About us: Jens Roeser

  • Senior Lecturer in Psycholinguistics @ Psychology Department
  • Teaching: advanced statistical modelling, data wrangling, data visualisation; R package (psyntur, Andrews and Roeser 2021)
  • Language production / comprehension / acquisition (e.g. Roeser, Torrance, and Baguley 2019; Garcia, Roeser, and Kidd 2023)
  • Bayesian modelling (Roeser et al. 2021) in Stan; keystroke logging; eye tracking
  • How do people turn thoughts into sentences and to what extent does spelling impact this process.

About us: Mark Torrance

  • 30+ years of research on how people write
  • Educational research – how can we change classroom teaching to better support writing development
  • Cognitive psychology research – what happens in our minds when we write letters, words, sentences
  • Wrote the Psychology Project marking criteria, so knows what a good Project looks like

Lab rules!

  • Do the tasks we set, when we set them.
  • Ask for help when you need it – don’t wait until you are behind.
  • Always use Teams (unless personal)
  • Do: “I’ve been reading / thinking / trying this… but I’m confused about… I’m thinking it could be this… but I need your input…”
  • Don’t: “Tell me what to do…”
  • Be at Lab meetings.

Summary: Projects need steady work, starting now. Like a job. We will help you but we won’t do the thinking / work for you, and you have to ask.

Dates Topic Homework for next session Deadlines
03/10/23 Introduction / project topics Identify, read, and summarise (at least) two relevant research articles
17/10/23 Rationale / methods Finalise your 500 words research rationale
31/10/23 Experimental design / analysis Prepare your ethics application; email us your final version for review
14/11/23 Feedback on ethics application Amend your ethics application; plan your data collection (e.g. create a Gorilla programme) Ethics: Nov 24
28/11/23 Plan stimulus material / data collection Create stimuli and implement data collection tools (e.g. Gorilla)
16/01/24 Planning introduction Collect data; write your introduction and methods sections; plan your analysis: what do you want to know from the data?
30/01/24 Data wrangling, visualisation and modelling Write your results section; attempt an interpretation of your data (bullet points)
13/02/24 Drawing conclusions and writing discussion Write your discussion section; bring your first draft into the next session
27/02/24 Understanding the marking criteria Finalise and submit your draft for feedback Draft: March 4
12/03/24 Final sessions and draft discussion Prepare any specific questions you have for us Supervision ends: March 28

Your turn!

What does a child need to do and know and what information do they need to put together to write down the name of a single object (picture on the left) or even an action or a full sentence (picture on the right)?

Language production

See @bock1994

See Bock and Levelt (1994)

Language production

See e.g. @slevc2022grammatical, @ferreira2006handbook, @bock2014syntactically

See e.g. Slevc (2022), Ferreira and Engelhardt (2006), Bock and Ferreira (2014)

Cascading model of writing

See @olive2014toward, @van1991handwriting

See Olive (2014), Van Galen (1991)

Cascading model of writing

See @olive2014toward, @van1991handwriting

See Olive (2014), Van Galen (1991)

Topic 1: Spelling disfluency in picture naming

To what extent does difficulty with word spelling affect the time course of writing short utterances?

Topic 1: Spelling disfluency in picture naming

Target utterance: "arm balloon" [@griffin2003reversed]Target utterance: "arm balloon" [@griffin2003reversed]

Target utterance: “arm balloon” (Griffin 2003)

Topic 1: Spelling disfluency in picture naming

Target utterance: "balloon arm" [@griffin2003reversed]Target utterance: "balloon arm" [@griffin2003reversed]

Target utterance: “balloon arm” (Griffin 2003)

Topic 1: Spelling disfluency in picture naming

  • Longer response latency for “arm balloon” compared to “balloon arm”
  • Difference disappears when using a phrase like “arm next to balloon”
  • Why? What do you think?
  • “Reversed word-length effect”: Shorter words allow less time to plan second noun in parallel to production of the first word; hence if first noun is short, we have to plan the name of the second noun before production onset to avoid disfluencies.
  • How about naming difficult including spelling difficulty?

Topic 1: Spelling disfluency in picture naming

Target word: "plane"

Target word: “plane”

  • Pre-activation of “plane” as phonological neighbour
  • Pre-activation of incorrect spelling
  • Gorilla programme for keystroke capture and stimuli are available

Topic 1: Spelling disfluency in picture naming

  • To what extent does planning words and in particular spelling difficult affect the writing time course?
  • Replicate and extend Griffin (2003) in writing.
  • Scope for including eye tracking (lab study).
  • Picture-word interference task (spelling alternatives; regular / irregular spelling / word length)
  • Prime orthographic alternatives with secondary memory task (“apple main fish” vs “apple mane fish”)

Topic 2: Writing disfluencies in bilingualism

  • 2A. To what extent do (homographic and heterographic) cognates affect picture naming?
  • 2B. To what extent does writing direction affect the production time course in second language contexts?

Topic 2A: Writing disfluencies in bilingualism (cognates)

  • What are cognates? – Words that are orthographically, lexically, phonologically similar across languages.
    • Homographic cognates: Restaurant (German)
    • Heterographic cognates: restaurang (Swedish)
  • How are cognates psycholinguistically represented in bilinguals?
  • Words might be easier to retrieve because of their similarity.
  • But might also be more difficult to spell because of subtle orthographic differences.
  • But orthographic transparency?
  • To what extent does orthographic neighbourhood affect spelling difficulty?

