Written Language & Literacy - Volume 19, Issue 1, 2016

This paper examines the role of literacy as it is practiced in a multilingual community on the Gazelle Peninsula in East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. 1 Ethnographic observational fieldwork and semi-structured interviews reveal how literacy plays out in six common domains of everyday life: public discourse, home, school, church, health care, and government. Following Street (1984 , 1995 ), an ideological framework is used to explore the unique cultural context of literacy in this community. It is found that: (a) the community venerates external standards of literacy, at the expense of local practices; nevertheless, (b) literacy practices reflect the multilingual skills of the general population; and (c) literacy events provide an opportunity for oral discourse and social bonding. It is also argued that the community would benefit if local literacy practices were recognised and validated on their own merit. 2

This paper constitutes an application of paleographic analysis of ancient Mayan hieroglyphic writing in line with the comprehensive approach elaborated by Lacadena (1995a , 1995b ). More specifically, it reviews the evidence for the origin and development of T168/2M1a, the logogram ʔAJAW ‘lord, ruler’, and proposes a relationship between it and T130/2S2, the syllabogram wa. Additionally, the paper contributes with a more complete diachronic perspective than has been attempted before by incorporating evidence from the earliest texts. Moreover, a graphic relationship between T168/2M1a and T130/2S2 is proposed, explained on the basis of designs of T168/2M1a starting in the Late Preclassic and Early Classic, as well as the graphic operations of rotation and ‘re-rotation’, a process introduced in this paper for the first time. The paper also suggests that the relationship between these signs is not merely graphic, but also acrophonic, and it elaborates a typology and chronological seriation of T168/2M1a, with the aim of assisting scholars in assigning relative chronologies to unprovenienced texts lacking calendrical data. 1

Many are familiar with Sequoyah’s creation of the Cherokee syllabary. But few are aware of the international impact of his script. Specialists have noted that his work led to the creation of additional scripts on three continents, but none have calculated the overall impact of Sequoyah’s influence. This article is the first to calculate the breadth of Sequoyah’s influence around the world, documenting his influence in the creation of 21 scripts for over 65 languages.

In masked onset priming (MOPE) there is an overlap between prime and target in the onset. This has been shown to lead to faster word recognition of the target in adults in naming tasks but not in lexical decision tasks. To take a developmental stance, the present study investigated MOPE of various onsets in 30 adults and 74 second graders in a lexical decision task. For adults we found no effects for MOPE in lexical decision, which is congruent with the literature. However, results revealed priming effects for the beginning readers: accuracy scores were higher and response times were shorter for both words and pseudowords when there was an overlap of the onset between prime and target. The effects that we found may reflect either sublexical processing or speech planning, leaving it for future research to reach a firm conclusion with regard to underlying processes. Based on our findings, it can tentatively be assumed that beginning readers are susceptible to MOPE in lexical decision because of the fact that their word identification is far from automated.

Fluid intelligence (Gf) is the ability to solve novel problems without resorting to information obtained from previous training ( Cattell, 1987 : Horn & Cattell, 1966 ). However, several research studies ( Au et al., 2015 ; Jaeggi et al., 2008 ; Kundu et al., 2013 ) have shown that Gf may be responsive to training if it is decomposed to its components, which are working memory capacity (WMC), fluid reasoning and visuospatial ability. Nonetheless, there are some counterarguments proposed by some researchers saying that Gf may not be improved through training ( Chooi & Thompson, 2012 ; Harrison et al., 2013 ; Redick et al., 2013 ). In this study 60 Iranian intermediate students majoring in Psychology were randomly assigned into two groups of control (Gco) and experimental (Gex). Both groups had 6 sessions of writing treatment. Besides, Gex was exposed to n-back task, Cattell’s test and Raven’s test for 12 more sessions,4 sessions for each task. The results showed that the exposure to Gf components could significantly affect learning connectors.