We report an eye movement experiment investigating the influence of the focus operator only on syntactic processing of "long" relative clause sentences. Paterson, Liversedge, and Underwood (1999) found that readers were garden pathed by "short" reduced relative clause sentences containing the focus operator only. They argued that due to thematic differences between "short" and "long" relative clause sentences, garden path effect might not occur when "long" reduced relative clause sentences are read. Eye-tracking data show that garden path effects found during initial processing of the disambiguating verb of "long" reduced sentences without only were absent or delayed in the case of counterparts with only. We discuss our results in terms of current theories of sentence processing.

We investigated thematic processing in sentences containing a prepositional phrase that was ambiguous between a locative and a temporal interpretation. We manipulated context (temporal or locative), target sentence (temporal or locative), and whether or not the main verb of the target and the context was repeated. Results showed that context dictated the participants' thematic expectations. Thematically, congruent target and context pairs were read faster than incongruent pairs. This effect was not modulated by verb repetition. We argue that wh-words cause readers to lodge semantically vacuous thematic roles in their discourse representation that bias a reader's interpretation of subsequent thematically ambiguous adjuncts in their discourse representation.

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Demand for blended and online learning environments is increasing and concurrent with this is the changing competencies required for teachers to be able to facilitate learning in both face-to-face and virtual space. The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) is a measure of teachers pedagogical, content and technical knowledge and their skill to embed technology in practice. Using the TPACK framework, this study explores the relationship between technical skills, learning design and how these relate to pedagogy. The study also investigates how TPACK varies by subject area, teaching qualification, and employment. A survey of 112 lecturers from a multi-campus university was conducted. We found that lecturers who have high TPACK tend to use more varied and interactive learning activities. TPACK did not significantly vary by subject area. It did not also vary between those who received a few trainings over the past year in comparison to those who didn't. However, significant differences in TPACK were found in terms of nature of employment and teaching qualification in higher education. These findings suggest that there is a need to provide a varied approach to develop staff competencies.