The relationship between working memory (WM) and second language (L2) reading comprehension has received considerable attention for nearly three decades. Although studies in this line of research generally report a small to moderate relationship between WM and L2 reading comprehension, comparison of studies remains challenging due to the lack of specification of the kind of comprehension under investigation (e.g., textbase, situation model) and the means of comprehension assessment. In addition, inconsistencies in the usage, scoring and analysis of WM measures further complicate the interpretation of findings across studies. Thus, in this chapter, we examine L2 reading-WM studies, paying particular attention to methodological considerations surrounding the use and scoring of WM tasks and the assessment of comprehension. We argue that methodological decisions can have non-trivial effects on this line of research and provide task recommendations based on current theorizing in reading

Working memory based limitations have increasingly been proposed as a way of explaining differences between native (L1) and non-native (L2) sentence processing. However, while there has been increasing interest in the role that working memory may play in L2 sentence processing, different approaches to L2 processing rely on different conceptualisations of the role that working memory plays in sentence processing. These different conceptualisations lead to different predictions about both the source of L1/L2 differences in sentence processing, and how individual differences in L2 processing should be measured. In this chapter, I critically evaluate different models of working memory during L2 sentence comprehension, review existing studies that have examined how working memory influences L2 sentence processing, and discuss the importance of considering how individual differences in working memory and sentence processing can be measured.

Working memory (WM) deficits are fundamental problems of children with average intelligence but with specific learning disorders in reading and/or math. Depending on the task, these deficits manifest themselves as a domain-specific storage constraint (i.e., the inefficient accessing and availability of phonological representations, e.g., numbers, phonemes) and/or a domain-general monitoring constraint (limitations in controlled attentional processing, i.e., updating, inhibition). Recent studies suggest that growth in the executive component of WM is significantly related to such children’s growth in reading and/or math. Although constraints in WM can be modified, WM constraints in performance in children with reading disorders (RD) and/or math disorders (MD) remain when compared to their average achieving counterparts across a broad age span. Taken together, children with RD and/MD suffer fundamental problems related to the phonological loop (STM) and controlled attention (executive) component of WM.

Female engagement in oral sex, both receiving and performing, is a sexual behavior found throughout the animal kingdom, yet it remains an underdeveloped research area. Regardless, proximate and ultimate causes can explain engagement in oral sex. For instance, there have been various sociocultural impacts that have led to fluctuations in the performance frequency of oral sex over human history. In this chapter, we highlight the results of research on oral sex for women. First, cross-cultural and historical practices regarding oral sex are presented to explain various fluctuations in the behavior. We also examine cross-species examples of oral sex. Second, we present contemporary research on oral sex and aspects that impact its frequency, such as peer pressure, age, and myths regarding the behavior. Third, proximate mechanisms (sexual pleasure and partner satisfaction) for engagement in oral sex are discussed. Fourth, we describe six evolutionary perspectives on oral sex and introduce one additional theory—a sexual communal perspective that integrates other models. Lastly, we note limitations and future directions for studying women's engagement in oral sex.

Female sexual experience has received more attention from the scientific community in recent decades, but there is still debate surrounding its importance from an evolutionary perspective. Specifically, researchers have debated whether female orgasm is an adaptation reflecting special design or a functionless byproduct of strong selection for male orgasm that arises in women because of early shared ontogeny with men. Scholars who endorse a byproduct explanation of women’s orgasm argue that it is unlikely the female orgasm was designed by sexual selection because, unlike male orgasm, women’s orgasm is not necessary for conception. Supporters of the byproduct position further contend that an adaptive explanation of women’s orgasm is unlikely because orgasm is more difficult to induce in women compared to men and because women’s orgasm is more likely to occur during masturbation or oral sex than it is during vaginal intercourse. In other words, proponents of the byproduct explanation for female orgasm liken female orgasm to male nipples: something that offers no adaptive function and is vestigial, but that arises because selection for that trait is so strong in the opposite-sex that the shared early stages of development lead to it appearing in both sexes. However, there is considerable evidence that female orgasm is far from vestigial and may have increased the reproductive success of ancestral women. Researchers who support the adaptation explanation of women’s orgasm dispute the byproduct hypothesis by pointing to evidence that female orgasm increases women’s fitness through one or more mechanisms. Female orgasm reinforces and rewards women’s sexual behaviors, thereby encouraging women to engage in behaviors that can result in conception. Also, evidence suggests that women’s orgasm may reinforce or increase pair-bonding among couples, act as a mate- or sire-selection mechanism, and increase the odds of conception. This chapter reviews the literature on women’s orgasm and concludes that a byproduct account is an inadequate explanation of the current findings, although additional research into the evolved functions of women’s orgasm is nonetheless warranted.

