We have seen rapid development of various brain training methods in the past few decades that quickly became popular among educators, despite the lack of evidence about these products’ effectiveness. Some negative outcomes prompted researchers from both neuroscience and education to develop collaboratively neuroscience-based approaches to educational and clinical practices. This chapter discusses fundamental training-related questions, such as neuroplasticity, transfer, and individual differences and provides a detailed examination of one domain-specific method (i.e., working memory training) and a multi-domain approach (i.e., music training). Based on the findings, we point out how critical it is to determine the specific cognitive or linguistic skills that researchers intend to target with a given training method prior to the beginning of the training process. Further, it is essential to identify the overlapping processing components and underlying neural regions between the training tasks and the post-training measures to achieve transfer to untrained tasks.

The Introduction provides a brief review of the overall aims and conceptual and methodological approaches of the book, with a focus on the dynamic interactions between cognitive control and language. It highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the discussions and the integration of behavioral and neurophysiological outcomes throughout the chapters. A further goal is to point to the need for a connection between theoretical models and educational/clinical practices and to facilitate a discussion between researchers and educators/clinicians. The Introduction also includes a short summary of each chapter by presenting the main ideas and critical issues about the development of cognitive control in children with various language skills (e.g., children with language talent, children with bilingualism as their first language, children with developmental language disorder, emerging bilingual speakers).

This chapter is a synthesis of the findings about the relationship between cognitive control and language. It provides a more holistic picture about this relationship with particular attention to the heterogeneity of the participants and the shortage of sufficiently sensitive, valid tasks. The discussion is centered around the need for more studies using an individual-differences approach and the ways this approach may be combined with experimental designs to provide a method within which variability in performance is viewed as key information. The findings suggest that we must broaden the language spectrum in our studies to include speakers of various languages at a variety of proficiency and ability levels. Additional focus is placed on the need for interprofessional collaborations among researchers across disciplines, as well as between researchers and practitioners and educators, in order to enhance our diagnostic and classification accuracy and to decrease the inconsistencies in findings across studies.

Radicalization is most often seen as a gradual process that may or may not lead to radical or extreme behaviors such as terrorism. Theories on the radicalization process often highlight the potential role of social exclusion in the propensity for radicalization. We here present some of the major radicalization theories and discuss exclusion as a common denominator that could trigger a radicalization process. We then describe the research on personality and individual differences in relation to radicalization briefly, before discussing individual differences that are connected to exclusion in more depth. We go through the available empirical evidence supporting the notion that some individual level differences, such as rejection sensitivity, could moderate the effect of exclusion on radicalization. We further discuss other potential individual differences that relate to exclusion such as need to belong and entitlement.

Although insight experiences are recognized to be cognitively, physiologically, and neurologically distinct from other forms of reasoning and problem solving, it also appears that the experience of insight is not the same for all types of individuals or in all circumstances. Researchers in our lab and others have begun to examine the individual differences associated with the insight experience: what makes certain individuals more likely to report solving problems insightfully, and how might the subjective experience of insight differ among people according to their underlying psychological and neurobiological characteristics? Research demonstrates that the tendency to experience insight during problem-solving varies among individuals as a function of transient differences in one’s psychological state as well as stable, trait-like differences in neurocognitive dynamics. We argue that an individual differences approach can further disambiguate the components of insight on the behavioral and neural levels and help us understand when, and for whom, such experiences are most likely to occur, and how they may affect us depending on our individual motivations, goals, and underlying neurobiology.

In this chapter, we discuss the way people read, remember and understand discourse, depending on the type of relations that link discourse segments together. We also illustrate the role of connectives and other discourse signals as elements guiding readers’ interpretation. Throughout the chapter, we review empirical evidence from experiments that involve various methodologies such as offline comprehension tasks, self-paced reading, eye-tracking and event related potentials. One of the major findings is that not all relations are processed and remembered in the same way. It seems that causal relations play a special role for creating coherence in discourse, as they are processed more quickly and remembered better. Conversely, because they are highly expected, causal relations benefit less from the presence of connectives compared to discontinuous relations like concession and confirmation. Finally, research shows that in their native language, speakers are able to take advantage of all sorts of connectives for discourse processing, even those restricted to the written mode, and those that are ambiguous.

In this chapter, we present an overview of current knowledge about learners’ use and understanding of connectives. In the first part of the chapter, we will see that connectives are notoriously difficult to master for second language learners, because they require an array of complex competences. Learners must know how to use them appropriately in various genres and registers, have a fine-grained understanding of the meaning differences between connectives used to convey similar coherence relations, and also automatize this knowledge so that it is activated automatically during discourse processing, and not only when they consciously elicit usage rules. In the second part of the chapter, we review the important body of studies that have empirically assessed the causes for learners’ difficulties with connectives, and conclude with some recommendations for teaching. We conclude that research on the second language acquisition of connectives contributes to answering important questions, such as what makes connectives difficult to master, and how they are they used across languages.

