Learning a new language is an important goal that many individuals find difficult to achieve, particularly during adulthood. Several factors have related this variability to different extrinsic (learning condition, difficulty of the materials) and intrinsic (cognitive abilities) factors, but the interaction between them is barely known. In two experiments, participants learned English grammar rules in intentional (Experiment 1) or explicit (Experiment 2), and incidental learning-contexts. Overall, results of this study indicated that intentional-explicit conditions benefitted rule-learning, as compared to incidental conditions. This benefit was mainly present when participants were learning an easy-rule; explicit and incidental learning did not differ in the case of participants learning a difficult rule (Experiment 2). Moreover, individual differences in executive functioning predicted successful learning in interaction with difficulty. When learning an easy-rule, proactive control facilitated intentional learning. In contrast, when participants were learning a complex-rule, incidental learning was enhanced by lower involvement of proactive control.

Differential affective processing has been widely documented for bilinguals: L1 affective words elicit higher levels of arousal and stronger emotionality ratings than L2 affective words (Pavlenko, 2012). In this study, we focus on two closely related Chinese languages, Mandarin and Cantonese, whose affective lexicons are highly overlapping, with shared lexical items that only differ in pronunciation across languages. We recorded L1 Cantonese – L2 Mandarin bilinguals’ pupil responses to auditory tokens of Cantonese and Mandarin affective words. Our results showed that Cantonese–Mandarin bilinguals had stronger pupil responses when the affective words were pronounced in Cantonese (L1) than when the same words were pronounced in Mandarin (L2). The effect was most evident in taboo words and among bilinguals with lower L2 proficiency. We discuss the theoretical implications of the findings in the frameworks of exemplar theory and models of the bilingual lexicon.

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a common mental health condition that is characterised by a persistent fear of social or performance situations. Despite effective treatments being available, many individuals with SAD do not seek treatment or delay treatment seeking for many years. The aim of the present study was to examine treatment barriers, treatment histories, and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) delivery preferences in a sample of women with clinically relevant SAD symptoms. Ninety-nine women (Mage = 34.90, SD = 11.28) completed the online questionnaires and were included in the study. Participants were recruited from advertisements on community noticeboards and posts on social media. The results demonstrated that less than 5% of those who received psychological treatment in the past were likely to have received best-practice CBT. The most commonly cited barriers to accessing treatment for women with SAD related to direct costs (63%) and indirect costs (e.g., transport/childcare) (28%). The most preferred treatment delivery method overall was individual face-to-face treatment (70%). The study demonstrates a need to provide a variety of treatment options in order to enhance access to empirically supported treatment for women with SAD.

The present study investigates the relation of procedural transparency and compliance with authorities’ regulations. The underlying assumption is that procedural transparency encourages compliance with regulations. In an incentivized experiment, 666 participants took on the role of a business owner and had to fill in a form and spend a certain amount of their income as compliance costs to adhere to safety rules. In a 2 (Business Size: small vs big) × 2 (Penalty Rate: equal vs unequal) × 2 (Penalty Scheme: transparent vs nontransparent) between-subjects design, we investigated whether an unequal penalty rate for small-size in contrast to big-size businesses had a different effect on compliance when this difference was transparent compared to when it was not transparent. Business income, compliance costs, and audit probability were varied within-subject, over 18 decision rounds. We find that the deterring effect of a higher penalty rate for big-size compared to small-size businesses under a nontransparent unequal penalty scheme is attenuated when the same information is available. This supports the idea of a backfiring effect and suggests that authorities need to carefully consider what information about their procedures to communicate in order to avoid the unintended negative effects of increasing transparency.

The present study investigated the age of acquisition (AoA) effect in processing second language (L2) words and how it is related to the AoA of the corresponding first language (L1) words. We adopted a lexical decision task in three experiments. The filler words were orthographically illegal in Experiment 1 to elicit more word form processing, while Experiment 2 used legal fillers to shift the bias toward semantic processing. In Experiment 3, we used a larger amount of stimuli containing more longer words with legal fillers. Our results showed that L2 AoA has a weak effect at the orthographical processing level and a stable effect at the semantic processing level. The L1 AoA modulates the L2 AoA effect at the semantic processing level, which is more likely to appear in long words. These results suggest that it is important to take bilingual representation and activation into consideration to explain the L2 AoA effect.