rss_2.0Sciendo RSS Feed for Psychology of Language and Communicationhttps://sciendo.com/journal/PLChttps://www.sciendo.comhttps://sciendo-parsed.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/64727ff4215d2f6c89dca81e/cover-image.jpghttps://sciendo.com/journal/PLC140216https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0021<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Mansplaining, the phenomenon of men degradingly explaining something to women, is widely recognized in popular culture but has received little scholarly attention so far. To address this gap, we conducted two studies to test the hypotheses that the better-than-average effect and the interpretation bias can help explain why mansplaining occurs and is remarked. Study 1 (<italic>N</italic> = 204) did not show that men think they know more than women, nor that men are more likely to offer an explanation in conversations. Study 2 (<italic>N</italic> = 247) showed that women are more likely to interpret an explanation as insulting than men, regardless of whether the explanation was given by a man or a woman. The current study provides empirical evidence to give mansplaining its proper conceptual grounding in communication theories and shows that communication biases are a viable avenue to understand mansplaining and similar communication phenomena.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00212024-12-02T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0020<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The current study presents a quantitative analysis of the political addresses of 29 Polish prime ministers in the light of the theory of the desire for power. The timeframe covers 74 years, between 1945 and 2019, including two important periods in Polish history: Soviet domination (1945-1989) and the time since the fall of communism and the return of an independent Poland (1989-2019). An analysis of the vocabulary grid adopted in our preliminary and main study allowed the identification of different views of social relations and the social world. The concept of power provided a consistent explanation of the captured quantitative differences in the addresses: first, differences in language from the communist era and independent Poland after 1989; second, differences in language from the periods of breakthroughs in the country’s history (martial law, overthrow of communism, accession to NATO and the EU); third, in the addresses of the prime ministers representing different parties and political ideologies (Civic Platform and Law and Justice).</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00202024-11-23T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0019<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The current action research explored the effects of social-emotional learning (SEL) in an online second language acquisition (SLA) graduate course. Employing the CASEL (2010) framework as the lens, I examined the following research question: What effects does social-emotional learning have on second language teachers in a second language acquisition course? Findings indicated that embedding SEL into the SLA course resulted in participants becoming increasingly self-aware of their learner-selves (i.e., self-awareness), prompting them to deploy a series of strategies to regulate their behaviors and practices as self-taught language learners and teachers (i.e., self-management). Increased empathy and understanding toward their present and future students (i.e., social awareness) was also noted, which contributed to students’ building positive, supportive relationships beyond the online classroom (i.e., relationship skills). Finally, SEL prompted participants to reflect on their identities, ideologies, and privileges as language teachers, learners, and speakers, which resulted in making caring and constructive choices (i.e., responsible decision-making).</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00192024-11-06T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0018<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The ability to understand and produce basic transitivity constructions serves as the foundation for human grammatical skills. While every clause or sentence in any given language follows a transitivity pattern, there is significant cross-linguistic variation in the specific formal elements used. Certain languages primarily rely on distributed cues, such as the number and ordering of noun phrases, while others prefer local devices like causative morphology or case markers. Extensive research has been conducted on the role played by the number and position of argument noun phrases in comprehending simple transitive sentences. This article offers a comprehensive review of the available evidence, covering typically-developing and monolingual populations, various languages, and different theoretical approaches. It also highlights gaps in the existing literature and provides suggestions for future investigations.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00182024-10-26T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0017<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>We carried out a preliminary study exploring the influence of sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) on the situation of foreign language testing. Initially, SPS levels were determined for 103 English philology students. Then, the participants reported their perceived stress levels during language tests and their preferences for test form (onsite vs. online) and type (written vs. oral). Subsequently, 50 students completed a written interview, expressing their opinions on factors that, beyond their knowledge and skills, had influenced their test performance. The data analysis indicated that oral language exams were generally perceived as more stressful by all participants, regardless of their SPS levels. Regarding test type and form preferences, no statistically significant differences were found between the three distinguished groups. In turn, thematic analysis of the written interviews suggests that, in testing situations, highly sensitive students reported to be especially affected by sensory disruptors.