Nick Balint Pandža

Multimodal materials (e.g., written text supplemented by images and/or audio)are commonplace in language classrooms. While they have been consistentlyshown to be beneficial for vocabulary acquisition, the efficacy of multimodalinput in scaffolding text comprehension is less clear. Conflicting findings havealso been reported in terms of the relationship between comprehension andattention to pictures as measured by eye tracking. In this pre-registered study,we provide further empirical evidence to this research base by testing a newpopulation, adult beginners, and by including a reading-only, no-imagecondition as the baseline. In a counterbalanced within-subject design, 65 learnersof Spanish were exposed to different parts of a story on an eye tracker underthree experimental conditions: Reading Only (RO), Reading + Image (RI), andReading + Image + Audio (RIA). Results revealed that comprehension washigher in the RIA and RI than in the RO condition, indicative of the usefulnessof the audio and/or the image. The number of looks at the images was higher inthe RIA condition, confirming that the audio allowed readers to attend to thepictorial information provided. Attention to the image, however, positivelypredicted comprehension scores only for the RIA condition.

Multimodal materials (e.g., written text supplemented by images and/or audio) are commonplace in language classrooms. While they have been consistently shown to be beneficial for vocabulary acquisition, the efficacy of multimodal input in scaffolding text comprehension is less clear. Conflicting findings have also been reported in terms of the relationship between comprehension and attention to pictures as measured by eye tracking. In this preregistered study, we provide further empirical evidence to this research base by testing a new population, adult beginners, and by including a reading‐only, no‐image condition as the baseline. In a counterbalanced within‐subject design, 65 learners of Spanish were exposed to different parts of a story on an eye tracker under three experimental conditions: reading only (RO), reading + image (RI), and reading + image + audio (RIA). Results revealed that comprehension was higher in the RIA and RI than in the RO condition, indicative of the usefulness of the audio and/or the image. The number of looks at the images was higher in the RIA condition, confirming that the audio allowed readers to attend to the pictorial information provided. Attention to the image, however, positively predicted comprehension scores only for the RIA condition.

Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) is a neuromodulatory technique that may have numerous potential health and human performance benefits. However, optimal stimulation parameters for maximizing taVNS efficacy are unknown. Progress is impeded by disagreement on the identification of a biomarker that reliably indexes activation of neuromodulatory systems targeted by taVNS, including the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system. Pupil size varies with LC-NE activity and is one potential taVNS biomarker that has shown inconsistent sensitivity to taVNS in prior studies. The present study examined the relationship between pupil size and taVNS using stimulation parameters that have shown promising behavioral effects in prior studies but have received comparatively little attention. Participants received 30-second trains of 50 μs taVNS pulses delivered below perceptual threshold at 300 Hz to the left external acoustic meatus (EAM) while pupil size was recorded during a pupillary light reflex task. Analysis of pupil size using generalized additive mixed modelling (GAMM) revealed a nonlinear relationship between taVNS intensity and pupil diameter. Active taVNS increased pupil size during stimulation for participants who received taVNS between 2 and approximately 4.8 mA, but not for participants who received higher intensity taVNS (up to 8.1 mA). In addition, taVNS effects persisted in subsequent blocks, mitigating decreases in pupil size over the course of the task. These findings suggest 300 Hz taVNS activates the LC-NE system when applied to the EAM, but its effects may be counteracted at higher intensities.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers became resourceful and many transitioned to online methods for remote data collection, suddenly bringing many platforms and methods to prominence in new experimental contexts. As in-person data collection resumed, online data collection remained as these methods have proven particularly useful in the field of applied linguistics and especially Second Language Acquisition (SLA), which often requires researchers to recruit participants who are inherently difficult to find (e.g., individuals proficient in less-commonly taught languages or living in a context far from the researcher’s university). In this chapter, we highlight factors that researchers should consider when implementing online research along with a high-level troubleshooting guide. We cover recruitment, enhancing participant performance, implementation, and deployment. Within these topics, we highlight important technological, procedural, and participant privacy recommendations for visual, aural, and oral online data collection designs specially tailored for applied linguists.

Neurostimulation, or stimulation of the nervous system, is a category of methods that modulate neural activity and can be used to investigate and enhance L2 learning and processing. This chapter reviews multiple methods of non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS), including transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), transcranial electrical stimulation (tES), and transcutaneous peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS). Following a brief history of these non-invasive methods to examine cognition, their use and potential in the investigation of L2 learning and processing is discussed, including experimental paradigms, example studies, and advantages and disadvantages of specific techniques. The chapter concludes by discussing future directions for NIBS methods in the investigation of L2.

While emotional content predicts social media post sharing, competing theories of emotion imply different predictions about how emotional content will influence the virality of social media posts. We tested and compared these theoretical frameworks. Teams of annotators assessed more than 4000 multimedia posts from Polish and Lithuanian Facebook for more than 20 emotions. We found that, drawing on semantic space theory, modeling discrete emotions independently was superior to models examining valence (positive or negative), activation/arousal (high or low), or clusters of emotions and was on par with but had more explanatory power than a seven basic emotion model. Certain discrete emotions were associated with post sharing, including both positive and negative and relatively lower and higher activation/arousal emotions (e.g., amusement, cute/kama muta, anger, and sadness) even when controlling for number of followers, time up, topic, and Facebook angry reactions. These results provide key insights into better understanding of social media post virality.

Purpose: This study examined the extent to which acoustic, linguistic, and cognitive task demands interactively impact listening effort. Method: Using a dual-task paradigm, on each trial, participants were instructed to perform either a single task or two tasks. In the primary word recognition task, participants repeated NU-6 words presented in speech-shaped noise at either an easier or a harder signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The words varied in how commonly they occur in the English language (lexical frequency). In the secondary visual task, participants were instructed to press a specific key as soon as a number appeared on screen (simpler task) or one of two keys to indicate whether the visualized number was even or odd (more complex task). Results: Manipulation checks revealed that key assumptions of the dual-task design were met. A significant three-way interaction was observed, such that the expected effect of SNR on effort was only observable for words with lower lexical frequency and only when multitasking demands were relatively simpler.Conclusions: This work reveals that variability across speech stimuli can influence the sensitivity of the dual-task paradigm for detecting changes in listening effort. In line with previous work, the results of this study also suggest that higher cognitive demands may limit the ability to detect expected effects of SNR on measures of effort. With implications for real-world listening, these findings highlight that even relatively minor changes in lexical and multitasking demands can alter the effort devoted to listening in noise.

English learners (ELs) in K–12 schools must acquire English while simultaneously mastering content knowledge. Educational technology may support students’ learning through the affordance of individualized language practice. The current randomized controlled trial intervention study examined the effects of Rosetta Stone Foundations software on English learning among middle school ELs. The study took place in Grades 6 to 8 of an urban U.S. school district (N = 221). Predictors of interest included time of testing (pretest vs. posttest) and software usage, and covariates included grade level, sex, and attendance. Additionally, socioeconomic status and home language were accounted for due to sample homogeneity. Multilevel models indicated that treatment group students showed larger gains than control group students on oral/aural outcomes. These results indicate that the software intervention enables individualized practice that can produce proficiency-related gains over and above the typical classroom curriculum.