Authors: Bradford Condon, Abdullah Almsaeed, Ming Chen...

Tripal community database construction toolkit utilizing the content management system Drupal. Tripal is used to make biological, genetic and genomic data more discoverable, shareable, searchable and standardized. As funding for community-level genomics databases declines, Tripal's open-source codebase provides a means for sites to be built and maintained with a minimal investment in staff and new development. Tripal is ultimately as strong as the community of sites and developers that use it. We present a set of developer tools that will make building and maintaining Tripal 3 sites easier for new and returning users. These tools break down barriers to entry such as setting up developer and testing environments, acquiring and loading test datasets, working with controlled vocabulary terms and writing new Drupal classes.

Topics: Databases, Genetic; Humans; Software; Vocabulary

PubMed: 30295719
DOI: 10.1093/database/bay099

Authors: Fuqi Xu, Nick Juty, Carole Goble...

BACKGROUND

The Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable(FAIR) Principles explicitly require the use of FAIR vocabularies, but what precisely constitutes a FAIR vocabulary remains unclear. Being able to define FAIR vocabularies, identify features of FAIR vocabularies, and provide assessment approaches against the features can guide the development of vocabularies.

RESULTS

We differentiate data, data resources and vocabularies used for FAIR, examine the application of the FAIR Principles to vocabularies, align their requirements with the Open Biomedical Ontologies principles, and propose FAIR Vocabulary Features. We also design assessment approaches for FAIR vocabularies by mapping the FVFs with existing FAIR assessment indicators. Finally, we demonstrate how they can be used for evaluating and improving vocabularies using exemplary biomedical vocabularies.

CONCLUSIONS

Our work proposes features of FAIR vocabularies and corresponding indicators for assessing the FAIR levels of different types of vocabularies, identifies use cases for vocabulary engineers, and guides the evolution of vocabularies.

Topics: Vocabulary, Controlled; Vocabulary; Biological Ontologies

PubMed: 37264430
DOI: 10.1186/s13326-023-00286-8

Authors: Hayoung Kim, Sungmook Choi, Soo-Ok Kweon...

Glosses provide an effective way of fostering second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition. Expanding on previous research, we explored how a vocabulary test announcement prior to reading a glossed text influences the reading behaviors and subsequent vocabulary acquisition of L2 learners. The participants of this study comprised 65 Korean undergraduate students. The participants were assigned to either a vocabulary test announcement (TA) or a no test announcement (NTA) group. Thereafter, the researchers read to the participants a short story containing 16 glossed words displayed in the bottom margin. The students' responses to the reading comprehension test and a battery of vocabulary tests (i.e., form recall, meaning recall, and meaning recognition) were captured immediately and one week after the assessments. The results showed that while processing in-text target words and marginal glosses, no variation in eye-tracking measures (e.g., gaze duration and total reading time) was observed among the TA and NTA groups. In contrast, the TA group spent significantly longer time fixating on bottom-margin target words than the NTA group during eye-tracking measures. Regardless of the testing phase, the vocabulary test results showed that only the form recall scores in the TA group were significantly higher than the NTA group. However, the differences in meaning recall and recognition scores were not significant. Collectively, these results suggest that vocabulary test announcements likely enhance the favorable effects of glossed text, particularly through promoting visual word form acquisition. However, the effects do not strengthen form-meaning associations without compromising L2 learners' reading comprehension.

Topics: Humans; Vocabulary; Language Tests; Eye-Tracking Technology; Language; Mental Recall; Comprehension

PubMed: 36656841
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0280552

Authors: Lisa Fitton, J Marc Goodrich, Lauren Thayer...

PURPOSE

This study explored approaches for measuring vocabulary among bilingual children with varying levels of proficiency in Spanish and English.

METHOD

One hundred fifteen kindergarten and first-grade Spanish-English-speaking children completed measures of vocabulary and sentence repetition in Spanish and English. Scores were derived from their responses to the vocabulary measure: Spanish-only vocabulary, English-only vocabulary, conceptual vocabulary, and total vocabulary. Best language sentence repetition was also obtained. Using both visualization of data and statistical analysis, we tested for potential associations between children's relative language skills in Spanish and English and the scores they received on each of the vocabulary metrics.