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00172024-09-30T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0016<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Classical grammatical studies in Spanish only consider binary gender and claim that gender assignment is an arbitrary process. However, psycholinguistic evidence suggests that gender morphology, lexical semantics, and gender stereotypes condition language processing. Recently, gender-inclusive language proposals have proliferated in several languages, and in Spanish, the use of the nonbinary morphological variant [-e] has spread considerably. This article presents the results of a self-paced reading task that evaluated the influence of gender stereotypes (role names with semantic male or female bias) on the processing of this morphological innovation. There was a semantic bias effect in the first spillover word, but there were no statistically significant differences for noun phrase, wrap-up region, and total sentence reading times. The results showed that gender stereotype effect occurs relatively early and at the local level. Moreover, nonbinary morphological innovations may be specializing in the representation of mixed groups of people.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00162024-09-17T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0015<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Race-relevant cues, whether vocal or visual, shape how listeners process the incoming speech signal. In order to better understand how these cues inform sentence-level processing, we asked listeners to rate the plausibility of three different sentence types: (a) plausible in both Mainstream American English (MAE) and African American English (AAE), (b) implausible in both, or (c) plausible in AAE, but not MAE. Across three experiments, we manipulated the type of race-relevant cues provided to listeners, who all identified as MAE-speakers. Experiment 1 (<italic>n</italic> = 72) used written sentences and therefore did not provide vocal or visual cues, Experiment 2 (<italic>n</italic> = 72) provided vocal cues to speaker background, and Experiment 3 (<italic>n</italic> = 72) provided vocal and visual cues to speaker background. Results show that MAE-speaking listeners readily incorporated race-relevant cues when processing these sentences. In particular, findings indicate that expectations associating African Americans with utterances implausible from an MAE-perspective inform sentence-level processing.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00152024-08-29T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0014<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>What does ironic language indicate about an emotional state? When we experience negative events, we may produce an ironic comment about our experience to cope. We tested whether using irony indexes less negative emotional states of speakers and listeners compared to literal statements. In addition, we tested whether comments directed at the self (“How clumsy/careful of me!”) lead to a different emotional state compared to statements directed at someone else (“How clumsy/careful of you!”). We found that listeners were rated as feeling more negative and more aroused when a statement was directed at them, whereas for speakers, direction did not matter. Further, self-irony led to lower ratings of negativity in speakers. Our results show that whether or not someone is an addressee of a statement matters for their perceived emotional state, and that self-irony may index down-regulated emotional states.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00142024-08-15T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0013<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This article shares the current interest in characterizing family interaction with children in different communities. I have investigated one aspect of possible diversity that is rarely reported: the normative discourse that caregivers direct towards children’s interventions that deviate from coding conventions, interactional commitments, or pragmatic expectations. Data collected from spontaneous conversations between young children and their caregivers in middle-class urban families in the Mexican highlands show that the motives for normative control in this community are very diverse. The most prominent normative targets relate to lexical conventionality and phonetic faithfulness, paying and showing attention to interlocutors, providing contingent interventions (especially answering questions), and making polite requests. Taken together, caregivers’ normative interventions touch on aspects of the interactional foundations of language, the adequacy of meaning and form for intercomprehension and the social rituals of politeness.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00132024-08-12T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0012<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Research on individual differences in irony understanding is not sparse, however the need for cognitive closure (NFC) has not been taken into consideration yet. This article presents the results of two studies on the relation between irony understanding and NFC. The Need for Cognitive Closure Scale in a Polish adaptation and a set of short vignettes with ironic statements were used in both studies. Two hundred and fifty-two (Study 1) and 137 (Study 2) participants completed the study. Results of Study 1 showed no statistically significant relation between irony understanding and NFC, while Study 2 showed a statistically significant, negative correlation between the closed-mindedness subscale of NFC and understanding of praise-by-blame irony. Moreover, in both studies, the ratings of playfulness, criticism, and flattery of ironic statements were analyzed.