Darwin found that many animals had characteristics that were difficult to explain in terms of natural selection (i.e., the gradual process in which organisms better adapted to their environment survive and reproduce more successfully over sufficiently long time periods). He proposed a new selective force, sexual selection, which refers to the process generated by differential sexual access to opposite-sex mates. The process of sexual selection, in its classic conceptualization, consisted of two components: male–male competition, resulting in built-in weapons, and female choice, resulting in ornaments. Following Darwin, sexual selection is often divided into two forms: (1) intrasexual selection, in which members of one sex, most often males, compete with one another to gain sexual access to opposite-sex mates; and (2) intersexual selection, in which individuals of one sex, most often females, choose among individuals of the opposite sex as mates. The two forms of sexual selection have been investigated in humans across cultures, producing a large body of work on psychological similarities and differences between women and men in the context of mating. Post-mating sexual selection and its effect on sexual psychology have also gained increasing research attention in the last two decades. Two post-mating strategies in sexual selection are discussed: sperm competition (the competition between the sperm of two or more males to fertilize the egg(s) of a single female) and mate guarding (behaviors used to maintain reproductive opportunities and sexual access to a mate). Previous applications of sexual selection to sexual psychology and future directions in integration of multiple perspectives in evolutionary social sciences are discussed.

The term ‘alignment’ is used in the typological literature to characterize the morphosyntactic behaviour of arguments and their relationship to the predicate. The term usually refers to case, agreement, and word order. Within the Romance family, Latin and its descendants are considered to display basic nominative-accusative alignment. However, Latin also has a split intransitive subject alignment in certain paradigms of the verbal system. This split alignment continues in a variety of guises into later Romance varieties. In this chapter, we discuss these phenomena in some detail, highlighting microvariation within the Romance family and discussing their importance for our broader understanding of alignment. We focus on the diachrony of alignment, as a backdrop for the discussion of the synchronic situation in Romance languages. We discuss auxiliary selection and the alignment of past participle agreement, charting both frequent and rare splits. Subsequently, we focus on alignment in SE-passives and word order in Romance. Finally, we briefly discuss two other potentially relevant phenomena: INDE-cliticization and absolute participles/participial adjectives. As we shall see, in many of these cases, the Romance language family displays a remarkable array of alignment patterns which raise interesting challenges for theories of split-intransitivity and alignment more generally.

The development of the sociological imagination is central to undergraduate training in sociology. Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) are one powerful pedagogical approach to helping students critically observe and analyze the complexity of social life. This chapter (1) explores the roots of UREs insociology; (2) examines the literature on infusing and scaffolding course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs), attending to successful models implementing CUREs in several types of sociology courses, across the curriculum, and as an integrated departmental approach; (3) details benefits and challenges of implementing CUREs from various stakeholder perspectives, and (4) shares thoughts on the path forward to further infuse undergraduate research in the sociology curriculum.

This chapter takes stock of current research concerning undergraduate research in Scandinavia. A literature search identified relatively few studies that explicitly employ this concept. There is a strong emphasis on “research-based education” as a principle in all three Scandinavian countries, with a broader view on linking research and education. In recent years, perspectives emphasizing inquiry, student-centeredness and problem-based learning have attracted considerable attention. There are also other indications of practices associated with students behaving as researchers – e.g., the relatively wide use of the bachelors’ thesis and specific examples of institutions and cases where principles from undergraduate research have been employed. More recent developments include theuse of honours programmes.

Even though Japan has a largely Westernized system of education, it is worth remembering that this country has a strong hierarchical Confucian tradition of master–student relationships. This relationship is underlined by the literal meaning of sensei, “the one born before,” as the honorific given to all teachers and professors. University lecturers enjoy significant autonomy, and there are no particular barriers to faculty integrating undergraduate research (UR) into the curriculum. It can be argued that the STEM areas in which Japan excels have historically created more opportunities for research, and that UR is already undertaken there, whether formally recognized or not. In the arts, humanities, and social sciences, students are required to write a graduation thesis or report under the guidance of their instructor.

Sociocultural approaches form a theoretical tradition that explains learning, identity development, and knowledge creation not merely as cognitive or as purely internal psychic processes. Rather it understands these educational phenomena relationally as practices that belong simultaneously to the development of the individual as well as to the society and its cultural ways of life. Commencing from these ideas, this chapter argues that undergraduate research and inquiry-based learning can be investigated as ways of ensuring student participation in and engagement with practices of doing research. A sociocultural view on these practices raises awareness of the broader context in which education develops, and how such development is influenced by all kinds of cultural and material relations. Higher education is not only understood within the boundaries of the university or the college. It can also be studied as culturally shaped by professional practices and ethics, or by epistemic cultures that form different manners of knowing. The focus on practices is important because it is a key to the reconstruction of ‘how we know what we know’ as a resource for student learning.

Diamesic variation, a concept coined by variationist researchers in Italy, helps to understand the impact of media on linguistic structures and their evolution. By distinguishing medial, sociolinguistic, and functional aspects of diamesic variation, it becomes clear that media not only affect the (phonic and graphic) materiality of signifiers but also interact strongly with diasystematic variation along regional, social, and situational parameters and with variability of verbalization strategies between the poles of communicative immediacy and communicative distance. The latter, functional aspect of diamesic variation is anthropologically rooted and forms a universal, omnipresent background in the history of the Romance languages. Several paradigmatic analyses of Latin and Romance historical data show how the communicative variation between, for example, the maximal degree of familiarity between partners vs formal, public encounters, a high degree of spontaneity vs a high degree of planning, intensive involvement in a situation vs decontextualized speaking and writing determines standardization processes of elaboration, centralization, and codification as well as linguistic change ‘from below’ or ‘from above’.