Using a high-dimensional graph of semantic space to model relationships among words.

PubMed

Jackson, Alice F; Bolger, Donald J

2014-01-01

The GOLD model (Graph Of Language Distribution) is a network model constructed based on co-occurrence in a large corpus of natural language that may be used to explore what information may be present in a graph-structured model of language, and what information may be extracted through theoretically-driven algorithms as well as standard graph analysis methods. The present study will employ GOLD to examine two types of relationship between words: semantic similarity and associative relatedness. Semantic similarity refers to the degree of overlap in meaning between words, while associative relatedness refers to the degree to which two words occur in the same schematic context. It is expected that a graph structured model of language constructed based on co-occurrence should easily capture associative relatedness, because this type of relationship is thought to be present directly in lexical co-occurrence. However, it is hypothesized that semantic similarity may be extracted from the intersection of the set of first-order connections, because two words that are semantically similar may occupy similar thematic or syntactic roles across contexts and thus would co-occur lexically with the same set of nodes. Two versions the GOLD model that differed in terms of the co-occurence window, bigGOLD at the paragraph level and smallGOLD at the adjacent word level, were directly compared to the performance of a well-established distributional model, Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). The superior performance of the GOLD models (big and small) suggest that a single acquisition and storage mechanism, namely co-occurrence, can account for associative and conceptual relationships between words and is more psychologically plausible than models using singular value decomposition (SVD).

Phonological and Semantic Cues to Learning from Word-Types

PubMed Central

Richtsmeier, Peter

2017-01-01

Word-types represent the primary form of data for many models of phonological learning, and they often predict performance in psycholinguistic tasks. Word-types are often tacitly defined as phonologically unique words. Yet, an explicit test of this definition is lacking, and natural language patterning suggests that word meaning could also act as a cue to word-type status. This possibility was tested in a statistical phonotactic learning experiment in which phonological and semantic properties of word-types varied. During familiarization, the learning targets—word-medial consonant sequences—were instantiated either by four related word-types or by just one word-type (the experimental frequency factor). The expectation was that more word-types would lead participants to generalize the target sequences. Regarding semantic cues, related word-types were either associated with different referents or all with a single referent. Regarding phonological cues, related word-types differed from each other by one, two, or more phonemes. At test, participants rated novel wordforms for their similarity to the familiarization words. When participants heard four related word-types, they gave higher ratings to test words with the same consonant sequences, irrespective of the phonological and semantic manipulations. The results support the existing phonological definition of word-types. PMID:29187914

Using listening difficulty ratings of conditions for speech communication in rooms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sato, Hiroshi; Bradley, John S.; Morimoto, Masayuki

2005-03-01

The use of listening difficulty ratings of speech communication in rooms is explored because, in common situations, word recognition scores do not discriminate well among conditions that are near to acceptable. In particular, the benefits of early reflections of speech sounds on listening difficulty were investigated and compared to the known benefits to word intelligibility scores. Listening tests were used to assess word intelligibility and perceived listening difficulty of speech in simulated sound fields. The experiments were conducted in three types of sound fields with constant levels of ambient noise: only direct sound, direct sound with early reflections, and direct sound with early reflections and reverberation. The results demonstrate that (1) listening difficulty can better discriminate among these conditions than can word recognition scores; (2) added early reflections increase the effective signal-to-noise ratio equivalent to the added energy in the conditions without reverberation; (3) the benefit of early reflections on difficulty scores is greater than expected from the simple increase in early arriving speech energy with reverberation; (4) word intelligibility tests are most appropriate for conditions with signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios less than 0 dBA, and where S/N is between 0 and 15-dBA S/N, listening difficulty is a more appropriate evaluation tool. .

Competition between multiple words for a referent in cross-situational word learning

PubMed Central

Benitez, Viridiana L.; Yurovsky, Daniel; Smith, Linda B.

2016-01-01

Three experiments investigated competition between word-object pairings in a cross-situational word-learning paradigm. Adults were presented with One-Word pairings, where a single word labeled a single object, and Two-Word pairings, where two words labeled a single object. In addition to measuring learning of these two pairing types, we measured competition between words that refer to the same object. When the word-object co-occurrences were presented intermixed in training (Experiment 1), we found evidence for direct competition between words that label the same referent. Separating the two words for an object in time eliminated any evidence for this competition (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 demonstrated that adding a linguistic cue to the second label for a referent led to different competition effects between adults who self-reported different language learning histories, suggesting both distinctiveness and language learning history affect competition. Finally, in all experiments, competition effects were unrelated to participants’ explicit judgments of learning, suggesting that competition reflects the operating characteristics of implicit learning processes. Together, these results demonstrate that the role of competition between overlapping associations in statistical word-referent learning depends on time, the distinctiveness of word-object pairings, and language learning history. PMID:27087742

The language used in describing autobiographical memories prompted by life period visually presented verbal cues, event-specific visually presented verbal cues and short musical clips of popular music.

PubMed

Zator, Krysten; Katz, Albert N

2017-07-01

Here, we examined linguistic differences in the reports of memories produced by three cueing methods. Two groups of young adults were cued visually either by words representing events or popular cultural phenomena that took place when they were 5, 10, or 16 years of age, or by words referencing a general lifetime period word cue directing them to that period in their life. A third group heard 30-second long musical clips of songs popular during the same three time periods. In each condition, participants typed a specific event memory evoked by the cue and these typed memories were subjected to analysis by the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program. Differences in the reports produced indicated that listening to music evoked memories embodied in motor-perceptual systems more so than memories evoked by our word-cueing conditions. Additionally, relative to music cues, lifetime period word cues produced memories with reliably more uses of personal pronouns, past tense terms, and negative emotions. The findings provide evidence for the embodiment of autobiographical memories, and how those differ when the cues emphasise different aspects of the encoded events.

When Meaning Is Not Enough: Distributional and Semantic Cues to Word Categorization in Child Directed Speech.

PubMed

Feijoo, Sara; Muñoz, Carmen; Amadó, Anna; Serrat, Elisabet

2017-01-01

One of the most important tasks in first language development is assigning words to their grammatical category. The Semantic Bootstrapping Hypothesis postulates that, in order to accomplish this task, children are guided by a neat correspondence between semantic and grammatical categories, since nouns typically refer to objects and verbs to actions. It is this correspondence that guides children's initial word categorization. Other approaches, on the other hand, suggest that children might make use of distributional cues and word contexts to accomplish the word categorization task. According to such approaches, the Semantic Bootstrapping assumption offers an important limitation, as it might not be true that all the nouns that children hear refer to specific objects or people. In order to explore that, we carried out two studies based on analyses of children's linguistic input. We analyzed child-directed speech addressed to four children under the age of 2;6, taken from the CHILDES database. The corpora were selected from the Manchester corpus. The corpora from the four selected children contained a total of 10,681 word types and 364,196 word tokens. In our first study, discriminant analyses were performed using semantic cues alone. The results show that many of the nouns found in parents' speech do not relate to specific objects and that semantic information alone might not be sufficient for successful word categorization. Given that there must be an additional source of information which, alongside with semantics, might assist young learners in word categorization, our second study explores the availability of both distributional and semantic cues in child-directed speech. Our results confirm that this combination might yield better results for word categorization. These results are in line with theories that suggest the need for an integration of multiple cues from different sources in language development.

The Metadiscourse Component: Understanding Writing about Reading Directives.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crismore, Avon

One of the most important functions for metadiscourse (reading directives) is to serve as textual relevance cues. Readers must use metadiscourse to determine the specific task or communicative context for understanding the total meaning of a text. Some of the more common types of metadiscourse include (1) hedges--words used to convey a note of…

Matching is not naming: a direct comparison of lexical manipulations in explicit and implicit reading tasks.

