Language Processes

Switching languages, a fine-tuning switch for tuning language control?

In this podcast episode, Jonathan Caballero interviews Dr. Angela de Bruin about a recent paper published in Memory and Cognition exploring how brief listening exposure to people switching languages can influence the speakers’ language control behavior. Transcript Melinh Lai: You’re listening to All Things Cognition, a Psychonomic Society podcast. Jonathan Caballero: Welcome to All Things […]

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Breaking new ground (and other expressions): Unearthing presuppositional strength of idioms

If you like idioms, you’ll be… head over heels… for this research. Allow me to… break the ice… without… beating around the bush. A new study on idioms by Nicholas Griffen and Ira Noveck is… the bee’s knees.  In second-language learning classes, ever notice that idiomatic expressions are covered in the more advanced sections? These […]

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Can a “fish” be friends with a “dish” – a new open-access resource for phonological network research

A common trope in high school movies involves the protagonist being given a tour of the various student cliques, where distinctive groups like the rowdy football players, the fashionable mean girls, and the school bullies are all seated at different cafeteria tables and looking unfriendly to anyone not in their group. While reality is more […]

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The ROAR-CAT’s out of the bag: A reliable, efficient reading assessment

As RuPaul famously says, “Reading is fundamental.” It forms the foundation of how we learn, communicate, and engage with the world around us. That’s why it’s essential to have good, reliable ways to measure reading ability. A parent might do this by asking their child to sound words out or try reading a sentence. Researchers, […]

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Truth is in the words of the beholder: How language shapes the believability of memories

You’ve heard the saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” which captures the idea that beauty is subjective. The same could probably be said about truth, especially when it comes to memory. Perceptions of how accurate a communicated memory is aren’t necessarily shaped by how accurate the memory actually is, but by the […]

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Formidable, flexible, friendly, and fun

We have known Larry for a long time. At first it was a one-way affair, when we were in graduate school and read his work. After we studied Larry’s paper on ad-hoc categories our view on semantic memory was never the same again. We had been working on the boundary between episodic and semantic memory, […]

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Benefits of being bilingual? Not adaptive control

Much to the chagrin of my Vietnamese parents, and probably also a few French teachers from my school years, I never picked up a language beyond English well enough to comfortably call myself bilingual. I think the closest thing to a bilingual experience I’ve ever had was when I attempted to order in French at […]

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Never Eat Sour Watermelons: Remembering lists as sentences

Everyone struggles to remember things. Whether it’s a home address, someone’s phone number, or even a new acquaintance’s name—it’s challenging to recall information when we need to. We have lost count of the number of times we’ve been introduced to someone only to immediately forget their name. However, some things might be easier to remember […]

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