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00122024-07-25T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/plc-2024-0012<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Research on individual differences in irony understanding is not sparse, however the need for cognitive closure (NFC) has not been taken into consideration yet. This article presents the results of two studies on the relation between irony understanding and NFC. The Need for Cognitive Closure Scale in a Polish adaptation and a set of short vignettes with ironic statements were used in both studies. Two hundred and fifty-two (Study 1) and 137 (Study 2) participants completed the study. Results of Study 1 showed no statistically significant relation between irony understanding and NFC, while Study 2 showed a statistically significant, negative correlation between the closed-mindedness subscale of NFC and understanding of praise-by-blame irony. Moreover, in both studies, the ratings of playfulness, criticism, and flattery of ironic statements were analyzed.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/plc-2024-00122024-07-25T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0011<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This review synthesizes findings from 117 studies that have manipulated various picture-word interference (PWI) task properties to establish whether semantic context effects reflect competitive word retrieval, or are driven by noncompetitive processes. Manipulations of several PWI task parameters (e.g., distractor visibility) have produced contradictory findings. Evidence derived from other manipulations (e.g., visual similarity between targets and distractors) has been scarce. Some of the manipulations that have furnished reliable effects (e.g., distractor taboo interference) do not discriminate between the rival theories. Interference from nonverbal distractors has been shown to be a genuine effect dependent on adequate lexicalization of interfering stimuli. This supports the swinging lexical network hypothesis and the selection-by-competition-with-competition-threshold hypothesis while undermining one of the assumptions of the response exclusion hypothesis. The contribution of pre-lexical processes, such as an interaction between distractor processing and conceptual encoding of the target to the overall semantic context effect is far from settled.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00112024-06-30T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0010<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Non-native English-speaking instructors often receive lower course evaluations and are criticized for their accents (Doubleday &amp; Lee, 2016; Rubin, 1992; Sanchez &amp; Khan, 2016; Subtirelu, 2015). This phenomenon has received much research attention in face-to-face classroom settings but less so in a distance education setting. The current study sought to determine if a lecture video with a non-native English-speaking instructor would cause more learner anxiety compared to a lecture video where the instructor had a standard American accent. The study also divided participants into high and low accented-speech experience groups. Participants in the study watched four videos, two with a non-native Englishspeaking instructor and the other two with an instructor with a Southern American English accent. After each video, participants were asked to recall questions about the information that they had just received before moving on to the following video. Participants were also given an anxiety scale to measure the anxiety they felt while listening to the lecture videos. Our findings indicated that participants with low second language experience had higher anxiety and worse recall performance in the non-native English speaking instructor condition. We also found that participants with high second language experience could potentially benefit from the non-native English speaking instructor’s video as they exhibited higher recall performance. Results from the current study have implications for distance education and pedagogical practices.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00102024-06-26T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0009<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The current study investigated fatwa discourse to reveal the attitudes and rulings of scholars towards English. In doing so, English and Arabic fatwas were analyzed employing modality. It was found that deontic auxiliary modals and similarly functioning markers were utilized to represent acceptance through median value modals to express obligation, for example, “should,” often followed by a justification, and low value modals to express permissibility, for example, “may.” Modality is also used to show resistance through a median value modal, such as “should” and “can.” The manipulation and power of such discourse are evident in the use of modality markers, including auxiliary, semi-auxiliary, and conditional modals. They function on the opposite poles of rulings, permissible and impermissible, to hedge permission and cast hesitation or uncertainty; yet, they show a lack of commitment on the part of the scholars to their fatwa, thus mitigating acceptance and resistance.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00092024-05-31T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0008<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Online romance fraud is a crime carried out largely using language, as the victim and scammer typically do not meet in person in their entire interaction. As a language-enabled crime, a linguistic analysis of scam communication can shed light on how language is used to attract victims and influence their thoughts and actions. This study examined the first stage in the online scam strategy, that is, the putting up of a dating profile (user biography) on online dating service websites. The analysis employs the judgement evaluation framework of appraisal theory to examine the extent to which scammer profiles differ from a set of general user profiles in terms of their use of social approval as a linguistic strategy to attract a more compliant victim type. Findings from the study can help in raising public awareness about how linguistic resources are employed in luring potential victims in scammer dating profiles.