PubMed

Vogel, Alecia C; Petersen, Steven E; Schlaggar, Bradley L

2013-10-01

The neurobiological basis of reading is of considerable interest, yet analyzing data from subjects reading words aloud during functional MRI data collection can be difficult. Therefore, many investigators use surrogate tasks such as visual matching or rhyme matching to eliminate the need for spoken output. Use of these tasks has been justified by the presumption of "automatic activation" of reading-related neural processing when a word is viewed. We have tested the efficacy of using a nonreading task for studying "reading effects" by directly comparing blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) activity in subjects performing a visual matching task and an item naming task on words, pseudowords (meaningless but legal letter combinations), and nonwords (meaningless and illegal letter combinations). When compared directly, there is significantly more activity during the naming task in "reading-related" regions such as the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and supramarginal gyrus. More importantly, there are differing effects of lexicality in the tasks. A whole-brain task (matching vs. naming) by string type (word vs. pseudoword vs. nonword) by BOLD timecourse analysis identifies regions showing this three-way interaction, including the left IFG and left angular gyrus (AG). In the majority of the identified regions (including the left IFG and left AG), there is a string type × timecourse interaction in the naming but not the matching task. These results argue that the processing performed in specific regions is contingent on task, even in reading-related regions and is thus nonautomatic. Such differences should be taken into consideration when designing studies intended to investigate reading. Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

What is the link between synaesthesia and sound symbolism?

PubMed Central

Bankieris, Kaitlyn; Simner, Julia

2015-01-01

Sound symbolism is a property of certain words which have a direct link between their phonological form and their semantic meaning. In certain instances, sound symbolism can allow non-native speakers to understand the meanings of etymologically unfamiliar foreign words, although the mechanisms driving this are not well understood. We examined whether sound symbolism might be mediated by the same types of cross-modal processes that typify synaesthetic experiences. Synaesthesia is an inherited condition in which sensory or cognitive stimuli (e.g., sounds, words) cause additional, unusual cross-modal percepts (e.g., sounds trigger colours, words trigger tastes). Synaesthesia may be an exaggeration of normal cross-modal processing, and if so, there may be a link between synaesthesia and the type of cross-modality inherent in sound symbolism. To test this we predicted that synaesthetes would have superior understanding of unfamiliar (sound symbolic) foreign words. In our study, 19 grapheme-colour synaesthetes and 57 non-synaesthete controls were presented with 400 adjectives from 10 unfamiliar languages and were asked to guess the meaning of each word in a two-alternative forced-choice task. Both groups showed superior understanding compared to chance levels, but synaesthetes significantly outperformed controls. This heightened ability suggests that sound symbolism may rely on the types of cross-modal integration that drive synaesthetes’ unusual experiences. It also suggests that synaesthesia endows or co-occurs with heightened multi-modal skills, and that this can arise in domains unrelated to the specific form of synaesthesia. PMID:25498744

Word form Encoding in Chinese Word Naming and Word Typing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Jenn-Yeu; Li, Cheng-Yi

2011-01-01

The process of word form encoding was investigated in primed word naming and word typing with Chinese monosyllabic words. The target words shared or did not share the onset consonants with the prime words. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was 100 ms or 300 ms. Typing required the participants to enter the phonetic letters of the target word,…

Objects but not concepts modulate the size of the attended region.

PubMed

Goodhew, Stephanie C; Edwards, Mark

2017-07-01

Here we investigated the types of stimuli that modulate the size of the attentional spotlight. In particular, it has been previously shown that conceptual cues that either directly refer to or are semantically related to particular spatial locations can shift attention to that location (known as "conceptual cueing"). For example, reading the word sun or joy can shift attention upward whereas the word boot or hostile can shift attention downward. Here, therefore, we tested whether words could modulate the size of the attended area. Across five experiments, we found that words that either directly referred to, or were abstractly associated with, particular sizes (small versus large) did not change the size of the attentional spotlight, whereas the presence of differently sized stimuli did, as evidenced by faster responses to targets when the spotlight is small than when it is large. This suggests that physical but not conceptual inducers can modulate the size of the attentional spotlight. This highlights an important difference between the regulation of spotlight size and shifts of attention, supporting the notion that they are subserved by distinct mechanisms.

Morphological Cues vs. Number of Nominals in Learning Verb Types in Turkish: The Syntactic Bootstrapping Mechanism Revisited

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ural, A. Engin; Yuret, Deniz; Ketrez, F. Nihan; Kocbas, Dilara; Kuntay, Aylin C.

2009-01-01

The syntactic bootstrapping mechanism of verb learning was evaluated against child-directed speech in Turkish, a language with rich morphology, nominal ellipsis and free word order. Machine-learning algorithms were run on transcribed caregiver speech directed to two Turkish learners (one hour every two weeks between 0;9 to 1;10) of different…

Increased Brain Activity to Infant-Directed Speech in 6- and 13-Month-Old Infants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zangl, Renate; Mills, Debra L.

2007-01-01

This study explored the impact of infant-directed speech (IDS) versus adult-directed speech (ADS) on neural activity to familiar and unfamiliar words in 6- and 13-month-old infants. Event-related potentials were recorded while infants listened to familiar words in IDS, familiar words in ADS, unfamiliar words in IDS, and unfamiliar words in ADS.…

A Conjoint Analysis Framework for Evaluating User Preferences in Machine Translation

PubMed Central

Kirchhoff, Katrin; Capurro, Daniel; Turner, Anne M.

2013-01-01

Despite much research on machine translation (MT) evaluation, there is surprisingly little work that directly measures users’ intuitive or emotional preferences regarding different types of MT errors. However, the elicitation and modeling of user preferences is an important prerequisite for research on user adaptation and customization of MT engines. In this paper we explore the use of conjoint analysis as a formal quantitative framework to assess users’ relative preferences for different types of translation errors. We apply our approach to the analysis of MT output from translating public health documents from English into Spanish. Our results indicate that word order errors are clearly the most dispreferred error type, followed by word sense, morphological, and function word errors. The conjoint analysis-based model is able to predict user preferences more accurately than a baseline model that chooses the translation with the fewest errors overall. Additionally we analyze the effect of using a crowd-sourced respondent population versus a sample of domain experts and observe that main preference effects are remarkably stable across the two samples. PMID:24683295

Dissociating mere exposure and repetition priming as a function of word type.

PubMed

Butler, Laurie T; Berry, Dianne C; Helman, Shaun

2004-07-01

The mere exposure effect is defined as enhanced attitude toward a stimulus that has been repeatedly exposed. Repetition priming is defined as facilitated processing of a previously exposed stimulus. We conducted a direct comparison between the two phenomena to test the assumption that the mere exposure effect represents an example of repetition priming. In two experiments, having studied a set of words or nonwords, participants were given a repetition priming task (perceptual identification) or one of two mere exposure (affective liking or preference judgment) tasks. Repetition priming was obtained for both words and nonwords, but only nonwords produced a mere exposure effect. This demonstrates a key boundary for observing the mere exposure effect, one not readily accommodated by a perceptual representation systems (Tulving & Schacter, 1990) account, which assumes that both phenomena should show some sensitivity to nonwords and words.

Unpacking Direct and Indirect Relationships of Short-Term Memory to Word Reading: Evidence From Korean-Speaking Children.