RESULTS

Participants' single-language vocabulary scores were linearly associated with their relative language scores. Higher relative Spanish language skills corresponded with higher Spanish-only vocabulary scores, and higher English language skills corresponded with higher English-only vocabulary scores. A quadratic association between children's relative language and their conceptual vocabulary scores was observed. Children with more balanced skills in Spanish and English received lower scores for conceptual vocabulary. No association between total vocabulary and relative language was observed.

CONCLUSIONS

Results revealed evidence of differential test bias for single-language vocabulary scores and conceptual vocabulary scores. Spanish-only vocabulary underestimated knowledge of participants with higher English proficiency, whereas English-only vocabulary underestimated knowledge of participants with higher Spanish proficiency. Conceptual scoring yielded lower values for participants with relatively balanced proficiency in Spanish and English. There is need for further consideration of score and test functioning across the full continuum of bilinguals with dynamic proficiencies in each of their languages.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23796330.

Topics: Child; Humans; Vocabulary; Multilingualism; Hispanic or Latino; Language Tests; Language

PubMed: 37541317
DOI: 10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00573

Review

Authors: Larissa K Samuelson, Bob McMurray

Vocabulary learning is deceptively hard, but toddlers often make it look easy. Prior theories proposed that children's rapid acquisition of words is based on language-specific knowledge and constraints. In contrast, more recent work converges on the view that word learning proceeds via domain-general processes that are tuned to richly structured-not impoverished-input. We argue that new theoretical insights, coupled with methodological tools, have pushed the field toward an appreciation of simple, content-free processes working together as a system to support the acquisition of words. We illustrate this by considering three central phenomena of early language development: referential ambiguity, fast-mapping, and the vocabulary spurt. WIREs Cogn Sci 2017, 8:e1421. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1421 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Topics: Child; Child Language; Child, Preschool; Humans; Infant; Language Development; Learning; Vocabulary

PubMed: 27911490
DOI: 10.1002/wcs.1421

Authors: Serhad Sarica, Jianxi Luo

There are increasing applications of natural language processing techniques for information retrieval, indexing, topic modelling and text classification in engineering contexts. A standard component of such tasks is the removal of stopwords, which are uninformative components of the data. While researchers use readily available stopwords lists that are derived from non-technical resources, the technical jargon of engineering fields contains their own highly frequent and uninformative words and there exists no standard stopwords list for technical language processing applications. Here we address this gap by rigorously identifying generic, insignificant, uninformative stopwords in engineering texts beyond the stopwords in general texts, based on the synthesis of alternative statistical measures such as term frequency, inverse document frequency, and entropy, and curating a stopwords dataset ready for technical language processing applications.

Topics: Humans; Natural Language Processing; Semantics; Task Performance and Analysis; Vocabulary

PubMed: 34351911
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254937

Authors: Milena Bakopoulou, Megan G Lorenz, Samuel H Forbes...

Words direct visual attention in infants, children, and adults, presumably by activating representations of referents that then direct attention to matching stimuli in the visual scene. Novel, unknown, words have also been shown to direct attention, likely via the activation of more general representations of naming events. To examine the critical issue of how novel words and visual attention interact to support word learning we coded frame-by-frame the gaze of 17- to 31-month-old children (n = 66, 38 females) while generalizing novel nouns. We replicate prior findings of more attention to shape when generalizing novel nouns, and a relation to vocabulary development. However, we also find that following a naming event, children who produce fewer nouns take longer to look at the objects they eventually select and make more transitions between objects before making a generalization decision. Children who produce more nouns look to the objects they eventually select more quickly following the naming event and make fewer looking transitions. We discuss these findings in the context of prior proposals regarding children's few-shot category learning, and a developmental cascade of multiple perceptual, cognitive, and word-learning processes that may operate in cases of both typical development and language delay. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Examined how novel words guide visual attention by coding frame-by-frame where children look when asked to generalize novel names. Gaze patterns differed with vocabulary size: children with smaller vocabularies attended to generalization targets more slowly and did more comparison than those with larger vocabularies. Demonstrates a relationship between vocabulary size and attention to object properties during naming. This work has implications for looking-based tests of early cognition, and our understanding of children's few-shot category learning.

