Cognitive Process

The present study was an attempt to provide a psycholinguistic account of cognitive processes underlying responding and questioning. It also strived to identify the potential differences between responding and questioning cognitive processes in Target Language Use Situation tasks. To accomplish the objectives, 65 Iranian general IELTS applicants from two foreign language learning institutes in Shiraz, with two different language proficiency levels (intermediate and advanced), were randomly selected. They were administered a normal responding and a reverse questioning IELTS oral tasks. Two seven-point Likert scale questionnaires were also used to measure the task difficulty and mental effort that the applicants perceived while doing the tasks. Additionally, the applicants’ recorded voices in tasks were transcribed and analyzed to assess the number of grammatical errors and pause lengths. The analysis of the numerical data through descriptive statistics and paired-samples t-tests indicated that, in general, the cognitive processes underlying oral responding and questioning are significantly different in terms of mental effort, task difficulty, length of pauses, and the number of grammatical errors. More specifically, the results suggested that the applicants took more mental effort and perceived more task difficulty while constructing the questions for given responses irrespective of their proficiency levels. Both groups also paused significantly longer and committed significantly more grammatical errors when completing the questioning tasks. The paper discusses the study implications for second language teachers and assessors.

A logo epitomizes a brand and depicts the picture of a product; consequently, attention, as an initial step of the AIDA model, to the logo is a good-looking index to survey the cognitive processing during consumers’ decision-making. Eye tracker extracts the visual attention data. For these reasons and appreciated from fixation duration, in the present study, the process of visual attention to the logo of a brand during decision-making was studied. To analyze the effects of the popularity of a brand on consumers’ decision-making, visual attention of 53 undergraduate students was studied. The brands were selected from two categories of beverages: soft drinks and non-alcoholic beers. Prior to the test, the participants had declared their favorite categories. The results showed that 75% of the participants selected a popular brand of their unfavorite categories. On the other hand, the difference of fixation duration between logos of popular and unknown brands did not directly relate to the choices of the participants. Therefore, these results did not correspond with the AIDA model. Additionally, cognitive processing toward the unknown brands’ logos was more than the popular brands’ logos. Moreover, the consumers who changed their decision were subjected to more cognitive processing compared to the consumers who insisted on their selection. In contrast to the AIDA model which implies that decision-making is triggered by attention, the present study indicated that decision making can also be influenced by the popularity of the brand. This can be due to optimization of the working memory usage by the brain. Finally, these results could be helpful in creating a new brand. According to the AIDA model, the more attractive logo and package of the brand, the more chance for being selected by the customers. However, our findings emphasize the importance of the popularity of the brand.