Manuela Wagner

The use of humor in the foreign language classroom: Funny and effective?

Abstract The present paper deals with the role of humor in world language teaching and learning. The goal is to enable educators and researchers to address the phenomenon of humor in the world language classroom in its complexity by suggesting a multidisciplinary approach and by introducing a coding scheme for investigating the use of humor in the world language classroom. Finally, we will introduce an ongoing long-term study planned with the proposed design.

Transient preferences for repetitive visual stimuli in human infancy

Sudden events and sharp discontinuities in the external world act as powerful attention attractors in adult humans. Does this reflex-like orienting towards targets deviating from their surround occur in early infancy? Here, we present evidence that, during the first months of life, infants orient preferentially towards repetitive visual patterns, rather than towards uniquely deviating targets. At 3-4 years of age, toddlers show an adult-like pattern of preferences. The transition from the infantile to the adult-like preferences occurs after the end of the first year of age. This development is parallelled by the emergence of novel neural and cognitive mechanisms. These maturational events might reflect the remodeling of the human brain during the transition from infancy to toddlerhood.