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PloS One 2023Concreteness is a fundamental dimension of word semantic representation that has attracted more and more interest to become one of the most studied variables in the...
Concreteness is a fundamental dimension of word semantic representation that has attracted more and more interest to become one of the most studied variables in the psycholinguistic and cognitive neuroscience literature in the last decade. Concreteness effects have been found at both the brain and the behavioral levels, but they may vary depending on the constraints of the context and task demands. In this study, we collected concreteness norms for English and Italian words presented in different context sentences to allow better control and manipulation of concreteness in future psycholinguistic research. First, we observed high split-half correlations and Cronbach's alpha coefficients, suggesting that our ratings were highly reliable and can be used in Italian- and English-speaking populations. Second, our data indicate that the concreteness ratings are related to the lexical density and accessibility of the sentence in both English and Italian. We also found that the concreteness of words in isolation was highly correlated with that of words in context. Finally, we analyzed differences between nouns and verbs in concreteness ratings without significant effects. Our new concreteness norms of words in context are a valuable source of information for future research in both the English and Italian language. The complete database is available on the Open Science Framework (doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/U3PC4).
Topics: Language; Psycholinguistics; Semantics; Brain; Italy
PubMed: 37862357
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0293031 -
BioRxiv : the Preprint Server For... Dec 2023We present an empirically benchmarked framework for sex-specific normative modeling of brain morphometry that can inform about the biological and behavioral significance...
We present an empirically benchmarked framework for sex-specific normative modeling of brain morphometry that can inform about the biological and behavioral significance of deviations from typical age-related neuroanatomical changes and support future study designs. This framework was developed using regional morphometric data from 37,407 healthy individuals (53% female; aged 3-90 years) following a comparative evaluation of eight algorithms and multiple covariate combinations pertaining to image acquisition and quality, parcellation software versions, global neuroimaging measures, and longitudinal stability. The Multivariate Factorial Polynomial Regression (MFPR) emerged as the preferred algorithm optimized using nonlinear polynomials for age and linear effects of global measures as covariates. The MFPR models showed excellent accuracy across the lifespan and within distinct age-bins, and longitudinal stability over a 2-year period. The performance of all MFPR models plateaued at sample sizes exceeding 3,000 study participants. The model and scripts described here are freely available through CentileBrain (https://centilebrain.org/).
PubMed: 38076938
DOI: 10.1101/2023.01.30.523509 -
Brain Sciences Jul 2023Compound words in psycholinguistics pose a significant challenge for researchers as their meaning involves more than the sum of their parts. The role of semantic...
Compound words in psycholinguistics pose a significant challenge for researchers as their meaning involves more than the sum of their parts. The role of semantic relations in this process is crucial, and studies have reported a phenomenon known as relation priming. It suggests that previously encountered relations enhance the processing of subsequent words with the same relation. Notably, this priming effect is limited to cases where there is morpheme repetition between the priming and target words. In the present study, 33 samples from the target group were selected, and the within-subject design of 3 morphemes (modifier-shared, head-shared, non-repeated) × 2 relations (relation-same, relation-different) was adopted to explore whether the relation priming effect would occur without morpheme repetition and its time course. Significant relation priming effects were found in both behavioral and electrophysiological experimental results. These findings indicating relation priming can occur independently of morpheme repetition, and it has been activated at a very early stage (about 200 ms). As the word processing progresses, this activation gradually strengthens, indicating that the relation role is slowly increasing in the process of compound word recognition. It may first be used as context information to help determine the constituent morphemes' meaning. After the meaning access of the constituent morphemes, they begin to play a role in the semantic composition process. This study uses electrophysiological technology to precisely describe the representation of relation and its time course for the first time, which gives us a deeper understanding of the relation priming process, and at the same time, sheds light on the meaning construction process of compounds.
PubMed: 37508965
DOI: 10.3390/brainsci13071033 -
European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Apr 2024The 8p23.1 duplication syndrome is a rare genetic condition with an estimated prevalence rate of 1 out of 58,000. Although the syndrome was associated with speech and...
