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Scientific Reports Dec 2020Social and pragmatic difficulties in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are widely recognized, although their underlying neural level processing is not well understood. The...
Social and pragmatic difficulties in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are widely recognized, although their underlying neural level processing is not well understood. The aim of this study was to examine the activity of the brain network components linked to social and pragmatic understanding in order to reveal whether complex socio-pragmatic events evoke differences in brain activity between the ASD and control groups. Nineteen young adults (mean age 23.6 years) with ASD and 19 controls (mean age 22.7 years) were recruited for the study. The stimulus data consisted of video clips showing complex social events that demanded processing of pragmatic communication. In the analysis, the functional magnetic resonance imaging signal responses of the selected brain network components linked to social and pragmatic information processing were compared. Although the processing of the young adults with ASD was similar to that of the control group during the majority of the social scenes, differences between the groups were found in the activity of the social brain network components when the participants were observing situations with concurrent verbal and non-verbal communication events. The results suggest that the ASD group had challenges in processing concurrent multimodal cues in complex pragmatic communication situations.
Topics: Adult; Autism Spectrum Disorder; Brain; Communication; Cues; Female; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Verbal Behavior; Young Adult
PubMed: 33303942
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-78874-2 -
Quarterly Journal of Experimental... Nov 2017The aim of the current study was to investigate subtle characteristics of social perception and interpretation in high-functioning individuals with autism spectrum...
The aim of the current study was to investigate subtle characteristics of social perception and interpretation in high-functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), and to study the relation between watching and interpreting. As a novelty, we used an approach that combined moment-by-moment eye tracking and verbal assessment. Sixteen young adults with ASD and 16 neurotypical control participants watched a video depicting a complex communication situation while their eye movements were tracked. The participants also completed a verbal task with questions related to the pragmatic content of the video. We compared verbal task scores and eye movements between groups, and assessed correlations between task performance and eye movements. Individuals with ASD had more difficulty than the controls in interpreting the video, and during two short moments there were significant group differences in eye movements. Additionally, we found significant correlations between verbal task scores and moment-level eye movement in the ASD group, but not among the controls. We concluded that participants with ASD had slight difficulties in understanding the pragmatic content of the video stimulus and attending to social cues, and that the connection between pragmatic understanding and eye movements was more pronounced for participants with ASD than for neurotypical participants.
Topics: Adult; Autism Spectrum Disorder; Cues; Eye Movements; Female; Follow-Up Studies; Humans; Male; Photic Stimulation; Social Perception; Statistics as Topic; Statistics, Nonparametric; Verbal Behavior; Visual Perception; Young Adult
PubMed: 27616204
DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2016.1233988 -
Scientific Reports Aug 2021The way infants learn language is a highly complex adaptive behavior. This behavior chiefly relies on the ability to extract information from the speech they hear and...
The way infants learn language is a highly complex adaptive behavior. This behavior chiefly relies on the ability to extract information from the speech they hear and combine it with information from the external environment. Most theories assume that this ability critically hinges on the recognition of at least some syntactic structure. Here, we show that child-directed speech allows for semantic inference without relying on explicit structural information. We simulate the process of semantic inference with machine learning applied to large text collections of two different types of speech, child-directed speech versus adult-directed speech. Taking the core meaning of causality as a test case, we find that in child-directed speech causal meaning can be successfully inferred from simple co-occurrences of neighboring words. By contrast, semantic inference in adult-directed speech fundamentally requires additional access to syntactic structure. These results suggest that child-directed speech is ideally shaped for a learner who has not yet mastered syntactic structure.
Topics: Adult; Causality; Child, Preschool; Comprehension; Humans; Infant; Language; Machine Learning; Semantics; Speech; Verbal Behavior
PubMed: 34400656
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-95392-x -
Journal of Experimental Psychology.... Apr 2017Using novel virtual cities, we investigated the influence of verbal and visual strategies on the encoding of navigation-relevant information in a large-scale virtual...
