English Education

According to a meta-analysis of empirical studies, seductive details such as emotionally interesting text
segments and attention-grabbing pictures have significant negative effects on the reader’s recall, reading
comprehension, and learning of important textual information. This study investigates the negative
effects of seductive details on recall of main ideas and reading comprehension by using an eye-tracking
technique. In the experiment, a total of 56 undergraduate students read a block of expository text with
seductive details, and the spatial and temporal distribution of attention was measured by gaze duration
and recorded by an eye tracker. Then recall and reading comprehension tests were employed. Two multiple
regression analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between attention allocation and
reading performance. The results indicate that increased attention to seductive sentences, not to
seductive pictures, was a major determinant of poor performance in terms of both recall and reading
comprehension, suggesting that increased attentional allocation to seductive sentences may hinder
information retrieval and produce a less coherent mental representation of given text.

Research to date suggests that textual enhancement may positively affect the learning of multiword combinations known as collocations, but may impair recall of unenhanced text. However, the attentional mechanisms underlying such effects remain unclear. In this study, 38 undergraduate students were divided into two groups: one read a text containing typographically enhanced collocations (ET group) and the other read the same text with unenhanced collocations (the baseline text, or BT group). While reading, participants' eye movements were recorded with an eye-tracker. Results showed that the ET group spent significantly longer time processing target collocations, and performed better than the BT group in a post-reading collocation test. However, apart from the enhanced collocations, the ET group recalled significantly less unenhanced text than the BT group. Further investigation of eye fixation data showed that the ET group spent substantially longer time processing collocations which, according to a pretest, they were not familiar with than did the BT group, whereas the two groups did not differ significantly in their processing of familiar collocations. Collectively, the results suggest that the trade-off between collocation learning and recall of unenhanced text is due to additional cognitive resources being allocated to enhanced collocations that are new to the reader.

Despite much evidence for the positive effects of L1 and L2 glosses on incidental vocabulary acquisition, their relative effectiveness remains unsettled. Furthermore, how such glosses affect lexical representations remains unknown. To address these points, 180 native speakers of Korean (10th graders) were assigned to one of three groups to read an English story containing either L1 (Korean) or L2 (English) glosses, or the same story without glosses. Immediately and one week later, the three groups were instructed to recall the meanings of target words in their choice of L1 or L2. The target words consisted of two sets: a set of words occurring twice (F2 words) or four times (F4 words), respectively. The results showed that although the L1 and L2 groups did not differ in their short-term retention of the F2 and F4 words, the L1 group outperformed the L2 group in the long-term retention of F4 words, but not F2 words. Further, the L1 group recalled the meanings of novel word forms predominantly in the L1 (Korean), whereas the L2 group showed mixed results (approximately 75% in the L2 and 25% in the L1). These results suggest that lexical processing and storage mechanisms may vary significantly depending on the gloss type, resulting in both a quantitatively and qualitatively different impact on L2 lexical knowledge.

To determine the neural underpinning of text-illustration effects, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed using 45 short passages in English with text only and with text-congruous and text-incongruous illustrations. Compared to text alone, text accompanied by congruous illustrations elicited increased activation in brain areas implicated in attention, motivation , and reward, suggesting that text-congruous illustrations can improve reader's attention and motivation to read text, which in turn may promote reading comprehension. Furthermore, in a comparison of effects between text-congruous and text-incongruous illustrations, the results indicated that illustrations

Although much is known about how contextualized and decontextualized learning affects explicit lexical knowledge, how these learning conditions contribute to implicit lexical knowledge remains unclear. To address this problem, Korean high school students were instructed to learn 30 English words by reading meaningful passages (i.e., in context) and another 30 English words using a wordlist (i.e., out of context). Five weeks later, implicit lexical knowledge was gauged by reaction time and the N400 event-related brain potential component, and explicit lexical knowledge was assessed with an explicit behavioral measure. Results showed that neither learning type was superior to the other in terms of implicit lexical knowledge acquisition, whereas learning words out of context was more effective than learning words in context for establishing explicit lexical knowledge. These results suggest that the presence or absence of context may lead to dissociation in the development of implicit and explicit lexical knowledge.