Topic 2B: Writing disfluencies in bilingualism (writing direction)

  • Adapting to another writing direction is a potential challenge in language learning contexts.
  • Differences in eye movement control when reading left-to-right (English) vs right-to-left (Arabic)
  • Gaze control is important for writing, pen movement
  • Fundamental physiological aspects of writing transfer across languages.
  • Ideal minimal pairs are Hindi (left-right) – Urdu (right-left); Persian (right-left) – Tajik (left-right); etc.
  • Also fundamental aspects of visual encoding or of stimulus screens.

Recommended reading

But it’s your project!

  • You can propose your own ideas.
  • Feel free to combine the bits from our projects you like best.
  • Topic 1: Spelling disfluency in picture naming
  • Topic 2: Writing disfluencies in bilingualism (cognates, writing direction)

Your projects

  • Find teams and post a message saying hello.
  • Create a chatGPT account chat.openai.com/
  • In pairs use chatGPT to find out as much as you can about one of our suggested research questions – write these down and be prepared to share them.
  • chatGPT is not omnipotent: instead we need you to share your summary with us for feedback.

References

Al-Saadi, Zulaikha Talib, and David Galbraith. 2020. “Does the Revision Process Differ Across the Language of Writing (L1 vs. FL), FL Language Proficiency, and Gender? An Empirical Study Using Keystroke Logging Data.” Writing and Pedagogy 12 (1): 73–109.

Andrews, Mark, and Jens Roeser. 2021. psyntur: Helper Tools for Teaching Statistical Data Analysis. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=psyntur.

Bock, J. Kathryn, and Victor S. Ferreira. 2014. “Syntactically Speaking.” In The Oxford Handbook of Language Production, edited by Matthew Goldrick, Victor S. Ferreira, and Michele Miozzo, 21–46. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bock, J. Kathryn, and Willem J. M. Levelt. 1994. “Language Production: Grammatical Encoding.” In Handbook of Psycholinguistics, edited by M. A. Gernsbacher, 945–84. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Ferreira, Fernanda, and Paul E. Engelhardt. 2006. “Syntax and Production.” In Handbook of Psycholinguistics, edited by Matthew Traxler and Morton Ann Gernsbacher, 2:61–91. Elsevier.

Garcia, Rowena, Jens Roeser, and Evan Kidd. 2023. “Finding Your Voice: Voice-Specific Effects in Tagalog Reveal the Limits of Word Order Priming.” Cognition 236: 105424.

Griffin, Zenzi M. 2003. “A Reversed Word Length Effect in Coordinating the Preparation and Articulation of Words in Speaking.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 10 (3): 603–9.

Kroll, Judith F., and Tamar H. Gollan. 2014. “Speech Planning in Two Languages: What Bilinguals Tell Us about Language Production.” In The Oxford Handbook of Language Production, edited by Matthew Goldrick, Victor Ferreira, and Michele Miozzo, 165–81. Oxford University Press.

Mohsen, Mohammed Ali. 2021. “ L1 versus L2 Writing Processes: What Insight Can We Obtain from a Keystroke Logging Program?” Language Teaching Research.

Muscalu, Laura M., and Patricia A. Smiley. 2019. “The Illusory Benefit of Cognates: Lexical Facilitation Followed by Sublexical Interference in a Word Typing Task.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 22 (4): 848–65.

Muylle, Merel, Eva Van Assche, and Robert J. Hartsuiker. 2022. “Comparing the Cognate Effect in Spoken and Written Second Language Word Production.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 25 (1): 93–107.

Olive, Thierry. 2014. “Toward a Parallel and Cascading Model of the Writing System: A Review of Research on Writing Processes Coordination.” Journal of Writing Research 6 (2): 173–94.

Roeser, Jens, Sven De Maeyer, Mariëlle Leijten, and Luuk Van Waes. 2021. “Modelling Typing Disfluencies as Finite Mixture Process.” Reading and Writing, 1–26.

Roeser, Jens, Mark Torrance, and Thom Baguley. 2019. “Advance Planning in Written and Spoken Sentence Production.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 45 (11): 1983–2009.

Runnqvist, Elin, Kristof Strijkers, and Albert Costa. 2014. “Bilingual Word Access.” In The Oxford Handbook of Language Production, edited by Matthew Goldrick, Victor Ferreira, and Michele Miozzo, 182–98. Oxford University Press.

Rønneberg, Vibeke, Mark Torrance, Per Henning Uppstad, and Christer Johansson. 2022. “The Process-Disruption Hypothesis: How Spelling and Typing Skill Affects Written Composition Process and Product.” Psychological Research 86 (7): 2239–55.

Schwartz, Ana I., and Judith F. Kroll. 2006. “Language Processing in Bilingual Speakers.” In Handbook of Psycholinguistics, 967–99. Elsevier.

Slevc, L. Robert. 2022. “Grammatical Encoding.” In Current Issues in the Psychology of Language, edited by R. Hartsuiker and K. Strijkers, 455–503. Routledge Press (Taylor & Francis), UK. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/a4vxm.

Swar, Ohood, and Mohammed Mohsen. 2022. “Students’ Cognitive Processes in L1 and L2 Translation: Evidence from a Keystroke Logging Program.” Interactive Learning Environments, 1–16.

Van Galen, Gerard P. 1991. “Handwriting: Issues for a Psychomotor Theory.” Human Movement Science 10 (2): 165–91.

Wheeldon, Linda Ruth, and Agnieszka Konopka. 2023. Grammatical Encoding for Speech Production. Elements in Psycholinguistics. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009264518.

Zhang, Juan, Chenggang Wu, Tiemin Zhou, and Yaxuan Meng. 2019. “Cognate Facilitation Priming Effect Is Modulated by Writing System: Evidence from Chinese-English Bilinguals.” International Journal of Bilingualism 23 (2): 553–66.