Using novel virtual cities, we investigated the influence of verbal and visual strategies on the encoding of navigation-relevant information in a large-scale virtual environment. In 2 experiments, participants watched videos of routes through 4 virtual cities and were subsequently tested on their memory for observed landmarks and their ability to make judgments regarding the relative directions of the different landmarks along the route. In the first experiment, self-report questionnaires measuring visual and verbal cognitive styles were administered to examine correlations between cognitive styles, landmark recognition, and judgments of relative direction. Results demonstrate a tradeoff in which the verbal cognitive style is more beneficial for recognizing individual landmarks than for judging relative directions between them, whereas the visual cognitive style is more beneficial for judging relative directions than for landmark recognition. In a second experiment, we manipulated the use of verbal and visual strategies by varying task instructions given to separate groups of participants. Results confirm that a verbal strategy benefits landmark memory, whereas a visual strategy benefits judgments of relative direction. The manipulation of strategy by altering task instructions appears to trump individual differences in cognitive style. Taken together, we find that processing different details during route encoding, whether due to individual proclivities (Experiment 1) or task instructions (Experiment 2), results in benefits for different components of navigation-relevant information. These findings also highlight the value of considering multiple sources of individual differences as part of spatial cognition investigations. (PsycINFO Database Record
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Analysis of Variance; Cognition; Environment; Female; Humans; Individuality; Male; Memory; Spatial Navigation; Surveys and Questionnaires; User-Computer Interface; Verbal Behavior; Visual Perception; Young Adult
PubMed: 27668486
DOI: 10.1037/xlm0000314 -
CoDAS 2018Purpose Prepare a list of pseudowords in Brazilian Portuguese to assess the auditory discrimination ability of schoolchildren and investigate the internal consistency of...
Purpose Prepare a list of pseudowords in Brazilian Portuguese to assess the auditory discrimination ability of schoolchildren and investigate the internal consistency of test items and the effect of school grade on discrimination performance. Methods Study participants were 60 schoolchildren (60% female) enrolled in the 3rd (n=14), 4th (n=24) and 5th (n=22) grades of an elementary school in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, aged between eight years and two months and 11 years and eight months (99 to 136 months; mean=120.05; SD=10.26), with average school performance score of 7.21 (minimum 5.0; maximum 10; SD=1.23). Forty-eight minimal pairs of Brazilian Portuguese pseudowords distinguished by a single phoneme were prepared. The participants' responses (whether the elements of the pairs were the same or different) were noted and analyzed. The data were analyzed using the Cronbach's Alpha Coefficient, Spearman's Correlation Coefficient, and Bonferroni Post-hoc Test at significance level of 0.05. Results Internal consistency analysis indicated the deletion of 20 pairs. The 28 items with results showed good internal consistency (α=0.84). The maximum and minimum scores of correct discrimination responses were 34 and 16, respectively (mean=30.79; SD=3.68). No correlation was observed between age, school performance, and discrimination performance, and no difference between school grades was found. Conclusion Most of the items proposed for assessing the auditory discrimination of speech sounds showed good internal consistency in relation to the task. Age and school grade did not improve the auditory discrimination of speech sounds.
Topics: Child; Educational Status; Female; Humans; Male; Speech Discrimination Tests; Speech Disorders; Speech Perception; Students; Verbal Behavior
PubMed: 29791617
DOI: 10.1590/2317-1782/20182017030 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... Oct 2010Emerging evidence from neuroimaging and neuropsychology suggests that human speech comprehension engages two types of neurocognitive processes: a distributed bilateral...