Plastic change of neural correlates with physical training. Basal ganglia showed increased activity after intensive training. Activity change was associated with performance and reinforcement learning. a b s t r a c t Evidence from previous studies has suggested that motor imagery and motor action engage overlapping brain systems. As a result of this observation that motor imagery can activate brain regions associated with actual motor movement, motor imagery is expected to enhance motor skill performance and become an underlying principle for physical training in sports and physical rehabilitation. However, few studies have examined the effects of physical training on motor imagery in beginners. Also, differences in neural networks related to motor imagery before and after training have seldom been studied. In the current study, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated the question of whether motor imagery can reflect plastic changes of neural correlates associated with intensive training. In fact, motor imagery was used in this study as a tool to assess the brain areas involved in shooting and involved in learning of shooting. We discovered that use of motor imagery resulted in recruitment of widely distributed common cortical areas, which were suggested to play a role in generation and maintenance of mental images before and after 90 h of shooting training. In addition to these common areas, brain activation before and after 90 h of shooting practice showed regionally distinct patterns of activity change in subcortical motor areas. That is, basal ganglia showed increased activity after 90 h of shooting practice, suggesting the occurrence of plastic change in association with gains in performance and reinforcement learning. Therefore, our results suggest that, in order to reach a level of expertise, the brain would change through initial reinforcement of preexistent connections during the training period and then use more focused neural correlates through formation of new connections.

Choi, Sungmook. (2013). Working memory capacity, vocabulary knowledge, and reading Comprehension of EFL learners. English Language Teaching, 25(1), 25-42. This study examined the combined and relative predictive powers of working memory capacity (WMC) and vocabulary knowledge in literal and inferential reading comprehension of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. To that end, forty-six university students in Korea performed a battery of tests: (a) the reading span task as a measure of WMC; (b) the Nelson-Denny Comprehension Test; and (c) the Vocabulary Test. Results showed that WMC and vocabulary knowledge accounted for 21.7% of the variance in literal reading comprehension scores with a medium effect size. With regard to inferential reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge alone explained 33.1% of the variance with a large effect size. Concerning relative predictive values, WMC was more useful than vocabulary knowledge in explaining literal reading comprehension performance, whereas in inferential reading comprehension, text-specific vocabulary knowledge was the only significant predictor.

This study examines whether orthographic information is used during prelexical processes in spoken word recognition by investigating ERPs during spoken word processing for Korean words. Differential effects due to orthographic syllable neighborhood size and sound-to-spelling consistency on P200 and N320 were evaluated by recording ERPs from 42 participants during a lexical decision task. The results indicate that P200 was smaller for words whose orthographic syllable neighbors are large in number rather than those that are small. In addition, a word with a large orthographic syllable neighborhood elicited a smaller N320 effect than a word with a small orthographic syllable neighborhood only when the word had inconsistent sound-to-spelling mapping. The results provide support for the assumption that orthographic information is used early during the prelexical spoken word recognition process. Descriptors: Spoken word recognition, P200, N320, Orthographic syllable neighborhood size, Sound-to-spelling consistency Accessing the phonological representation of a word is a mandatory process during visual word recognition (Alvarez, Carreiras, & Perea, 2004; Grainger, Muneaux, Farioli, & Zeigler, 2005; Luka-tela & Turvey, 2000). For example, words with inconsistent spelling-to-sound mapping (e.g.,-ough is pronounced differently in cough, dough, through, bough, and tough) are recognized more slowly than those with consistent mapping (e.g.,-uck in duck and luck) (Ziegler, Stone, & Jacobs, 1997). In addition, heterographic homophones (e.g., maid-made) are recognized more slowly than nonhomophonic words, which suggests automatic phonological activation during visual word recognition (Ferrand & Grainger, 2003). It is noteworthy that the inconsistencies in sound-to-spelling representation have also been observed to affect spoken word recognition. Ziegler and Ferrand (1998) found that French spoken word recognition is slower for words containing characters pronounced as one sound (e.g., /-ip/) but written in different forms (e.g.,-eep,-eap) than for those with characters with one-to-one sound-to-spelling correspondence. Results supporting the effect of orthographic information on spoken word recognition have been accumulating for various languages, including Portuguese (Ventura, Morais, Pattamadilok, & Kolinsky, 2004) and English (Ziegler, Petrova, & Ferrand, 2008), using various tasks such as auditory priming (Chereau, Gaskell, & Dumay, 2007) and phono-logical neighbor generation (Muneauz & Ziegler, 2004). However, although accumulated evidence provides support for the involvement of orthographic information in spoken word recognition (for overview, see Norris, McQueen, & Cutler, 2000), there are several questions that remain unanswered, including when and how ortho-graphic information affects spoken word recognition. According to several ERP studies, the effect of sound-to-spelling consistency begins rather early during the spoken word recognition process. For instance, Perre and Ziegler (2008) investigated the time point at which this effect is generated by manipulating the sound-to-spelling consistency of the initial and final parts of a given word. They argued that, if orthographic information from a spoken word starts to affect the prelexical stages of spoken word recognition, such as the mapping between the spoken word's phonology and its spellings, then an ERP difference between consistent and inconsistent words will be shown before N400, which reflects the activation of word meaning (e.g., or the late positive component, which indexes postlexical processing (Rugg, 1990). In their results, Perre and Ziegler (2008) found a significant N320 effect of sound-to-spelling consistency in the 300–350 ms time window after the onset of a word. Similarly, in an auditory priming task investigating the orthographic effect during spoken word recognition, Perre, Midgley, and Ziegler (2009) contrasted orthographic-phonological rhyme overlap (beef-reef) and phonological-only rhyme overlap (leaf-reef) with a control condition (sick-reef) and found that the phonological-only rhyme overlap elicited a larger ERP waveform in the 400–500 ms time window than the phonological