PubMed

Kim, Young-Suk Grace; Cho, Jeung-Ryeul; Park, Soon-Gil

2017-08-01

We examined the relations of short-term memory (STM), metalinguistic awareness (phonological, morphological, and orthographic awareness), and rapid automatized naming (RAN) to word reading in Korean, a language with a relatively transparent orthography. STM, metalinguistic awareness, and RAN have been shown to be important to word reading, but the nature of the relations of STM, metalinguistic awareness, and RAN to word reading has rarely been investigated. Two alternative models were fitted. In the indirect relation model, STM was hypothesized to be indirectly related to word reading via metalinguistic awareness and RAN. In the direct and indirect relations model, STM was hypothesized to be directly and indirectly related to word reading. Results from 207 beginning readers in South Korea showed that STM was directly related to word reading as well as indirectly via metalinguistic awareness and RAN. Although the direct effect of STM was relatively small (.16), the total effect incorporating the indirect effect was substantial (.42). These results suggest that STM is an important, foundational cognitive capacity that underpins metalinguistic awareness and RAN as well as word reading, and further indicate the importance of considering both direct and indirect effects of language and cognitive skills on word reading.

Learning Words from Labeling and Directive Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Callanan, Maureen A.; Akhtar, Nameera; Sussman, Lisa

2014-01-01

Despite the common intuition that labeling may be the best way to teach a new word to a child, systematic testing is needed of the prediction that children learn words better from labeling utterances than from directive utterances. Two experiments compared toddlers' label learning in the context of hearing words used in directive versus labeling…

The time-course of lexical activation in Japanese morphographic word recognition: evidence for a character-driven processing model.

PubMed

Miwa, Koji; Libben, Gary; Dijkstra, Ton; Baayen, Harald

2014-01-01

This lexical decision study with eye tracking of Japanese two-kanji-character words investigated the order in which a whole two-character word and its morphographic constituents are activated in the course of lexical access, the relative contributions of the left and the right characters in lexical decision, the depth to which semantic radicals are processed, and how nonlinguistic factors affect lexical processes. Mixed-effects regression analyses of response times and subgaze durations (i.e., first-pass fixation time spent on each of the two characters) revealed joint contributions of morphographic units at all levels of the linguistic structure with the magnitude and the direction of the lexical effects modulated by readers' locus of attention in a left-to-right preferred processing path. During the early time frame, character effects were larger in magnitude and more robust than radical and whole-word effects, regardless of the font size and the type of nonwords. Extending previous radical-based and character-based models, we propose a task/decision-sensitive character-driven processing model with a level-skipping assumption: Connections from the feature level bypass the lower radical level and link up directly to the higher character level.

The neural basis of illusory gustatory sensations: two rare cases of lexical-gustatory synaesthesia.

PubMed

Jones, C L; Gray, M A; Minati, L; Simner, J; Critchley, H D; Ward, J

2011-09-01

Lexical-gustatory synaesthesia is a rare phenomenon in which the individual experiences flavour sensations when they read, hear, or imagine words. In this study, we provide insight into the neural basis of this form of synaesthesia using functional neuroimaging. Words known to evoke pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant synaesthetic tastes and synaesthetically tasteless words were presented to two lexical-gustatory synaesthetes, during fMRI scanning. Ten non-synaesthetic participants were also scanned on the same list of words. The synaesthetic brain displayed a different pattern of activity to words when compared to the non-synaesthetes, with insula activation related to viewing words that elicited tastes that have an associated emotional valence (i.e., pleasant or unpleasant tastes). The subjective intensity of the synaesthesia was correlated with activity in the medial parietal lobes (precuneus/retrosplenial cortex), which are implicated in polymodal imagery and self-directed thought. This region has also previously been activated in studies of lexical-colour synaesthesia, suggesting its role may not be limited to the type of synaesthesia explored here. ©2011 The British Psychological Society.

The Influence of Child-Directed Speech on Word Learning and Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Foursha-Stevenson, Cassandra; Schembri, Taylor; Nicoladis, Elena; Eriksen, Cody

2017-01-01

This paper describes an investigation into the function of child-directed speech (CDS) across development. In the first experiment, 10-21-month-olds were presented with familiar words in CDS and trained on novel words in CDS or adult-directed speech (ADS). All children preferred the matching display for familiar words. However, only older toddlers…

Word-initial /r/-clusters in Swedish speaking children with typical versus protracted phonological development.

PubMed

Lundeborg Hammarström, Inger

2018-01-01

The present study investigated word-initial (WI) /r/-clusters in Central Swedish-speaking children with and without protracted phonological development (PPD). Data for WI singleton /r/ and singleton and cluster /l/ served as comparisons. Participants were twelve 4-year-olds with PPD and twelve age- and gender-matched typically developing (TD) controls. Native speakers audio-recorded and transcribed 109 target single words using a Swedish phonology test with 12 WI C+/r/-clusters and three WI CC+/r/-clusters. The results showed significantly higher match scores for the TD children, a lower match proportion for the /r/ targets and for singletons compared with clusters, and differences in mismatch patterns between the groups. There were no matches for /r/-cluster targets in the PPD group, with all children except two in that group showing deletions for both /r/-cluster types. The differences in mismatch proportions and types between the PPD group and controls suggests new directions for future clinical practice.

Influence of Lexical Factors on Word-Finding Accuracy, Error Patterns, and Substitution Types

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Newman, Rochelle S.; German, Diane J.; Jagielko, Jennifer R.

2018-01-01

This retrospective, exploratory investigation examined the types of target words that 66 children with/without word-finding difficulties (WFD) had difficulty naming, and the types of errors they made. Words were studied with reference to lexical factors (LFs) that might influence naming performance: word frequency, familiarity, length, phonotactic…

Are You Taking the Fastest Route to the RESTAURANT?

PubMed

Perea, Manuel; Marcet, Ana; Vergara-Martínez, Marta

2018-03-01

Most words in books and digital media are written in lowercase. The primacy of this format has been brought out by different experiments showing that common words are identified faster in lowercase (e.g., molecule) than in uppercase (MOLECULE). However, there are common words that are usually written in uppercase (street signs, billboards; e.g., STOP, PHARMACY). We conducted a lexical decision experiment to examine whether the usual letter-case configuration (uppercase vs. lowercase) of common words modulates word identification times. To this aim, we selected 78 molecule-type words and 78 PHARMACY-type words that were presented in lowercase or uppercase. For molecule-type words, the lowercase format elicited faster responses than the uppercase format, whereas this effect was absent for PHARMACY-type words. This pattern of results suggests that the usual letter configuration of common words plays an important role during visual word processing.

Free recall memory performance after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage.

PubMed

Sheldon, Signy; Macdonald, R Loch; Schweizer, Tom A

2012-03-01

Memory deficits for survivors of aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) are common, however, the nature of these deficits is not well understood. In this study, 24 patients with SAH and matched control participants were asked to study six lists containing words from four different categories. For half the lists, the categories were presented together (organized lists). For the remaining lists, the related words were presented randomly to maximize the use of executive processes such as strategy and organization (unorganized lists). Across adjoining lists, there was overlap in the types of categories given, done to promote intrusions. Compared to control participants, SAH patients recalled a similar number of words for the organized lists, but significantly fewer words for the unorganized lists. SAH patients also reported more intrusions than their matched counterparts. Separating patients into anterior communicating artery ruptures (ACoA) and ruptures in other regions, there was a recall deficit only for the unorganized list for those with ACoA ruptures and deficits across both list types for other rupture locations. These results suggest that memory impairment following SAH is likely driven by impairment in the executive components of memory, particularly for those with ACoA ruptures. Such findings may help direct future cognitive-therapeutic programs.

On the susceptibility of adaptive memory to false memory illusions.