Emerging evidence from neuroimaging and neuropsychology suggests that human speech comprehension engages two types of neurocognitive processes: a distributed bilateral system underpinning general perceptual and cognitive processing, viewed as neurobiologically primary, and a more specialized left hemisphere system supporting key grammatical language functions, likely to be specific to humans. To test these hypotheses directly we covaried increases in the nonlinguistic complexity of spoken words [presence or absence of an embedded stem, e.g., claim (clay)] with variations in their linguistic complexity (presence of inflectional affixes, e.g., play+ed). Nonlinguistic complexity, generated by the on-line competition between the full word and its onset-embedded stem, was found to activate both right and left fronto-temporal brain regions, including bilateral BA45 and -47. Linguistic complexity activated left-lateralized inferior frontal areas only, primarily in BA45. This contrast reflects a differentiation between the functional roles of a bilateral system, which supports the basic mapping from sound to lexical meaning, and a language-specific left-lateralized system that supports core decompositional and combinatorial processes invoked by linguistically complex inputs. These differences can be related to the neurobiological foundations of human language and underline the importance of bihemispheric systems in supporting the dynamic processing and interpretation of spoken inputs.
Topics: Animals; Brain Mapping; Comprehension; Humans; Linguistics; Speech; Speech Perception; Verbal Behavior
PubMed: 20855587
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1000531107 -
PloS One 2018Asking unanticipated questions in investigative interviews can elicit differences in the verbal behaviour of truth-tellers and liars: When faced with unanticipated... (Randomized Controlled Trial)
Randomized Controlled Trial
Asking unanticipated questions in investigative interviews can elicit differences in the verbal behaviour of truth-tellers and liars: When faced with unanticipated questions, liars give less detailed and consistent responses than truth-tellers. Do such differences in verbal behaviour lead to an improvement in the accuracy of interviewers' veracity judgements? Two empirical studies evaluated the efficacy of the unanticipated questions technique. Experiment 1 compared two types of unanticipated questions (questions regarding the planning of a task and questions regarding the specific spatial and temporal details associated with the task), assessing the veracity judgements of interviewers and verbal content of interviewees' responses. Experiment 2 assessed veracity judgements of independent observers. Overall, the results provide little support for the technique. For interviewers, unanticipated questions failed to improve veracity judgement accuracy above chance. Reality monitoring analysis revealed qualitatively distinct information in the responses to the two unanticipated question types, though little distinction between the responses of truth-tellers and liars. Accuracy for observers was greater when judging transcripts of unanticipated questions, and this effect was stronger for spatial and temporal questions than planning questions. The benefits of unanticipated questioning appear limited to post-interview situations. Furthermore, the type of unanticipated question affects both the type of information gathered and the ability to detect deceit.
Topics: Adult; Anticipation, Psychological; Choice Behavior; Deception; Executive Function; Female; Humans; Interviews as Topic; Judgment; Lie Detection; Male; Spatial Navigation; Time Perception; Verbal Behavior; Young Adult
PubMed: 30532180
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0208751 -
Neurologia 2020Patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) perform poorly on semantic verbal fluency (SVF) tasks. Completing these tasks successfully involves multiple cognitive...
INTRODUCTION
Patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) perform poorly on semantic verbal fluency (SVF) tasks. Completing these tasks successfully involves multiple cognitive processes simultaneously. Therefore, quantitative analysis of SVF (number of correct words in one minute), conducted in most studies, has been found to be insufficient to identify cognitive dysfunction underlying SVF difficulties in TLE.
OBJECTIVES
To determine whether a sample of patients with TLE had SVF difficulties compared with a control group (CG), and to identify the cognitive components associated with SVF difficulties using quantitative and qualitative analysis.
METHODS
SVF was evaluated in 25 patients with TLE and 24 healthy controls; the semantic verbal fluency test included 5 semantic categories: animals, fruits, occupations, countries, and verbs. All 5 categories were analysed quantitatively (number of correct words per minute and interval of execution: 0-15, 16-30, 31-45, and 46-60seconds); the categories animals and fruits were also analysed qualitatively (clusters, cluster size, switches, perseverations, and intrusions).
RESULTS
Patients generated fewer words for all categories and intervals and fewer clusters and switches for animals and fruits than the CG (P<.01). Differences between groups were not significant in terms of cluster size and number of intrusions and perseverations (P>.05).
CONCLUSIONS
Our results suggest an association between SVF difficulties in TLE and difficulty activating semantic networks, impaired strategic search, and poor cognitive flexibility. Attention, inhibition, and working memory are preserved in these patients.
