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Previous research has shown that information referring to a named character or to information in the main clause of a sentence is more accessible and facilitates the processing of anaphoric references. We investigated whether the use of such cues are maintained in healthy aging. We present two experiments investigating whether information contained in the main clause of a sentence is more accessible compared with information contained in the subordinate clause. We present two further experiments that explored whether proper names act as controllers of discourse focus. Experiment 1 showed that information contained in the subordinate clause of a sentence decreased the processing efficiency of anaphoric references (more so for older adults), and Experiment 2 found that main clauses facilitated probe recognition. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that named characters increased the processing efficiency of anaphoric references and facilitated probe recognition (younger adults only), whereas older adults displayed a primacy effect.

Translation equivalents are widely used in bilingual research concerning word processing (e.g., Eddington & Tokowicz, 2013; Jouravlev & Jared, 2020) and second-language vocabulary learning (e.g., Bracken et al., 2017; Degani et al., 2014). Although translation norms exist in several languages, to date there are no Malay-English translation norms. This study presents the first Malay-English translation norms collected with highly proficient Malay-English bilinguals. Furthermore, the study investigates the impact of lexical characteristics on translation ambiguity. The forward translation (FT) task (N = 30) collected English translations for 1004 Malay words selected from the Malay Lexicon Project (Yap et al., 2010), and subsequently the backward translation (BT) task (N = 30) gathered Malay translations for 845 English words obtained from the FT phase. The data revealed a high prevalence of translation ambiguity in both translation directions. Specifically, verbs, adjectives, and class-ambiguous words were more translation-ambiguous than nouns. Furthermore, within-language semantic variability and word length were positively correlated with translation ambiguity, whereas word frequency only correlated with translation ambiguity in FT. Word length and word frequency of the source words and their translations were positively correlated. Intriguingly, only in FT were bilinguals with higher Malay proficiency more likely to provide accurate and dominant translations for the Malay words. These findings contrast with those reported in translation norming studies involving other language pairs. The translation norms provide a useful resource for bilingual language studies involving Malay-English bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chemical concepts and microfluidic tools developed for network-level investigations of the spatial dynamics of these networks is described which provide strategies for simplifying, modeling, and probing complex networks without sacrificing the functionality of the network.

Rapid population ageing is observed in both developed and developing countries. During the period of movement restrictions due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, older Malaysians experienced reduced social interactions and limited usage of their second (L2) and third (L3) languages. This may lead to earlier onset of age-related language attrition and cognitive frailty. This study intends to identify the contributing factors to language attrition and here, we will present preliminary results of phase 1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates a novel high variability phonetic training paradigm that involves presenting spoken words in adverse conditions. The effectiveness, generalizability, and longevity of this high variability phonetic training in adverse conditions was evaluated using English phoneme contrasts in three experiments with Malaysian multilinguals. Adverse conditions were created by presenting spoken words against background multi-talker babble. In Experiment 1, the adverse condition level was set at a fixed level throughout the training and in Experiment 2 the adverse condition level was determined for each participant before training using an adaptive staircase procedure. To explore the effectiveness and sustainability of the training, phonemic discrimination ability was assessed before and immediately after training (Experiments 1 and 2) and 6 months after training (Experiment 3). Generalization of training was evaluated within and across phonemic contrasts using trained and untrained stimuli. Results revealed significant perceptual improvements after just three 20-minute training sessions and these improvements were maintained after 6 months. The training benefits also generalized from trained to untrained stimuli. Crucially, perceptual improvements were significantly larger when the adverse conditions were adapted before each training session than when it was set at a fixed level. As the training improvements observed here are markedly larger than those reported in the literature, this indicates that the individualized phonetic training regime in adaptive adverse conditions (HVPT-AAC) is highly effective at improving speech perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that information referring to a named character or to information in the main clause of a sentence is more accessible and facilitates the processing of anaphoric references. We investigated whether the use of such cues are maintained in healthy aging. We present two experiments investigating whether information contained in the main clause of a sentence is more accessible compared with information contained in the subordinate clause. We present two further experiments that explored whether proper names act as controllers of discourse focus. Experiment 1 showed that information contained in the subordinate clause of a sentence decreased the processing efficiency of anaphoric references (more so for older adults), and Experiment 2 found that main clauses facilitated probe recognition. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that named characters increased the processing efficiency of anaphoric references and facilitated probe recognition (younger adults only), whereas older adults displayed a primacy effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]