The 8p23.1 duplication syndrome is a rare genetic condition with an estimated prevalence rate of 1 out of 58,000. Although the syndrome was associated with speech and language delays, a comprehensive assessment of speech and language functions has not been undertaken in this population. To address this issue, the present study reports rigorous speech and language, in addition to oral-facial and developmental, assessment of a 50-month-old Turkish-speaking boy who was diagnosed with the 8p23.1 duplication syndrome. Standardized tests of development, articulation and phonology, receptive and expressive language and a language sample analysis were administered to characterize speech and language skills in the patient. The language sample was obtained in an ecologically valid, free play and conversation context. The language sample was then analyzed and compared to a database of age-matched typically-developing children (n = 33) in terms of intelligibility, morphosyntax, semantics/vocabulary, discourse, verbal facility and percentage of errors at word and utterance levels. The results revealed mild to severe problems in articulation and phonology, receptive and expressive language skills, and morphosyntax (mean length of utterance in morphemes). Future research with larger sample sizes and employing detailed speech and language assessment is needed to delineate the speech and language profile in individuals with the 8p23.1 duplication syndrome, which will guide targeted speech and language interventions.
PubMed: 38671247
DOI: 10.1007/s00787-024-02448-0 -
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Aug 2023This study investigates the performance of adults with cerebrovascular lesion in the right hemisphere (RHL) or left hemisphere (LHL) in word reading (TLPP) and spelling...
This study investigates the performance of adults with cerebrovascular lesion in the right hemisphere (RHL) or left hemisphere (LHL) in word reading (TLPP) and spelling (TEPP) tasks based on the dual-route models. A total of 85 adults were assessed, divided into three groups: 10 with RHL, 15 with LHL, and 60 neurologically healthy ones. The performance of the three groups was compared in terms of the characteristics of the words (regularity, frequency, and length) and pseudowords (length), error types, and psycholinguistic effects. A cluster analysis was performed to investigate the profiles of the reading. The LHL group showed lower scores in reading and spelling tasks of words and pseudowords, as well as a higher frequency of errors. Four LHL cases were found to have an acquired dyslexia profile. This study highlights that the tasks developed in Brazil are in accordance with theoretical models of written language, and the results point to the heterogeneous performance of the cases with acquired dyslexia.
Topics: Adult; Humans; Reading; Dyslexia, Acquired; Dyslexia; Phonetics; Language; Stroke
PubMed: 37022628
DOI: 10.1007/s10936-023-09951-6 -
Behavior Research Methods Mar 2024The Large Database of English Pseudo-compounds (LaDEP) contains nearly 7500 English words which mimic, but do not truly possess, a compound morphemic structure. These...
The Large Database of English Pseudo-compounds (LaDEP) contains nearly 7500 English words which mimic, but do not truly possess, a compound morphemic structure. These pseudo-compounds can be parsed into two free morpheme constituents (e.g., car-pet), but neither constituent functions as a morpheme within the overall word structure. The items were manually coded as pseudo-compounds, further coded for features related to their morphological structure (e.g., presence of multiple affixes, as in ruler-ship), and summarized using common psycholinguistic variables (e.g., length, frequency). This paper also presents an example analysis comparing the lexical decision response times between compound words, pseudo-compound words, and monomorphemic words. Pseudo-compounds and monomorphemic words did not differ in response time, and both groups had slower response times than compound words. This analysis replicates the facilitatory effect of compound constituents during lexical processing, and demonstrates the need to emphasize the pseudo-constituent structure of pseudo-compounds to parse their effects. Further applications of LaDEP include both psycholinguistic studies investigating the nature of human word processing or production and educational or clinical settings evaluating the impact of linguistic features on language learning and impairments. Overall, the items within LaDEP provide a varied and representative sample of the population of English pseudo-compounds which may be used to facilitate further research related to morphological decomposition, lexical access, meaning construction, orthographical influences, and much more.
Topics: Humans; Vocabulary; Language; Psycholinguistics; Linguistics; Language Development; Semantics
PubMed: 37464152
DOI: 10.3758/s13428-023-02170-w -
Behavior Research Methods Oct 2023In this paper, we discuss key characteristics and typical experimental designs of the visual-world paradigm and compare different methods of analysing eye-movement data....
In this paper, we discuss key characteristics and typical experimental designs of the visual-world paradigm and compare different methods of analysing eye-movement data. We discuss the nature of the eye-movement data from a visual-world study and provide data analysis tutorials on ANOVA, t-tests, linear mixed-effects model, growth curve analysis, cluster-based permutation analysis, bootstrapped differences of timeseries, generalised additive modelling, and divergence point analysis to enable psycholinguists to apply each analytical method to their own data. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of each method and offer recommendations about how to select an appropriate method depending on the research question and the experimental design.
Topics: Humans; Eye Movements; Linear Models; Research Design; Cluster Analysis; Psycholinguistics
PubMed: 36396835
DOI: 10.3758/s13428-022-01969-3 -
Biological Psychiatry Jan 2024Carriers of the 1q21.1 distal and 15q11.2 BP1-BP2 copy number variants exhibit regional and global brain differences compared with noncarriers. However, interpreting...