Topics: Adult; Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe; Female; Humans; Male; Mexico; Semantics; Task Performance and Analysis; Verbal Behavior
PubMed: 28863828
DOI: 10.1016/j.nrl.2017.07.001 -
PloS One 2019People interpret verbal expressions of probabilities (e.g. 'very likely') in different ways, yet words are commonly preferred to numbers when communicating uncertainty.... (Clinical Trial)
Clinical Trial
People interpret verbal expressions of probabilities (e.g. 'very likely') in different ways, yet words are commonly preferred to numbers when communicating uncertainty. Simply providing numerical translations alongside reports or text containing verbal probabilities should encourage consistency, but these guidelines are often ignored. In an online experiment with 924 participants, we compared four different formats for presenting verbal probabilities with the numerical guidelines used in the US Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) 203 to see whether any could improve the correspondence between the intended meaning and participants' interpretation ('in-context'). This extends previous work in the domain of climate science. The four experimental conditions we tested were: 1. numerical guidelines bracketed in text, e.g. X is very unlikely (05-20%), 2. click to see the full guidelines table in a new window, 3. numerical guidelines appear in a mouse over tool tip, and 4. no guidelines provided (control). Results indicate that correspondence with the ICD 203 standard is substantially improved only when numerical guidelines are bracketed in text. For this condition, average correspondence was 66%, compared with 32% in the control. We also elicited 'context-free' numerical judgements from participants for each of the seven verbal probability expressions contained in ICD 203 (i.e., we asked participants what range of numbers they, personally, would assign to those expressions), and constructed 'evidence-based lexicons' based on two methods from similar research, 'membership functions' and 'peak values', that reflect our large sample's intuitive translations of the terms. Better aligning the intended and assumed meaning of fuzzy words like 'unlikely' can reduce communication problems between the reporter and receiver of probabilistic information. In turn, this can improve decision making under uncertainty.
Topics: Adult; Confusion; Decision Making; Female; Humans; Judgment; Male; Uncertainty; Verbal Behavior
PubMed: 30995242
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213522 -
Psychiatria Polska Aug 2017Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is regarded either within spectrum of atypical parkinsonian syndromes or frontotemporal lobar degeneration. We compared the verbal,... (Comparative Study)
Comparative Study
OBJECTIVES
Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is regarded either within spectrum of atypical parkinsonian syndromes or frontotemporal lobar degeneration. We compared the verbal, visuospatial and procedural learning profiles in patients with PSP and Parkinson's disease (PD). Furthermore, the relationship between executive factors (initiation and inhibition) and learning outcomes was analyzed.
METHODS
Thirty-three patients with the clinical diagnosis of PSP-Richardson's syndrome (PSP-RS), 39 patients with PD and 29 age -and education -matched controls were administered Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), phonemic and semantic fluency tasks, Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT), Visual Learning and Memory Test for Neuropsychological Assessment by Lamberti and Weidlich (Diagnosticum für Cerebralschädigung, DCS), Tower of Toronto (ToT) and two motor sequencing tasks. Patients with PSP-RS and PD were matched in terms of MMSE scores and mood.
RESULTS
Performance on DCS was lower in PSP-RS than in PD. AVLT delayed recall was better in PSP-RS than PD. Motor sequencing task did not differentiate between patients. Scores on AVLT correlated positively with phonemic fluency scores in both PSP-RS and PD. ToT rule violation scores were negatively associated with DCS performance in PSP-RS and PD as well as with AVLT performance in PD.
CONCLUSIONS
Global memory performance is relatively similar in PSP-RS and PD. Executive factors (initiation and inhibition) are closely related to memory performance in PSP-RS and PD. Visuospatial learning impairment in PSP-RS is possibly linked to impulsivity and failure to inhibit automatic responses.
Topics: Adult; Attention; Cognition; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Neuropsychological Tests; Parkinsonian Disorders; Space Perception; Supranuclear Palsy, Progressive; Verbal Behavior; Visual Perception
PubMed: 28987055
DOI: 10.12740/PP/OnlineFirst/62804