-Expectation Marker and Its Use in Shanghai Dialect-Mandarin Bidialectals: An Experimental Investigation of papa in Shanghai Dialect.","authors":"Xun Li, Ruixuan Xu, Xiaoming Jiang","doi":"10.1007/s10936-026-10259-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10936-026-10259-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The present study investigated how Shanghai dialect-Mandarin bidialectal speakers comprehend and produce sentences with a specific counter-expectation marker papa in their first language, the Shanghai dialect. Papa leads a complex sentence, as in \"papa being a senior doctor, he cannot perform such an easy surgery\", with the subordinating clause entailing the speakers' expectation and the main clause describing the reality which is contrary to the speakers' expectation. Different from other counter-expectation markers which generally license the violation of speakers' expectedness, the use of papa is restricted to a context which typically encodes a positive expectation being dissatisfied. In two experiments, we aimed to investigate how specific contexts influence bidialectal Shanghai dialect speakers' comprehension and production of papa complex sentences. In the comprehension task, participants were instructed to judge the contextual felicitousness of complex sentences containing papa, which featured an event that was either consistent or inconsistent with the counter-expectation constraint and used in either positive or negative evaluative context. Sentences in the consistent or positive conditions were judged to be more felicitous than their inconsistent or negative counterparts, highlighting the influence of both the counter-expectation constraint and the evaluative context. In the production task, participants were asked to complete sentences with only subordinating or the main clause provided. The results showed that participants demanded more time to plan sentences in negative evaluative contexts. Subsequent semantic coding of adversative and expectation types revealed that participants preferred to produce sentences with explicit adversative relationships in positive than negative contexts, while they favored sentences with under-expectation relationships in neutral contexts. These findings suggest an \"under-expectation bias\" in the use of papa complex sentences, indicating a selectivity to a specific direction of counter-expectation relationships. This suggests that new usages of counter-expectation marker can emerge from particular contexts. Such under-expectation bias could be related to papa's communicative function to express sarcasm.</p>","PeriodicalId":47689,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psycholinguistic Research","volume":"55 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148139387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Illusions of Plausibility: The Case of Semantic Attraction.","authors":"Lucas Cruz, Chiara Melloni, Larissa Ciríaco","doi":"10.1007/s10936-026-10240-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10936-026-10240-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Semantic attraction is an illusion of plausibility that occurs when a noun with verb-matching semantic cues intervenes in the subject-verb agreement relation. Thus, a sentence like “The drawer with the knife cuts” tends to be perceived as more acceptable than “The drawer with the handle cuts” because cut and knife (the attractor) often co-occur. We report results from a self-paced reading experiment followed by two offline tasks (acceptability judgments and comprehension questions) that sought to examine the underlying factors in stronger or weaker semantic attraction effects. That was done by manipulating the frequency with which nouns co-occur with the verb and the cognitive load on working memory. The converging evidence reveals that online processing is rarely disturbed by implausible sentences, but their interpretation is directly linked to lexical co-occurrence and general contextual plausibility. Therefore, not only does acceptability in implausible sentences increase with the presence of an attractor but the degree to which the attractor shares features with the local noun can be a predictor of the likelihood of attraction, showing speakers’ sensitivity to plausible reading. That, in turn, suggests that in addition to a cue-based parsing mechanism, speakers' expectations, based on their world knowledge, seem to contribute to sentence interpretation.</p>","PeriodicalId":47689,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psycholinguistic Research","volume":"55 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148139314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Rhythmic Training on Executive Function and Phonological Skills in Preschoolers.","authors":"L Boulc'h, D Pereira, S Jhean-Larose","doi":"10.1007/s10936-026-10256-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10936-026-10256-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Phonological skills and executive functions are fundamental cognitive abilities underlying reading acquisition. It is therefore crucial that children begin developing these capacities early, starting in preschool. This study tests the hypothesis that psychomotor training focused on temporal processing enhances early predictors of reading ability. The first part of the study investigates the relationships between rhythmic ability, inhibitory control, and key pre-reading skills in preschool children aged 4 to 6 years. The second part examines the effects of rhythmic training on emergent literacy skills. A distinctive feature of this research is its longitudinal design. Children's cognitive and motor abilities were first assessed at age 3, during their initial year of formal schooling. Half of the cohort participated in a rhythmic training program administered over two 12-week sessions. Post-intervention assessments were conducted at regular intervals up to age 6, evaluating phonological awareness, executive functioning, and emergent reading abilities. The findings underscore the significant role of rhythmic training in supporting reading development. Results indicate that such training may positively influence early literacy skills and enhance specific executive functions, including inhibitory control. In conclusion, the incorporation of musical and motor activities into early childhood education may offer a promising approach for fostering cognitive processes essential for reading.