PubMed

Howe, Mark L; Derbish, Mary H

2010-05-01

Previous research has shown that survival-related processing of word lists enhances retention for that material. However, the claim that survival-related memories are more accurate has only been examined when true recall and recognition of neutral material has been measured. In the current experiments, we examined the adaptive memory superiority effect for different types of processing and material, measuring accuracy more directly by comparing true and false recollection rates. Survival-related information and processing was examined using word lists containing backward associates of neutral, negative, and survival-related critical lures and type of processing (pleasantness, moving, survival) was varied using an incidental memory paradigm. Across four experiments, results showed that survival-related words were more susceptible than negative and neutral words to the false memory illusion and that processing information in terms of its relevance to survival independently increased this susceptibility to the false memory illusion. Overall, although survival-related processing and survival-related information resulted in poorer, not more accurate, memory, such inaccuracies may have adaptive significance. These findings are discussed in the context of false memory research and recent theories concerning the importance of survival processing and the nature of adaptive memory. Copyright 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Goal-directed mechanisms that constrain retrieval predict subsequent memory for new "foil" information.

PubMed

Vogelsang, David A; Bonnici, Heidi M; Bergström, Zara M; Ranganath, Charan; Simons, Jon S

2016-08-01

To remember a previous event, it is often helpful to use goal-directed control processes to constrain what comes to mind during retrieval. Behavioral studies have demonstrated that incidental learning of new "foil" words in a recognition test is superior if the participant is trying to remember studied items that were semantically encoded compared to items that were non-semantically encoded. Here, we applied subsequent memory analysis to fMRI data to understand the neural mechanisms underlying the "foil effect". Participants encoded information during deep semantic and shallow non-semantic tasks and were tested in a subsequent blocked memory task to examine how orienting retrieval towards different types of information influences the incidental encoding of new words presented as foils during the memory test phase. To assess memory for foils, participants performed a further surprise old/new recognition test involving foil words that were encountered during the previous memory test blocks as well as completely new words. Subsequent memory effects, distinguishing successful versus unsuccessful incidental encoding of foils, were observed in regions that included the left inferior frontal gyrus and posterior parietal cortex. The left inferior frontal gyrus exhibited disproportionately larger subsequent memory effects for semantic than non-semantic foils, and significant overlap in activity during semantic, but not non-semantic, initial encoding and foil encoding. The results suggest that orienting retrieval towards different types of foils involves re-implementing the neurocognitive processes that were involved during initial encoding. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Literacy in the Workplace: A Whole Language Approach.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carr, Kathryn S.

The personnel director of a local industry requested reading help from Central Missouri State University for several employees. After several meetings, a workplace literacy program that used the whole language approach supplemented by direct instruction in word recognition skills was developed. Two types of tests were written. One, a vocabulary…

[Explicit memory for type font of words in source monitoring and recognition tasks].

PubMed

Hatanaka, Yoshiko; Fujita, Tetsuya

2004-02-01

We investigated whether people can consciously remember type fonts of words by methods of examining explicit memory; source-monitoring and old/new-recognition. We set matched, non-matched, and non-studied conditions between the study and the test words using two kinds of type fonts; Gothic and MARU. After studying words in one way of encoding, semantic or physical, subjects in a source-monitoring task made a three way discrimination between new words, Gothic words, and MARU words (Exp. 1). Subjects in an old/new-recognition task indicated whether test words were previously presented or not (Exp. 2). We compared the source judgments with old/new recognition data. As a result, these data showed conscious recollection for type font of words on the source monitoring task and dissociation between source monitoring and old/new recognition performance.

Word type effects in false recall: concrete, abstract, and emotion word critical lures.

PubMed

Bauer, Lisa M; Olheiser, Erik L; Altarriba, Jeanette; Landi, Nicole

2009-01-01

Previous research has demonstrated that definable qualities of verbal stimuli have implications for memory. For example, the distinction between concrete and abstract words has led to the finding that concrete words have an advantage in memory tasks (i.e., the concreteness effect). However, other word types, such as words that label specific human emotions, may also affect memory processes. This study examined the effects of word type on the production of false memories by using a list-learning false memory paradigm. Participants heard lists of words that were highly associated to nonpresented concrete, abstract, or emotion words (i.e., the critical lures) and then engaged in list recall. Emotion word critical lures were falsely recalled at a significantly higher rate (with the effect carried by the positively valenced critical lures) than concrete and abstract critical lures. These findings suggest that the word type variable has implications for our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie recall and false recall.

Direct comparison of four implicit memory tests.

PubMed

Rajaram, S; Roediger, H L

1993-07-01

Four verbal implicit memory tests, word identification, word stem completion, word fragment completion, and anagram solution, were directly compared in one experiment and were contrasted with free recall. On all implicit tests, priming was greatest from prior visual presentation of words, less (but significant) from auditory presentation, and least from pictorial presentations. Typefont did not affect priming. In free recall, pictures were recalled better than words. The four implicit tests all largely index perceptual (lexical) operations in recognizing words, or visual word form representations.

Sixteen-Month-Old Infants' Segment Words from Infant- and Adult-Directed Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mani, Nivedita; Pätzold, Wiebke

2016-01-01

One of the first challenges facing the young language learner is the task of segmenting words from a natural language speech stream, without prior knowledge of how these words sound. Studies with younger children find that children find it easier to segment words from fluent speech when the words are presented in infant-directed speech, i.e., the…

Anxiety sensitivity: the role of conscious awareness and selective attentional bias to physical threat.

PubMed

Hunt, Caroline; Keogh, Edmund; French, Christopher C

2006-08-01

Selective attentional biases were examined amongst individuals varying in levels of physical anxiety sensitivity. The dot-probe paradigm was used to examine attention towards anxiety symptomatology, social threat and positive words. Stimuli were presented above (unmasked) and below (masked) the level of conscious awareness. High physical anxiety sensitivity was associated with attentional vigilance for anxiety symptomatology words in both unmasked and masked conditions. For positive words, however, those high in anxiety sensitivity were found to avoid such stimuli when they were masked, whereas they exhibited a relative vigilance when unmasked. If the differences between awareness conditions are reliable, then the impact of the automatic vigilance for threat might be modified by conscious attempts to direct attention towards other types of stimuli. (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved

Latest Highlights from our Direct Measurement Video Collection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vonk, M.; Bohacek, P. H.

2014-12-01

Recent advances in technology have made videos much easier to produce, edit, store, transfer, and view. This has spawned an explosion in a production of a wide variety of different types of pedagogical videos. But with the exception of student-made videos (which are often of poor quality) almost all of the educational videos being produced are passive. No matter how compelling the content, students are expected to simply sit and watch them. Because we feel that being engaged and active are necessary components of student learning, we have been working to create a free online library of Direct Measurement Videos (DMV's). These videos are short high-quality videos of real events, shot in a way that allows students to make measurements directly from the video. Instead of handing students a word problem about a car skidding on ice, we actually show them the car skidding on ice. We then ask them to measure the important quantities, make calculations based on those measurements and solve for unknowns. DMV's are more interesting than their word problem equivalents and frequently inspire further questions about the physics of the situation or about the uncertainty of the measurement in ways that word problems almost never do. We feel that it is simply impossible to a video of a roller coaster or a rocket and then argue that word problems are better. In this talk I will highlight some new additions to our DMV collection. This work is supported by NSF TUES award #1245268

Weak evidence for increased motivated forgetting of trauma-related words in dissociated or traumatised individuals in a directed forgetting experiment.

PubMed

Patihis, Lawrence; Place, Patricia J

2018-05-01

Motivated forgetting is the idea that people can block out, or forget, upsetting or traumatic memories, because there is a motivation to do so. Some researchers have cited directed forgetting studies using trauma-related words as evidence for the theory of motivated forgetting of trauma. In the current article subjects used the list method directed forgetting paradigm with both trauma-related words and positive words. After one list of words was presented subjects were directed to forget the words previously learned, and they then received another list of words. Each list was a mix of positive and trauma-related words, and the lists were counterbalanced. Later, subjects recalled as many of the words as they could, including the ones they were told to forget. Based on the theory that motivated forgetting would lead to recall deficits of trauma-related material, we created eight hypotheses. High dissociators, trauma-exposed, sexual trauma-exposed, and high dissociators with trauma-exposure participants were hypothesised to show enhanced forgetting of trauma words. Results indicated only one of eight hypotheses was supported: those higher on dissociation and trauma recalled fewer trauma words in the to-be-forgotten condition, compared to those low on dissociation and trauma. These results provide weak support for differential motivated forgetting.