BACKGROUND
Carriers of the 1q21.1 distal and 15q11.2 BP1-BP2 copy number variants exhibit regional and global brain differences compared with noncarriers. However, interpreting regional differences is challenging if a global difference drives the regional brain differences. Intraindividual variability measures can be used to test for regional differences beyond global differences in brain structure.
METHODS
Magnetic resonance imaging data were used to obtain regional brain values for 1q21.1 distal deletion (n = 30) and duplication (n = 27) and 15q11.2 BP1-BP2 deletion (n = 170) and duplication (n = 243) carriers and matched noncarriers (n = 2350). Regional intra-deviation scores, i.e., the standardized difference between an individual's regional difference and global difference, were used to test for regional differences that diverge from the global difference.
RESULTS
For the 1q21.1 distal deletion carriers, cortical surface area for regions in the medial visual cortex, posterior cingulate, and temporal pole differed less and regions in the prefrontal and superior temporal cortex differed more than the global difference in cortical surface area. For the 15q11.2 BP1-BP2 deletion carriers, cortical thickness in regions in the medial visual cortex, auditory cortex, and temporal pole differed less and the prefrontal and somatosensory cortex differed more than the global difference in cortical thickness.
CONCLUSIONS
We find evidence for regional effects beyond differences in global brain measures in 1q21.1 distal and 15q11.2 BP1-BP2 copy number variants. The results provide new insight into brain profiling of the 1q21.1 distal and 15q11.2 BP1-BP2 copy number variants, with the potential to increase understanding of the mechanisms involved in altered neurodevelopment.
Topics: Humans; Chromosome Deletion; Brain; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Abnormalities, Multiple; Chromosomes, Human, Pair 15; DNA Copy Number Variations
PubMed: 37661008
DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2023.08.018 -
Journal of Experimental Psychology.... Dec 2023Typing slows at the middle of the word. The exact nature of the slowdown is still disputed. Research on attentional and motoric effects in typing suggests that the...
Typing slows at the middle of the word. The exact nature of the slowdown is still disputed. Research on attentional and motoric effects in typing suggests that the slowdown is purely a function of chunking of letters in creating the motor output; this approach posits no further influence of linguistic information during output. Research from a psycholinguistic perspective does posit lexical and sublexical effects during output and explains the midword slowing as a function of slowdowns at the boundaries of sublexical units. Across four experiments, using three different typing tasks, we investigated the typing of compound (schoolteacher) and pseudocompound () words. Typing at the midword region is sensitive to the morphological structure of the word and to linguistic properties of the word and its (pseudo)constituents (e.g., linguistic information about and affects , and and affects ). These findings suggest that typing compounds involves a hierarchical plan consisting of two separate motor plans for each constituent executed sequentially such that the output of letters is sensitive to the number of letters within that plan, the position of the sequence in the hierarchy (e.g., first vs. second constituent), and the morphemic structure of the to-be-typed word. Surprisingly, given that pseudocompound lexical representations should not include the pseudoconstituents and given that our tasks in the first three experiments demand full access to the lexical representation before typing, pseudocompound typing is also sensitive to the pseudoconstituent characteristics, suggesting that, during typing, the system attempts to build a compound-like structure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Humans; Floors and Floorcoverings; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Psycholinguistics; Linguistics; Memory
PubMed: 38127499
DOI: 10.1037/xlm0001299 -
Topics in Cognitive Science Jun 2024The necessity for introducing interactionist and parallelism approaches in different branches of cognitive science emerged as a reaction to classical sequential...
The necessity for introducing interactionist and parallelism approaches in different branches of cognitive science emerged as a reaction to classical sequential stage-based models. Functional psychological models that emphasized and explained how different components interact, dynamically producing cognitive and perceptual states, influenced multiple disciplines. Chiefly among them were experimental psycholinguistics and the many applied areas that dealt with humans' ability to process different types of information in different contexts. Understanding how bilinguals represent and process verbal and visual input, how their neural and psychological states facilitate such interactions, and how linguistic and nonlinguistic processing overlap, has now emerged as an important area of multidisciplinary research. In this article, we will review available evidence from different language-speaking groups of bilinguals in India with a focus on situational context. In the discussion, we will address models of language processing in bilinguals within a cognitive psychological approach with a focus on existent models of inhibitory control. The paper's stated goal will be to show that the parallel architecture framework can serve as a theoretical foundation for examining bilingual language processing and its interface with external factors such as social context.
PubMed: 38923214
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12745