This chapter takes an individual-differences perspective on the dual sound systems of American heritage speakers (HSs) of Mandarin Chinese. Based on detailed socio-demographic data and production data on segmentals and suprasegmentals, we build holistic demographic and phonetic profiles for HSs, as well as native speakers and late learners, to explore how different aspects of their two languages (i.e., Mandarin, English) may develop in relation to each other and how individual variation in production may be related to socio-demographic factors. Using multiple factor analysis (MFA), we describe the range of these profiles, identify clusters of variation defined by different socio-demographic factors, and argue that some factors (e.g., age of arrival, language(s) spoken at home) have more predictive power for phonetic profiles than others. Overall, our results suggest a significant, if limited, link between socio-demographic factors and production, but only in Mandarin. We conclude by discussing the advantages and disadvantages of group-based and individual-centered approaches.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the aims of the book, and the coverage in the chapters contained within the book. It includes a brief introduction to dyslexia, starting with the key features of dyslexia, primarily as seen from research and practice on children, before moving to a discussion of adult dyslexia. These key elements related to dyslexia focus on difficulties with reading and writing that can be long-lasting, and hence occur in adulthood. They also link to the potential cause of dyslexia, such as phonological processing deficits, and the impact that dyslexia can have on learning and cognition in general. Therefore, the chapter also discusses issues related to the experiences of adult dyslexics and the consequences of dyslexia that can impact on life and performance in the workplace. Dyslexia in adulthood can be considered more complex to childhood dyslexia given the range of experiences and strategies that the individual has acquired, as well as the variability in tasks that the adult needs to perform. Hence, individual differences in strengths and difficulties, as well as lifetime experiences, are an important for understanding adult dyslexia.

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (DCN) has made significant strides since its inception in the late 1980s. In this concluding chapter, we celebrate the progress made in understanding brain development from prenatal stages to adulthood, exploring genetics, epigenetics, neural foundations, and their connections to cognitive and socioemotional growth. While DCN research has gained public and policy attention, there are still theoretical, methodological, and practical challenges ahead, with the field being relatively young and open to exploration. We highlight key takeaways, emphasizing the intricate relationships between brain development, cognition, and the environment. The chapter discusses ongoing limitations and emerging research areas, aiming to inspire future researchers, particularly graduate students, to explore these promising directions. Lastly, we explore the broader societal impact of DCN research, showcasing its potential to deepen our understanding of human development and learning, bridging the gaps between genes, brain structure and function, and environmental influences. DCNs evolution promises to enrich our knowledge of human development and learning, offering insights that can benefit society.

Chapter 9 offers insight into how second language acquisition researchers have understood the concept of language aptitude and its impact on language development. Bryfonski and Mackey describe several of the most commonly used sub-components of language aptitude including phonetic, reasoning, and memory abilities. By drawing connections between these sub-components and instructional practices, this chapter offers ways in which teachers can understand how learners may experience language learning.

Ironic language often conveys and elicits intense emotions. This chapter describes much of the relevant experimental research on the ways people emotionally react to sarcastic messages (e.g., “You’re so strong” when the person is actually rather weak). She considers some of the communicative reasons why people employ sarcasm in their speech, including possible affective messages they may wish to express. Experimental studies have employed eye tracking and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) measures to assess examine people’s anticipated emotional responses to story characters who were presented with either ironic (e.g., “You’re so strong”) or literal (e.g., “You’re so weak”) criticisms. The results suggest that readers initially anticipated a hurt response to ironic criticism, but eventually found it easier to integrate a hurt response following literal criticism (i.e., a “two-stage model” of emotional responses). But there are important individual differences in the ways people respond to sarcasm, not surprisingly. For example, autistic individuals do not easily distinguish between ironic and literal criticisms. Older adults also exhibit reduced abilities to understand and emotionally respond to sarcastic utterances. There are also significant variations in the ways people from different cultures use, interpret, and emotionally respond to sarcasm.

Chapter 1 introduces the importance of metaphor to an understanding of time and, in that context, introduces two gaps in our understanding of spatial metaphors for time that the current volume aims to fill.

Chapter 6 highlights the roles of personal and situational factors on metaphoric interpretation through a focused exploration of the interpretation of McGlone and Harding’s (1998) Next Wednesday’s meeting question.