Does "a picture is worth 1000 words" apply to iconic Chinese words? Relationship of Chinese words and pictures.

PubMed

Lo, Shih-Yu; Yeh, Su-Ling

2018-05-29

The meaning of a picture can be extracted rapidly, but the form-to-meaning relationship is less obvious for printed words. In contrast to English words that follow grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence rule, the iconic nature of Chinese words might predispose them to activate their semantic representations more directly from their orthographies. By using the paradigm of repetition blindness (RB) that taps into the early level of word processing, we examined whether Chinese words activate their semantic representations as directly as pictures do. RB refers to the failure to detect the second occurrence of an item when it is presented twice in temporal proximity. Previous studies showed RB for semantically related pictures, suggesting that pictures activate their semantic representations directly from their shapes and thus two semantically related pictures are represented as repeated. However, this does not apply to English words since no RB was found for English synonyms. In this study, we replicated the semantic RB effect for pictures, and further showed the absence of semantic RB for Chinese synonyms. Based on our findings, it is suggested that Chinese words are processed like English words, which do not activate their semantic representations as directly as pictures do.

Direction of Wording Effects in Balanced Scales.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miller, Timothy R.; Cleary, T. Anne

1993-01-01

The degree to which statistical item selection reduces direction-of-wording effects in balanced affective measures developed from relatively small item pools was investigated with 171 male and 228 female undergraduate and graduate students at 2 U.S. universities. Clearest direction-of-wording effects result from selection of items with high…

Effects of script types of Japanese loan words on priming performance.

PubMed

Hayashi, Chiyoko

2005-04-01

23 female undergraduate students (M=20 yr., 10 mo., SD=15 mo.) were given a word-fragment completion task, containing a study and nonstudy list. In the present study, the effect of orthographic familiarity (e.g., script type) of a test item on a word-fragment completion task was examined. The script types of word stimuli (Katakana and Hiragana) were manipulated between a study and test phase. Priming effect was greater when the script type was the same between a study and test phase than in the cross-script condition. Further, even if the script type of word stimulus was different between study and test phases, a significant priming effect was obtained when the test fragment was orthographically familiar. These results suggested that not only the consistency of the perceptual feature of the stimulus word between study and test phases, but also orthographic familiarity of the stimulus word in the test phase facilitated priming effect in a word-fragment completion test.

The neural circuits recruited for the production of signs and fingerspelled words

PubMed Central

Emmorey, Karen; Mehta, Sonya; McCullough, Stephen; Grabowski, Thomas J.

2016-01-01

Signing differs from typical non-linguistic hand actions because movements are not visually guided, finger movements are complex (particularly for fingerspelling), and signs are not produced as holistic gestures. We used positron emission tomography to investigate the neural circuits involved in the production of American Sign Language (ASL). Different types of signs (one-handed (articulated in neutral space), two-handed (neutral space), and one-handed body-anchored signs) were elicited by asking deaf native signers to produce sign translations of English words. Participants also fingerspelled (one-handed) printed English words. For the baseline task, participants indicated whether a word contained a descending letter. Fingerspelling engaged ipsilateral motor cortex and cerebellar cortex in contrast to both one-handed signs and the descender baseline task, which may reflect greater timing demands and complexity of handshape sequences required for fingerspelling. Greater activation in the visual word form area was also observed for fingerspelled words compared to one-handed signs. Body-anchored signs engaged bilateral superior parietal cortex to a greater extent than the descender baseline task and neutral space signs, reflecting the motor control and proprioceptive monitoring required to direct the hand toward a specific location on the body. Less activation in parts of the motor circuit was observed for two-handed signs compared to one-handed signs, possibly because, for half of the signs, handshape and movement goals were spread across the two limbs. Finally, the conjunction analysis comparing each sign type with the descender baseline task revealed common activation in the supramarginal gyrus bilaterally, which we interpret as reflecting phonological retrieval and encoding processes. PMID:27459390

Categorizing words using 'frequent frames': what cross-linguistic analyses reveal about distributional acquisition strategies.

PubMed

Chemla, Emmanuel; Mintz, Toben H; Bernal, Savita; Christophe, Anne

2009-04-01

Mintz (2003) described a distributional environment called a frame, defined as the co-occurrence of two context words with one intervening target word. Analyses of English child-directed speech showed that words that fell within any frequently occurring frame consistently belonged to the same grammatical category (e.g. noun, verb, adjective, etc.). In this paper, we first generalize this result to French, a language in which the function word system allows patterns that are potentially detrimental to a frame-based analysis procedure. Second, we show that the discontinuity of the chosen environments (i.e. the fact that target words are framed by the context words) is crucial for the mechanism to be efficient. This property might be relevant for any computational approach to grammatical categorization. Finally, we investigate a recursive application of the procedure and observe that the categorization is paradoxically worse when context elements are categories rather than actual lexical items. Item-specificity is thus also a core computational principle for this type of algorithm. Our analysis, along with results from behavioural studies (Gómez, 2002; Gómez and Maye, 2005; Mintz, 2006), provides strong support for frames as a basis for the acquisition of grammatical categories by infants. Discontinuity and item-specificity appear to be crucial features.

Prosodic Differences between Declaratives and Interrogatives in Infant-Directed Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Geffen, Susan; Mintz, Toben H.

2017-01-01

In many languages, declaratives and interrogatives differ in word order properties, and in syntactic organization more broadly. Thus, in order to learn the distinct syntactic properties of the two sentence types, learners must first be able to distinguish them using non-syntactic information. Prosodic information is often assumed to be a useful…

EFL Learner's Awareness of Stress-Moving vs. Neutral Suffixes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shemshadsara, Zahra Ghorbani

2011-01-01

Mastering pronunciation in EFL context, where direct access to native speaker is scarce, is a highly challenging objective for many language students in Iran. Stress as a suprasegmental feature, more specifically, poses its own problems, specially when suffixes are added to words. There are different types of suffixes, two of which are neutral…

Unequal Opportunity and the Chicana

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aguilar, Linda Peralta

1977-01-01

Practically no one has ventured to write about employment discrimination directed at Chicanas, not only from male Anglo employers, but potential Chicano employers as well. I use the word potential because in my own experiences I have found that a Chicana has a better chance of being employed by an Anglo if she seeks any type of administrative…

40 CFR 156.140 - Identification of container types.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... statement such as “See container for recycling [or other descriptive word] information.” must be placed on... directions for use allow a different (concentrated) product to be diluted in the container.” (3) Recycling or reconditioning statement. One of the following statements is required: (i) “Offer for recycling if available...

40 CFR 156.140 - Identification of container types.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... statement such as “See container for recycling [or other descriptive word] information.” must be placed on... directions for use allow a different (concentrated) product to be diluted in the container.” (3) Recycling or reconditioning statement. One of the following statements is required: (i) “Offer for recycling if available...

40 CFR 156.140 - Identification of container types.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... statement such as “See container for recycling [or other descriptive word] information.” must be placed on... directions for use allow a different (concentrated) product to be diluted in the container.” (3) Recycling or reconditioning statement. One of the following statements is required: (i) “Offer for recycling if available...