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00082024-05-28T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0007<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The objective of the current study was to examine how the expected rewards, theory of mind, and false praise-telling relate to interventional deception that prevents moral transgression. A sample of 114 children aged 4-7 years participated in the study. The expected rewards ratio was a statistically significant predictor of interventional deception, with the children being most likely to deceive to prevent moral transgressions when the deception involved high personal gain. Overall, children who gave false praise and who passed the hidden emotion task were more likely to deceive than those who told another individual an unpleasant truth and failed the emotion understanding task. The results are discussed with respect to diverse developmental conceptions and studies on prosocial behaviors and sociocognitive and cultural factors involved in deception.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00072024-05-19T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0001<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This study investigated the relationship between phonological short-term memory (PSTM), working memory capacity (WMC), and receptive and productive dimensions of explicit and implicit (automatized) knowledge of English passive voice, also taking into account the effect of grammar attainment and self-reported length of study. Participants were 152 Polish university students majoring in English. Two measures of PSTM and WMC were applied. Receptive and productive explicit knowledge were measured by means of an untimed grammaticality judgment test and a test requiring the provision of correct verb forms, respectively. Receptive implicit (automatized) knowledge was assessed with a timed grammaticality judgment test while its productive dimension was assessed through a focused communication task. Canonical correlation for the entire model was rather high, which means that the original variables were strongly related to each other. However, finer-grained analyses showed that it was primarily overall grammar attainment, and, to a lesser extent, WMC that determined the levels of explicit and implicit (automatized) grammar knowledge.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00012024-01-20T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0006<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Phonetic imitation, understood as adjustment of one’s pronunciation towards that of a model speaker, plays an important role in second language speech learning. The current study was intended to determine the degree to which young native Polish learners of English imitate native English models’ speech, with gender as a potential influencing factor. Thirty-four participants shadowed words with both voiceless /p, t, k/ and voiced /b, d, g/ consonants as onsets, which differ in terms of voice onset time (VOT) in the two languages. Having compared VOT measurements in three tasks, no significant differences were found for /p, t, k/, suggesting no imitation effect regardless of gender, and an apparent increase of prevoicing for /b, d, g/ in the imitation tasks. Some of the null results may be attributed to high baseline values and to the stimuli’s conflicting modalities. Noticeable variability in the data may have masked the true impact of imitative exposure.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00062024-04-29T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0005<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Immigrants and racial minorities continue to face hiring discrimination. The current study examined the influence of accent, race, as well as perceived Americanness on hiring evaluations. White US adults (<italic>N</italic> = 375) were randomly assigned to one of six conditions based on two factors: (a) accent (standard versus foreign) and (b) race (White, Black, and Asian). Accented speakers were perceived to be less American and were subsequently less likely to be hired. However, this effect was stronger or only emerged for White and Black candidates. The perception and evaluation of the Asian candidate were not explained by perceived Americanness. Implications for being perceived as American are discussed.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00052024-04-06T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-0004<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The purpose of the current study was to explore parental beliefs about the effect of the COVID-19 quarantine on the subjectively estimated quality of parent-child interactions as well as their beliefs about its impact on early childhood language development within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). A cross-sectional observational study was conducted via an electronic survey. The study surveyed 439 parents of typical children aged between 24 and 60 months. The survey was distributed online to cover a wide range of participants across the KSA. Based on the parental subjective measure used in the current study, parent-child interactions and children's language skills had significantly increased during the quarantine (<italic>p</italic> &lt; .001). In conclusion, the study highlighted the important role of parents during the critical period of language development in promoting their children's speech and language skills.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.58734/plc-2024-00042024-03-23T00:00:00.000+00:00en-us-1