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Behavior Research Methods Oct 2023Affective information contained in words is gaining increased attention among neurolinguists and psycholinguists around the world. This study established the Affective...
Affective information contained in words is gaining increased attention among neurolinguists and psycholinguists around the world. This study established the Affective Norms for Chinese Words (ANCW) with valence, arousal, dominance, and concreteness ratings for 4030 words that were Chinese adaptations of the CET-4 (The National College English Test Band 4) official syllabus. Despite the existing Chinese affective norms such as the Chinese Affective Words System (CAWS), the ANCW provides much more and richer Chinese vocabulary. By using 7-point (ranging from 1 to 7) Likert scales in a paper-and-pencil procedure, we obtained ratings for all variables from 3717 Chinese undergraduates. The ANCW norms possessed good response reliability and were compatible with prior normative studies in Chinese. The pairwise correlation analysis revealed quadratic relations between valence and arousal, arousal and dominance, as well as valence and concreteness. Additionally, valence and dominance, as well as arousal and concreteness, presented a linear correlation, and concreteness and dominance were correlated. The ANCW provides reliable and standardized stimulus materials for further research involving emotional language processing.
PubMed: 37801213
DOI: 10.3758/s13428-023-02226-x -
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Apr 2024The form of a word sometimes conveys semantic information. For example, the iconic word gurgle sounds like what it means, and busy is easy to identify as an English... (Review)
Review
The form of a word sometimes conveys semantic information. For example, the iconic word gurgle sounds like what it means, and busy is easy to identify as an English adjective because it ends in -y. Such links between form and meaning matter because they help people learn and use language. But gurgle also sounds like gargle and burble, and the -y in busy is morphologically and etymologically unrelated to the -y in crazy and watery. Whatever processing effects gurgle and busy have in common likely stem not from iconic, morphological, or etymological relationships but from systematicity more broadly: the phenomenon whereby semantically related words share a phonological or orthographic feature. In this review, we evaluate corpus evidence that spoken languages are systematic (even when controlling for iconicity, morphology, and etymology) and experimental evidence that systematicity impacts word processing (even in lieu of iconic, morphological, and etymological relationships). We conclude by drawing attention to the relationship between systematicity and low-frequency words and, consequently, the role that systematicity plays in natural language processing.
Topics: Humans; Semantics; Phonetics; Psycholinguistics; Speech Perception; Language
PubMed: 37803232
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-023-02395-y -
Frontiers in Psychology 2024
PubMed: 38440237
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1375105 -
Perspectives on Psychological Science :... Sep 2023Natural human interaction requires us to produce and process many different signals, including speech, hand and head gestures, and facial expressions. These... (Review)
Review
Natural human interaction requires us to produce and process many different signals, including speech, hand and head gestures, and facial expressions. These communicative signals, which occur in a variety of temporal relations with each other (e.g., parallel or temporally misaligned), must be rapidly processed as a coherent message by the receiver. In this contribution, we introduce the notion of interactionally embedded, affordance-driven gestalt perception as a framework that can explain how this rapid processing of multimodal signals is achieved as efficiently as it is. We discuss empirical evidence showing how basic principles of gestalt perception can explain some aspects of unimodal phenomena such as verbal language processing and visual scene perception but require additional features to explain multimodal human communication. We propose a framework in which high-level gestalt predictions are continuously updated by incoming sensory input, such as unfolding speech and visual signals. We outline the constituent processes that shape high-level gestalt perception and their role in perceiving relevance and . Finally, we provide testable predictions that arise from this multimodal interactionally embedded gestalt-perception framework. This review and framework therefore provide a theoretically motivated account of how we may understand the highly complex, multimodal behaviors inherent in natural social interaction.
Topics: Humans; Communication; Language; Visual Perception; Speech
PubMed: 36634318
DOI: 10.1177/17456916221141422 -
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Aug 2023Metaphor, as widely known, is a figure of speech where a word or phrase is used to describe an object, action, or event to which it cannot be applied exactly. Metaphors...
Metaphor, as widely known, is a figure of speech where a word or phrase is used to describe an object, action, or event to which it cannot be applied exactly. Metaphors are often used figuratively to enable clarity or emphasize the similarities between the two things in a frame. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between cognitive functions and generating metaphor and their associations in older bilingual and monolingual participants. We conducted the experiment with fifty-six (Bilingual and Monolingual) participants in the age group ranging from 50 to 65 years. We administered the novel and conventional metaphor generation task based on vision words in perceptual domain in Telugu. Followed by a battery of cognitive function tests: Flanker task to study the attention, Semantic Fluency task, Corsi task to check working memory, LexTALE to measure the vocabulary, and a language questionnaire. These tasks are used to investigate the association and correlation between the old age bilingual and monolingual in generating vision metaphors. The current study's findings demonstrate that bilinguals have a considerable advantage in cognitive function and their ability to generate novel metaphors are better when compared to monolinguals.