40 CFR 156.140 - Identification of container types.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... statement such as “See container for recycling [or other descriptive word] information.” must be placed on... directions for use allow a different (concentrated) product to be diluted in the container.” (3) Recycling or reconditioning statement. One of the following statements is required: (i) “Offer for recycling if available...

40 CFR 156.140 - Identification of container types.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... statement such as “See container for recycling [or other descriptive word] information.” must be placed on... directions for use allow a different (concentrated) product to be diluted in the container.” (3) Recycling or reconditioning statement. One of the following statements is required: (i) “Offer for recycling if available...

I see/hear what you mean: semantic activation in visual word recognition depends on perceptual attention.

PubMed

Connell, Louise; Lynott, Dermot

2014-04-01

How does the meaning of a word affect how quickly we can recognize it? Accounts of visual word recognition allow semantic information to facilitate performance but have neglected the role of modality-specific perceptual attention in activating meaning. We predicted that modality-specific semantic information would differentially facilitate lexical decision and reading aloud, depending on how perceptual attention is implicitly directed by each task. Large-scale regression analyses showed the perceptual modalities involved in representing a word's referent concept influence how easily that word is recognized. Both lexical decision and reading-aloud tasks direct attention toward vision, and are faster and more accurate for strongly visual words. Reading aloud additionally directs attention toward audition and is faster and more accurate for strongly auditory words. Furthermore, the overall semantic effects are as large for reading aloud as lexical decision and are separable from age-of-acquisition effects. These findings suggest that implicitly directing perceptual attention toward a particular modality facilitates representing modality-specific perceptual information in the meaning of a word, which in turn contributes to the lexical decision or reading-aloud response.

Rotation Reveals the Importance of Configural Cues in Handwritten Word Perception

PubMed Central

Barnhart, Anthony S.; Goldinger, Stephen D.

2013-01-01

A dramatic perceptual asymmetry occurs when handwritten words are rotated 90° in either direction. Those rotated in a direction consistent with their natural tilt (typically clockwise) become much more difficult to recognize, relative to those rotated in the opposite direction. In Experiment 1, we compared computer-printed and handwritten words, all equated for degrees of leftward and rightward tilt, and verified the phenomenon: The effect of rotation was far larger for cursive words, especially when rotated in a tilt-consistent direction. In Experiment 2, we replicated this pattern with all items presented in visual noise. In both experiments, word frequency effects were larger for computer-printed words and did not interact with rotation. The results suggest that handwritten word perception requires greater configural processing, relative to computer print, because handwritten letters are variable and ambiguous. When words are rotated, configural processing suffers, particularly when rotation exaggerates natural tilt. Our account is similar to theories of the “Thatcher Illusion,” wherein face inversion disrupts holistic processing. Together, the findings suggest that configural, word-level processing automatically increases when people read handwriting, as letter-level processing becomes less reliable. PMID:23589201

Recall and response time norms for English-Swahili word pairs and facts about Kenya.

PubMed

Bangert, Ashley S; Heydarian, Nazanin M

2017-02-01

In the vast literature exploring learning, many studies have used paired-associate stimuli, despite the fact that real-world learning involves many different types of information. One of the most popular materials used in studies of learning has been a set of Swahili-English word pairs for which Nelson and Dunlosky (Memory 2; 325-335, 1994) published recall norms two decades ago. These norms involved use of the Swahili words as cues to facilitate recall of the English translation. It is unclear whether cueing in the opposite direction (from English to Swahili) would lead to symmetric recall performance. Bilingual research has suggested that translation in these two different directions involves asymmetric links that may differentially impact recall performance, depending on which language is used as the cue (Kroll & Stewart, Journal of Memory and Language 33; 149-174,1994). Moreover, the norms for these and many other learning stimuli have typically been gathered from college students. In the present study, we report recall accuracy and response time norms for Swahili words when they are cued by their English translations. We also report norms for a companion set of fact stimuli that may be used along with the Swahili-English word pairs to assess learning on a broader scale across different stimulus materials. Data were collected using Amazon's Mechanical Turk to establish a sample that was diverse in both age and ethnicity. These different, but related, stimulus sets will be applicable to studies of learning, metacognition, and memory in diverse samples.

Theta-band Oscillations in the Middle Temporal Gyrus Reflect Novel Word Consolidation.

PubMed

Bakker-Marshall, Iske; Takashima, Atsuko; Schoffelen, Jan-Mathijs; van Hell, Janet G; Janzen, Gabriele; McQueen, James M

2018-05-01

Like many other types of memory formation, novel word learning benefits from an offline consolidation period after the initial encoding phase. A previous EEG study has shown that retrieval of novel words elicited more word-like-induced electrophysiological brain activity in the theta band after consolidation [Bakker, I., Takashima, A., van Hell, J. G., Janzen, G., & McQueen, J. M. Changes in theta and beta oscillations as signatures of novel word consolidation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27, 1286-1297, 2015]. This suggests that theta-band oscillations play a role in lexicalization, but it has not been demonstrated that this effect is directly caused by the formation of lexical representations. This study used magnetoencephalography to localize the theta consolidation effect to the left posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG), a region known to be involved in lexical storage. Both untrained novel words and words learned immediately before test elicited lower theta power during retrieval than existing words in this region. After a 24-hr consolidation period, the difference between novel and existing words decreased significantly, most strongly in the left pMTG. The magnitude of the decrease after consolidation correlated with an increase in behavioral competition effects between novel words and existing words with similar spelling, reflecting functional integration into the mental lexicon. These results thus provide new evidence that consolidation aids the development of lexical representations mediated by the left pMTG. Theta synchronization may enable lexical access by facilitating the simultaneous activation of distributed semantic, phonological, and orthographic representations that are bound together in the pMTG.

Behavioral and Neural Representations of Spatial Directions across Words, Schemas, and Images.

PubMed

Weisberg, Steven M; Marchette, Steven A; Chatterjee, Anjan

2018-05-23

Modern spatial navigation requires fluency with multiple representational formats, including visual scenes, signs, and words. These formats convey different information. Visual scenes are rich and specific but contain extraneous details. Arrows, as an example of signs, are schematic representations in which the extraneous details are eliminated, but analog spatial properties are preserved. Words eliminate all spatial information and convey spatial directions in a purely abstract form. How does the human brain compute spatial directions within and across these formats? To investigate this question, we conducted two experiments on men and women: a behavioral study that was preregistered and a neuroimaging study using multivoxel pattern analysis of fMRI data to uncover similarities and differences among representational formats. Participants in the behavioral study viewed spatial directions presented as images, schemas, or words (e.g., "left"), and responded to each trial, indicating whether the spatial direction was the same or different as the one viewed previously. They responded more quickly to schemas and words than images, despite the visual complexity of stimuli being matched. Participants in the fMRI study performed the same task but responded only to occasional catch trials. Spatial directions in images were decodable in the intraparietal sulcus bilaterally but were not in schemas and words. Spatial directions were also decodable between all three formats. These results suggest that intraparietal sulcus plays a role in calculating spatial directions in visual scenes, but this neural circuitry may be bypassed when the spatial directions are presented as schemas or words. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Human navigators encounter spatial directions in various formats: words ("turn left"), schematic signs (an arrow showing a left turn), and visual scenes (a road turning left). The brain must transform these spatial directions into a plan for action. Here, we investigate similarities and differences between neural representations of these formats. We found that bilateral intraparietal sulci represent spatial directions in visual scenes and across the three formats. We also found that participants respond quickest to schemas, then words, then images, suggesting that spatial directions in abstract formats are easier to interpret than concrete formats. These results support a model of spatial direction interpretation in which spatial directions are either computed for real world action or computed for efficient visual comparison. Copyright © 2018 the authors 0270-6474/18/384996-12$15.00/0.