Topics: Child; Infant; Adult; Female; Humans; Child, Preschool; Vocabulary; Language; Language Development; Verbal Learning; Cognition

PubMed: 37072679
DOI: 10.1111/desc.13399

Authors: Margaret Kehoe, Diane Poulin-Dubois, Margaret Friend...

PURPOSE

This study investigated within-language and between-language associations between phonological memory, vocabulary, and grammar in French-English ( = 43) and Spanish-English ( = 25) bilingual children at 30, 36, and 48 months. It was predicted that phonological memory would display both within-language and between-language relations to language development and that these relations would be stronger at the youngest age.

METHOD

Bilingual children participated in free-play sessions in both of their languages at each age, from which vocabulary and grammatical information (number of different words and mean length of utterance) was extracted. Vocabulary information was also obtained from parent inventories completed when the children were 30 months and a standardized receptive vocabulary test administered at 36 and 48 months. The children were also administered nonword repetition tests in both of their languages at each age.

RESULTS

Mixed logistic regression indicated that phonological memory was associated with vocabulary and grammar within the same language and phonological memory in the other language. In two of the four statistical models, phonological memory exhibited positive between-language relations, and in one model, it exhibited negative between-language relations to language development. Results also indicated that within-language and between-languages effects remained constant, or between-language associations decreased during the age range studied.

CONCLUSION

Overall, the findings provide some support for cross-language associations between phonological memory and lexical and grammatical skills.

Topics: Child; Child Language; Humans; Language Development; Language Tests; Linguistics; Multilingualism; Vocabulary

PubMed: 34731575
DOI: 10.1044/2021_JSLHR-21-00176

Meta-Analysis Review

Authors: Emma James, M Gareth Gaskell, Anna Weighall...

Sleep plays a role in strengthening new words and integrating them with existing vocabulary knowledge, consistent with neural models of learning in which sleep supports hippocampal transfer to neocortical memory. Such models are based on adult research, yet neural maturation may mean that the mechanisms supporting word learning vary across development. Here, we propose a model in which children may capitalise on larger amounts of slow-wave sleep to support a greater demand on learning and neural reorganisation, whereas adults may benefit from a richer knowledge base to support consolidation. Such an argument is reinforced by the well-reported "Matthew effect", whereby rich vocabulary knowledge is associated with better acquisition of new vocabulary. We present a meta-analysis that supports this association between children's existing vocabulary knowledge and their integration of new words overnight. Whilst multiple mechanisms likely contribute to vocabulary consolidation and neural reorganisation across the lifespan, we propose that contributions of existing knowledge should be rigorously examined in developmental studies. Such research has potential to greatly enhance neural models of learning.

Topics: Humans; Knowledge; Learning; Memory; Sleep; Vocabulary

PubMed: 28274725
DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.01.054

Meta-Analysis Review

Authors: Hayley E Pickering, Jessica L Peters, Sheila G Crewther...

Although attention and early associative learning in preverbal children is predominantly driven by rapid eye-movements in response to moving visual stimuli and sounds/words (e.g., associating the word "bottle" with the object), the literature examining the role of visual attention and memory in ongoing vocabulary development across childhood is limited. Thus, this systematic review and meta-analysis examined the association between visual memory and vocabulary development, including moderators such as age and task selection, in neurotypical children aged 2-to-12 years, from the brain-based perspective of cognitive neuroscience. Visual memory tasks were classified according to the visual characteristics of the stimuli and the neural networks known to preferentially process such information, including consideration of the distinction between the ventral visual stream (processing more static visuo-perceptual details, such as form or colour) and the more dynamic dorsal visual stream (processing spatial temporal action-driven information). Final classifications included spatio-temporal span tasks, visuo-perceptual or spatial concurrent array tasks, and executive judgment tasks. Visuo-perceptual concurrent array tasks, reliant on ventral stream processing, were moderately associated with vocabulary, while tasks measuring spatio-temporal spans, associated with dorsal stream processing, and executive judgment tasks (central executive), showed only weak correlations with vocabulary. These findings have important implications for health professionals and researchers interested in language, as they advocate for the development of more targeted language learning interventions that include specific and relevant aspects of visual processing and memory, such as ventral stream visuo-perceptual details (i.e., shape or colour).

Topics: Child; Humans; Vocabulary; Memory; Visual Perception; Brain; Language

PubMed: 36136174
DOI: 10.1007/s11065-022-09561-4