Language and cognition

Researchers: Leah Roberts and Emma Marsden

Department of Education

This strand focuses on psychological factors that may influence learning and teaching processes, and learner engagement and achievement. Factors include beliefs and individual differences including identity, motivation, attitude, working memory capacity and aptitude.

• Anxiety and foreign language learning in Saudi Arabia (PhD student: Rolla Massri)
• Effects of individual differences in declarative and procedural memory on the acquisition of English articles (PhD student: Jelena Horvatic)
• Cross-linguistic influences and cognitive individual differences in the processing of English wh-movement constructions by near-native speakers of English (PhD student: Li Yin)
• English language communication apprehension and employability among final-year undergraduates in Malaysia (PhD student: Farihah Mazmi)
• English language learning strategies and strategy instruction in Bangladesh (PhD student: Tasnima Aktar)
• The English language learning motivation and identity of Chinese students (PhD student: Lin Liu)
• Identity in foreign language learning and teaching (MS Word , 4,177kb) (Florentina Taylor with Emma Marsden, Vera Busse, Carl von Ossietzky University, Germany, Barbara Roosken, Fontys University, the Netherlands; and Lubina Gagova, University of Sofia, Bulgaria)
• Identity perceptions amongst international MA TESOL students (MS Word , 4,176kb) (Florentina Taylor with Margaret Hearnden and Martin Lamb, University of Leeds)
• Improving the perceived relevance of Modern Foreign Languages in Year 9 (MS Word , 4,176kb) (Florentina Taylor with Emma Marsden and Chris Kyriacou)
• Individual differences and cognitive processing in L2 and L3 acquisition under two different learning contexts (PhD student: Li Yin)
• Investigating learner autonomy in a Saudi Arabian context (PhD student: Noha Halabi)
• Japanese children’s L2 identity development (PhD student: Keita Takashima)
• Language learning motivation in L1-English adults during an Italian beginners' course (PhD student: Liviana Ferrari)
• Charting the first hours of foreign language learning in the classroom (MS Word , 4,177kb) (Leah Roberts with Emma Marsden)
• The study of positive psychology and self-determination of Chinese students in learning of English as Second Language at UK Universities (PhD student: Winfred Wing Fung Mak)

Researcher: Beth Jefferies

Department of Psychology

Cognition is supported by networks of brain regions working in concert. We use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to explore functional dissociations between sites that make distinct contributions to semantic cognition and language and also stimulate different sites within the same network to provide evidence for functional similarity. 

Read more about 'Semantic cognition and language'

Researcher: Silke Göbel

Department of Psychology

Number words, in contrast to the digits 1, 2, etc, are not universals. They depend on the language a person speaks. Words for small numbers are among the first words learned.

This research asks whether language factors influence the association between spoken number words and numerical digits, and if so, how? In our longitudinal study, we will investigate the influence of language on number transcoding by comparing monolingual children from two language backgrounds: English and German. We chose those two languages because the construction of number words in both languages is broadly similar, with one exception: German is a language with inverted number words (i.e. ‘twenty-five’ in English, but ‘fünf-und-zwanzig’ (‘five-and-twenty’) in German). This is crucial because number word inversion is one of the linguistic factors most likely to affect the efficiency of the mapping of number words to numerical digits.

This essential manipulation will enable us to test directly whether foundation skills of mathematical development are non-verbal or affected by linguistic factors. This project is a collaboration with Karin Landerl at the University of Graz, Austria. 

Read more about our cross-linguistic projects

Researchers: Angela de Bruin and Danijela Trenkic 

Departments of Psychology and Education

Speaking two languages requires not only a certain proficiency level in each language, but also language control to ensure that the contextually appropriate language is used. Even when a bilingual has to use just one of their languages, the other language is still active. For example, when attending classes in the UK, a Mandarin-English bilingual has to use English. To achieve this, not only do they need to select English words, but they also have to ensure that they do not accidentally speak Mandarin words.

Furthermore, bilinguals often switch between their languages. For example, the same Mandarin-English bilingual needs to switch back to Mandarin when talking with a Chinese friend. Bilinguals often switch languages apparently effortlessly, but this actually requires various control processes. Bilinguals need to look at the environment (eg the faces of their interlocutors) to choose a language, they need to select words in that language, avoid interference from the other language, and make the switch when needed.

This project studies a group of Chinese students who have moved from China to the UK to complete a university degree. The students will complete several language production and comprehension tasks to measure language control. We will assess how language control develops within this group of international students. 

Read more about the project

• Syntactic Structure and Working Memory: Nino Grillo, Shayne Sloggett, Fani Karageorgou (PhD student, Language and Linguistic Science), with Andrea Santi (UCL)
• Language, perception and cognition, language, event encoding and memory (Silvia Gennari, Psychology)
• Linguistic focus as attention allocation: Shayne Sloggett (Language and Linguistic Science), Amanda Rysling (UC Santa Cruz), & Adrian Staub (UMass Amherst)