Symbol Grounding Without Direct Experience: Do Words Inherit Sensorimotor Activation From Purely Linguistic Context?

PubMed

Günther, Fritz; Dudschig, Carolin; Kaup, Barbara

2018-05-01

Theories of embodied cognition assume that concepts are grounded in non-linguistic, sensorimotor experience. In support of this assumption, previous studies have shown that upwards response movements are faster than downwards movements after participants have been presented with words whose referents are typically located in the upper vertical space (and vice versa for downwards responses). This is taken as evidence that processing these words reactivates sensorimotor experiential traces. This congruency effect was also found for novel words, after participants learned these words as labels for novel objects that they encountered either in their upper or lower visual field. While this indicates that direct experience with a word's referent is sufficient to evoke said congruency effects, the present study investigates whether this direct experience is also a necessary condition. To this end, we conducted five experiments in which participants learned novel words from purely linguistic input: Novel words were presented in pairs with real up- or down-words (Experiment 1); they were presented in natural sentences where they replaced these real words (Experiment 2); they were presented as new labels for these real words (Experiment 3); and they were presented as labels for novel combined concepts based on these real words (Experiment 4 and 5). In all five experiments, we did not find any congruency effects elicited by the novel words; however, participants were always able to make correct explicit judgements about the vertical dimension associated to the novel words. These results suggest that direct experience is necessary for reactivating experiential traces, but this reactivation is not a necessary condition for understanding (in the sense of storing and accessing) the corresponding aspects of word meaning. Copyright © 2017 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Improves Audioverbal Memory in Stroke Patients

PubMed Central

Kazuta, Toshinari; Takeda, Kotaro; Osu, Rieko; Tanaka, Satoshi; Oishi, Ayako; Kondo, Kunitsugu; Liu, Meigen

2017-01-01

Objective The aim of this study was to investigate whether anodal transcranial direct current stimulation over the left temporoparietal area improved audioverbal memory performance in stroke patients. Design Twelve stroke patients with audioverbal memory impairment participated in a single-masked, crossover, and sham-controlled experiment. The anodal or sham transcranial direct current stimulation was applied during the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, which evaluates the ability to recall a list of 15 heard words over five trials. The number of correctly recalled words was compared between the anodal and sham conditions and the influence of transcranial direct current stimulation on serial position effect of the 15 words was also examined. Results The increase in the number of correctly recalled words from the first to the fifth trial was significantly greater in the anodal condition than in the sham condition (P < 0.01). There was a significant difference (P < 0.01) between the anodal and sham conditions in the number of correctly recalled words within the first five words (primacy region) over the second to fifth trial trials, but not in the middle (next five words) or recency (last five words) regions. Conclusions Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation over the left temporoparietal area improved audioverbal memory performance and induced the primacy effect in stroke patients. PMID:28085735

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Improves Audioverbal Memory in Stroke Patients.

PubMed

Kazuta, Toshinari; Takeda, Kotaro; Osu, Rieko; Tanaka, Satoshi; Oishi, Ayako; Kondo, Kunitsugu; Liu, Meigen

2017-08-01

The aim of this study was to investigate whether anodal transcranial direct current stimulation over the left temporoparietal area improved audioverbal memory performance in stroke patients. Twelve stroke patients with audioverbal memory impairment participated in a single-masked, crossover, and sham-controlled experiment. The anodal or sham transcranial direct current stimulation was applied during the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, which evaluates the ability to recall a list of 15 heard words over five trials. The number of correctly recalled words was compared between the anodal and sham conditions and the influence of transcranial direct current stimulation on serial position effect of the 15 words was also examined. The increase in the number of correctly recalled words from the first to the fifth trial was significantly greater in the anodal condition than in the sham condition (P < 0.01). There was a significant difference (P < 0.01) between the anodal and sham conditions in the number of correctly recalled words within the first five words (primacy region) over the second to fifth trial trials, but not in the middle (next five words) or recency (last five words) regions. Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation over the left temporoparietal area improved audioverbal memory performance and induced the primacy effect in stroke patients.

Young readers' use of phonological information: phonological awareness, memory, and comprehension.

PubMed

Gray, Audra; McCutchen, Deborah

2006-01-01

In this study, we explored the relationship between beginning readers' phonological awareness and other aspects of phonological processing, specifically as manifested in short-term memory and comprehension tasks. The theoretical questions underlying the study were (a) what roles phonological processes play in children's beginning reading, from word identification through sentence comprehension, and (b) whether those roles are sufficiently related that potential difficulties at one level directly affect processing at other levels. Phonologically induced effects were observed for word-list memory and for sentence judgments for both novice readers (at the end of kindergarten) and relatively more experienced readers (end of Grades 1 and 2). For both age groups, correlational analyses revealed relationships among phonological awareness, phonological processing in list memory, and word reading. However, phonological processing in sentence comprehension was not related to other types of phonological processing. These results indicate that although phonology plays a role during comprehension, phonological processing may not be as limiting a factor in comprehension as in word reading.

The Role of Gaze Direction and Mutual Exclusivity in Guiding 24-Month-Olds' Word Mappings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Graham, Susan A.; Nilsen, Elizabeth S.; Collins, Sarah; Olineck, Kara

2010-01-01

In these studies, we examined how a default assumption about word meaning, the mutual exclusivity assumption and an intentional cue, gaze direction, interacted to guide 24-month-olds' object-word mappings. In Expt 1, when the experimenter's gaze was consistent with the mutual exclusivity assumption, novel word mappings were facilitated. When the…

Phonotactic Probability Effects in Children Who Stutter

PubMed Central

Anderson, Julie D.; Byrd, Courtney T.

2008-01-01

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of phonotactic probability, the frequency of different sound segments and segment sequences, on the overall fluency with which words are produced by preschool children who stutter (CWS), as well as to determine whether it has an effect on the type of stuttered disfluency produced. Method A 500+ word language sample was obtained from 19 CWS. Each stuttered word was randomly paired with a fluently produced word that closely matched it in grammatical class, word length, familiarity, word and neighborhood frequency, and neighborhood density. Phonotactic probability values were obtained for the stuttered and fluent words from an online database. Results Phonotactic probability did not have a significant influence on the overall susceptibility of words to stuttering, but it did impact the type of stuttered disfluency produced. In specific, single-syllable word repetitions were significantly lower in phonotactic probability than fluently produced words, as well as part-word repetitions and sound prolongations. Conclusions In general, the differential impact of phonotactic probability on the type of stuttering-like disfluency produced by young CWS provides some support for the notion that different disfluency types may originate in the disruption of different levels of processing. PMID:18658056

Mahlzeit! (Enjoy Your Meal!) German Table Manners, Menus, and Eating Establishments.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Singer, Debbie

A series of short texts focus on German eating habits and types of eating establishments. Vocabulary is glossed in the margin and each text is followed by comprehension questions. Menus from a restaurant, an inn, and a fast-food restaurant; vocabulary exercises; a word search puzzle and its solution; and directions in English for conversational…

Costs and benefits in item-method directed forgetting: differential effects of encoding and retrieval.

PubMed

Lee, Yuh-Shiow

2013-01-01

This study examined how encoding and retrieval factors affected directed forgetting costs and benefits in an item-method procedure. Experiment 1 used a typical item-method procedure and revealed a levels-of-processing effect in overall recall. However, the deep encoding condition showed a smaller directed forgetting effect than the shallow encoding conditions. More importantly, "remember" (R) words were selectively rehearsed as indicated by greater recall from the primacy portion of the list and more apt to be recalled before "forget" (F) words. Experiment 2 showed that a deep encoding operation reduced directed forgetting costs and that directed forgetting benefits occurred only when R words were recalled before F words. These findings supported the hypotheses that encoding manipulation affected directed forgetting costs and that directed forgetting benefits were associated with output order bias. Results were discussed in terms of mechanisms that produce item-method directed forgetting.