Topics: Humans; Aged; Middle Aged; Multilingualism; Metaphor; Language; Vocabulary; Cognition
PubMed: 36715812
DOI: 10.1007/s10936-022-09929-w -
Cognitive Science Dec 2023Previous work has shown that English native speakers interpret sentences as predicted by a noisy-channel model: They integrate both the real-world plausibility of the...
Previous work has shown that English native speakers interpret sentences as predicted by a noisy-channel model: They integrate both the real-world plausibility of the meaning-the prior-and the likelihood that the intended sentence may be corrupted into the perceived sentence. In this study, we test the noisy-channel model in Mandarin Chinese, a language taxonomically different from English. We present native Mandarin speakers sentences in a written modality (Experiment 1) and an auditory modality (Experiment 2) in three pairs of syntactic alternations. The critical materials are literally implausible but require differing numbers and types of edits in order to form more plausible sentences. Each sentence is followed by a comprehension question that allows us to infer whether the speakers interpreted the item literally, or made an inference toward a more likely meaning. Similar to previous research on related English constructions, Mandarin participants made the most inferences for implausible materials that could be inferred as plausible by deleting a single morpheme or inserting a single morpheme. Participants were less likely to infer a plausible meaning for materials that could be inferred as plausible by making an exchange across a preposition. And participants were least likely to infer a plausible meaning for materials that could be inferred as plausible by making an exchange across a main verb. Moreover, we found more inferences in written materials than spoken materials, possibly a result of a lack of word boundaries in written Chinese. Overall, the fact that the results were so similar to those found in related constructions in English suggests that the noisy-channel proposal is robust.
Topics: Humans; Speech Perception; Language; Comprehension; Probability; China
PubMed: 38073607
DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13383 -
The Behavioral and Brain Sciences Dec 2023Large language models (LLMs) are not detailed models of human linguistic processing. They are, however, extremely successful at their primary task: Providing a model for...
Large language models (LLMs) are not detailed models of human linguistic processing. They are, however, extremely successful at their primary task: Providing a model for language. For this reason LLMs are important in psycholinguistics: They are useful as a practical tool, as an illustrative comparative, and philosophically, as a basis for recasting the relationship between language and thought.
Topics: Humans; Language; Psycholinguistics; Linguistics
PubMed: 38054292
DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X23001693 -
PLoS Biology May 2024Negation is key for cognition but has no physical basis, raising questions about its neural origins. A new study in PLOS Biology on the negation of scalar adjectives...
Negation is key for cognition but has no physical basis, raising questions about its neural origins. A new study in PLOS Biology on the negation of scalar adjectives shows that negation acts in part by altering the response to the adjective it negates.
Topics: Brain; Humans; Cognition; Behavior
PubMed: 38820496
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002656 -
Cell Reports. Medicine May 2024The size of the human head is highly heritable, but genetic drivers of its variation within the general population remain unmapped. We perform a genome-wide association...
The size of the human head is highly heritable, but genetic drivers of its variation within the general population remain unmapped. We perform a genome-wide association study on head size (N = 80,890) and identify 67 genetic loci, of which 50 are novel. Neuroimaging studies show that 17 variants affect specific brain areas, but most have widespread effects. Gene set enrichment is observed for various cancers and the p53, Wnt, and ErbB signaling pathways. Genes harboring lead variants are enriched for macrocephaly syndrome genes (37-fold) and high-fidelity cancer genes (9-fold), which is not seen for human height variants. Head size variants are also near genes preferentially expressed in intermediate progenitor cells, neural cells linked to evolutionary brain expansion. Our results indicate that genes regulating early brain and cranial growth incline to neoplasia later in life, irrespective of height. This warrants investigation of clinical implications of the link between head size and cancer.
Topics: Humans; Genome-Wide Association Study; Head; Neoplasms; Female; Male; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; Genetic Variation; Organ Size; Signal Transduction; Adult; Genetic Predisposition to Disease
PubMed: 38703765
DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2024.101529 -
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Aug 2023The relationship between working memory and speech has been a topic of intense research interest and investigation for many years. Memory studies have found that the... (Review)
Review
The relationship between working memory and speech has been a topic of intense research interest and investigation for many years. Memory studies have found that the active processing of working memory is required for language comprehension and speech production. Though there are studies that discuss the capacity of working memory, the processing of verbal stimuli into verbal memory remains unclear. Therefore, it is essential to understand the functioning of the working memory and how it processes verbal information. As working memory is intricately linked with communication, any deficits in working memory could cause communication disorders. Also, the disruption in the storage and retrieval of verbal memory could cause a disturbance in the speech pattern. To this point, this review elaborates on the active processing of working memory and its role in communication. Further, by studying the deficits in working memory that could cause cognitive-communication disorders such as apraxia of speech, dementia, and dysarthria, this article highlights the importance of verbal memory in speech.
Topics: Humans; Memory, Short-Term; Lip; Communication Disorders; Brain; Cognition
PubMed: 37022624
DOI: 10.1007/s10936-023-09946-3