</p>","PeriodicalId":47689,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psycholinguistic Research","volume":"55 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148139376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Lexical Inference in L2 Chinese: Does Contextual Information Always Work?","authors":"Wenwen Zhu, Meng Cheng, Bing Feng, Tianxu Chen","doi":"10.1007/s10936-026-10258-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10936-026-10258-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The ability of second language (L2) learners to guess the meanings of unfamiliar words, which is known as lexical inference, is crucial for learning words and for reading comprehension. However, the extent to which L2 learners can make effective use of the contextual resources surrounding unfamiliar words remains uncertain, as many L2 studies seem to suggest a low success rate for lexical inferencing in context; furthermore, whether the relationship between contextual richness and the success of lexical inferencing is influenced by L2 learners' linguistic knowledge (i.e., vocabulary and grammatical knowledge) is undetermined. Sixty-six L2 Chinese learners who were attending Chinese universities participated voluntarily in this study. All the participants completed four computerized tasks: a short-term memory task, a vocabulary knowledge task, a grammatical knowledge task, and a lexical inferencing task with three contextual conditions. The results revealed that: 1) regardless of their linguistic knowledge, L2 learners performed better in lexical inference when provided with a more informative context compared to a less informative or a non-informative context, indicating that the degree of contextual richness plays a significant role in L2 learners' success; 2) L2 learners with greater linguistic knowledge performed marginally better when inferring the meanings of unknown words in the more informative context than did those with less linguistic knowledge; and. 3) although L2 learners' linguistic knowledge did not generally have a moderating effect on their lexical inference via the use of contextual information, there appeared to be some complexity in this relationship for participants with greater linguistic knowledge.</p>","PeriodicalId":47689,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psycholinguistic Research","volume":"55 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148139392","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Prosodic Resolution of Quantifier Scope Ambiguity in Child Mandarin.","authors":"Haiquan Huang, Ziyu Wei, Yixiong Chen, Meili Liu, Yaxi Du","doi":"10.1007/s10936-026-10228-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10936-026-10228-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the domain of quantifier scope interpretation, cross-linguistic differences have been observed between Mandarin Chinese and English. In Mandarin, doubly quantified sentences with the logical notation “∀x (P (x) → ∃y (Q (y) ∧ R (x, y)))” only permit a surface-scope interpretation, whereas the English counterparts allow both surface-scope and inverse-scope interpretations. However, it has been shown that unlike adults, Mandarin-speaking children can access both the surface-scope and inverse-scope interpretation of such sentences, suggesting that they initially allow a flexible scope relation. Moreover, young children have been found to utilize prosodic contour to resolve scope ambiguity. Against this background, the present study attempts to explore whether children are able to use prosodic information to disambiguate the aforementioned doubly quantified sentences. To this end, we ran an experiment with Mandarin-speaking children and a group of adult controls in three prosodic conditions, using the picture selection task. In Condition 1, the test sentences were presented in a global level intonation, which served as a baseline of the experiment. In Condition 2, the subject NP of the test sentences was accentuated in the presentation. In Condition 3, the object NP was accentuated. The main findings were threefold. In Condition 1, children performed nearly at chance between the surface-scope and inverse-scope interpretations, whereas adults derived the isomorphic interpretation, suggesting that children interpret the test items as ambiguous, whereas adults do not. In Condition 2, both groups converged on the surface-scope interpretation. In Condition 3, both groups derived an inverse-scope interpretation. Considered together, the findings reveal that by age 4, Mandarin-speaking children readily recruit prosodic information to resolve quantifier scope ambiguity.</p>","PeriodicalId":47689,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psycholinguistic Research","volume":"55 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148139323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ageing, Cognitive Deterioration, and Verbal Disfluency: A Case Study in Thailand.","authors":"Thanasak Sirikanerat, Teeranoot Siriwittayakorn","doi":"10.1007/s10936-026-10260-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10936-026-10260-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Studies on the effects of ageing on cognitive functioning and verbal performance were often conducted in western population with mixed results. More recent research suggested roles of socio-individual factors in modulating the age effects. The present study employed different tasks including a working memory test, a picture naming task, and a storytelling task to investigate the ageing effects in Thai population, the underrepresented group. Socio-individual factors including education, stress, and sleep hours were also included, and age was treated as continuous variable in the analyses. From a working memory test, it was found that with every increase in age, there was a decline in working memory capacity. To test whether cognitive deterioration resulting from age affects verbal performance, and whether each socio-individual factor could directly affect verbal performance, a picture naming task and a storytelling task were conducted. It was found that age was inversely related to disfluency in terms of pause filler production, self-monitoring, and self-repair. None of socio-individual factors was significant. The study calls for more careful analyses on speech-disfluency variables.</p>","PeriodicalId":47689,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psycholinguistic Research","volume":"55 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148139382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}