-The present study compared brain activity of adolescents with or without burnout during their responses to a computerized version of the Stroop Color and Word Test. The Sport Adaptation of the Maslach Burnout Inventory was administered to 460 Korean high school student athletes. Electroencephalographic data were recorded from frontal, central, parietal, and occipital brain regions while these participants were performing the Stroop Color and Word Test. A 2 (group) × 2 (condition) × 15 (electrodes) three-way analysis of variance was used to analyze the data. Results indicated that the athletes without burnout exhibited significantly higher accuracy than their counterparts with burnout on the Stroop Color and Word Test. The athletes without burnout also showed higher amplitudes for theta, alpha, and beta power in the frontal areas than the athletes with burnout.

-Self-controlled feedback on a variety of tasks are well established as effective means of facilitating motor skill learning. This study assessed the effects of self-controlled feedback on the performance of a serial motor skill. The task was to learn the sequence of 18 movements that make up the Taekwondo Poomsae Taegeuk first, which is the first beginner's practice form learned in this martial art. Twenty-four novice female participants (M age = 27.2 yr., SD = 1.8) were divided into two groups. All participants performed 16 trials in 4 blocks of the acquisition phase and 20 hr. later, 8 trials in 2 blocks of the retention phase. The self-controlled feedback group had significantly higher performance compared to the yoked-feedback group with regard to acquisition and retention. The results of this study may contribute to the literature regarding feedback by extending the usefulness of self-controlled feedback for learning a serial skill.

The present study investigated psychophysiological di®erences between cognitive and motor tasks. Participants were 16 university students (male¼10, female¼6) aged between 24 to 31 years (mean¼27.6 years, SD¼ 2:3 years). They were instructed to perform cognitive and motor tasks while their brain activity was simultaneously recorded using electroencephalography
(EEG). A 3(task)
8(area)
4(bands) analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed on theta, alpha and beta frequency bands. The results showed that the cognitive task resulted in a signi¯cantly higher spectral power in the theta band at frontal electrodes than did the
motor task. This suggests that the frontal lobe might be engaged in problem solving, resulting in increased theta activity. However, there were no di®erences in alpha and beta activity between the two tasks. The present study provides psychophysiological evidence for classifying cognitive and motor tasks, which has been a controversial issue for task classi¯cations in motor
learning research.

Upper-case text is considered detrimental to the reading comprehension of second language learners of English. Little is known about the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the processing of upper-case text. To investigate this issue, Korean students (n = 23) performed 40 reading trials, and their reading comprehension of text written in either upper-or lowercase letters was recorded while their brain activities were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Compared to lowercase text, upper-case text elicited greater activation of the primary visual areas in both hemispheres associated with orthographic processing. In contrast, lowercase text increased neural activity in brain regions associated with higher-order reading comprehension processes (e.g. the integration of text information) and the premotor cortex. Collectively, based on automacity theory, these results suggested that upper-case text interferes with reading comprehension because it requires increased orthographic processing, which in turn leaves fewer neural resources for phonological processing and higher-order reading comprehension processes.