Exploring a recognition-induced recognition decrement

PubMed Central

Dopkins, Stephen; Ngo, Catherine Trinh; Sargent, Jesse

2007-01-01

Four experiments explored a recognition decrement that is associated with the recognition of a word from a short list. The stimulus material for demonstrating the phenomenon was a list of words of different syntactic types. A word from the list was recognized less well following a decision that a word of the same type had occurred in the list than following a decision that such a word had not occurred in the list. A recognition decrement did not occur for a word of a given type following a positive recognition decision to a word of a different type. A recognition decrement did not occur when the list consisted exclusively of nouns. It was concluded that the phenomenon may reflect a criterion shift but probably does not reflect a list strength effect, suppression, or familiarity attribution consequent to a perceived discrepancy between actual and expected fluency. PMID:17063915

The Function of Repeating: The Relation between Word Class and Repetition Type in Developmental Stuttering

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Buhr, Anthony P.; Jones, Robin M.; Conture, Edward G.; Kelly, Ellen M.

2016-01-01

Background: It is already known that preschool-age children who stutter (CWS) tend to stutter on function words at the beginning of sentences. It is also known that phonological errors potentially resulting in part-word repetitions tend to occur on content words. However, the precise relation between word class and repetition type in preschool-age…

Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder exhibit altered emotional processing and attentional control during an emotional Stroop task.

PubMed

Khanna, M M; Badura-Brack, A S; McDermott, T J; Embury, C M; Wiesman, A I; Shepherd, A; Ryan, T J; Heinrichs-Graham, E; Wilson, T W

2017-08-01

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is often associated with attention allocation and emotional regulation difficulties, but the brain dynamics underlying these deficits are unknown. The emotional Stroop task (EST) is an ideal means to monitor these difficulties, because participants are asked to attend to non-emotional aspects of the stimuli. In this study, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) and the EST to monitor attention allocation and emotional regulation during the processing of emotionally charged stimuli in combat veterans with and without PTSD. A total of 31 veterans with PTSD and 20 without PTSD performed the EST during MEG. Three categories of stimuli were used, including combat-related, generally threatening and neutral words. MEG data were imaged in the time-frequency domain and the network dynamics were probed for differences in processing threatening and non-threatening words. Behaviorally, veterans with PTSD were significantly slower in responding to combat-related relative to neutral and generally threatening words. Veterans without PTSD exhibited no significant differences in responding to the three different word types. Neurophysiologically, we found a significant three-way interaction between group, word type and time period across multiple brain regions. Follow-up testing indicated stronger theta-frequency (4-8 Hz) responses in the right ventral prefrontal (0.4-0.8 s) and superior temporal cortices (0.6-0.8 s) of veterans without PTSD compared with those with PTSD during the processing of combat-related words. Our data indicated that veterans with PTSD exhibited deficits in attention allocation and emotional regulation when processing trauma cues, while those without PTSD were able to regulate emotion by directing attention away from threat.

HIT: a new approach for hiding multimedia information in text

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

El-Kwae, Essam A.; Cheng, Li

2002-04-01

A new technique for hiding multimedia data in text, called the Hiding in Text (HIT) technique, is introduced. The HIT technique can transform any type of media represented by a long binary string into innocuous text that follows correct grammatical rules. This technique divides English words into types where each word can appear in any number of types. For each type, there is a dictionary, which maps words to binary codes. Marker types are special types whose words do not repeat in any other type. Each generated sentence must include at least one word from the marker type. In the hiding phase, a binary string is input to the HIT encoding algorithm, which then selects sentence templates at random. The output is a set of English sentences according to the selected templates and the dictionaries of types. In the retrieving phase, the HIT technique uses the position of the marker word to identify the template used to build each sentence. The proposed technique greatly improves the efficiency and the security features of previous solutions. Examples for hiding text and image information in a cover text are given to illustrate the HIT technique.

Phonological neighborhood and word frequency effects in the stuttered disfluencies of children who stutter.

PubMed

Anderson, Julie D

2007-02-01

The purpose of this study was to examine (a) the role of neighborhood density (number of words that are phonologically similar to a target word) and frequency variables on the stuttering-like disfluencies of preschool children who stutter, and (b) whether these variables have an effect on the type of stuttering-like disfluency produced. A 500+ word speech sample was obtained from each participant (N = 15). Each stuttered word was randomly paired with the firstly produced word that closely matched it in grammatical class, familiarity, and number of syllables/phonemes. Frequency, neighborhood density, and neighborhood frequency values were obtained for the stuttered and fluent words from an online database. Findings revealed that stuttered words were lower in frequency and neighborhood frequency than fluent words. Words containing part-word repetitions and sound prolongations were also lower in frequency and/or neighborhood frequency than fluent words, but these frequency variables did not have an effect on single-syllable word repetitions. Neighborhood density failed to influence the susceptibility of words to stuttering, as well as the type of stuttering-like disfluency produced. In general, findings suggest that neighborhood and frequency variables not only influence the fluency with which words are produced in speech, but also have an impact on the type of stuttering-like disfluency produced.

Control of Auditory Attention in Children With Specific Language Impairment.

PubMed

Victorino, Kristen R; Schwartz, Richard G

2015-08-01

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) appear to demonstrate deficits in attention and its control. Selective attention involves the cognitive control of attention directed toward a relevant stimulus and simultaneous inhibition of attention toward irrelevant stimuli. The current study examined attention control during a cross-modal word recognition task. Twenty participants with SLI (ages 9-12 years) and 20 age-matched peers with typical language development (TLD) listened to words through headphones and were instructed to attend to the words in 1 ear while ignoring the words in the other ear. They were simultaneously presented with pictures and asked to make a lexical decision about whether the pictures and auditory words were the same or different. Accuracy and reaction time were measured in 5 conditions, in which the stimulus in the unattended channel was manipulated. The groups performed with similar accuracy. Compared with their peers with TLD, children with SLI had slower reaction times overall and different within-group patterns of performance by condition. Children with TLD showed efficient inhibitory control in conditions that required active suppression of competing stimuli. Participants with SLI had difficulty exerting control over their auditory attention in all conditions, with particular difficulty inhibiting distractors of all types.

Emotional arousal enhances word repetition priming

PubMed Central

Thomas, Laura A.; LaBar, Kevin S.

2012-01-01

Three experiments were conducted to determine if emotional content increases repetition priming magnitude. In the study phase of Experiment 1, participants rated high-arousing negative (taboo) words and neutral words for concreteness. In the test phase, they made lexical decision judgements for the studied words intermixed with novel words (half taboo, half neutral) and pseudowords. In Experiment 2, low-arousing negative (LAN) words were substituted for the taboo words, and in Experiment 3 all three word types were used. Results showed significant priming in all experiments, as indicated by faster reaction times for studied words than for novel words. A priming × emotion interaction was found in Experiments 1 and 3, with greater priming for taboo relative to neutral words. The LAN words in Experiments 2 and 3 showed no difference in priming magnitude relative to the other word types. These results show selective enhancement of word repetition priming by emotional arousal. PMID:26321783

Visual thinking in action: visualizations as used on whiteboards.

PubMed

Walny, Jagoda; Carpendale, Sheelagh; Riche, Nathalie Henry; Venolia, Gina; Fawcett, Philip

2011-12-01

While it is still most common for information visualization researchers to develop new visualizations from a data- or taskdriven perspective, there is growing interest in understanding the types of visualizations people create by themselves for personal use. As part of this recent direction, we have studied a large collection of whiteboards in a research institution, where people make active use of combinations of words, diagrams and various types of visuals to help them further their thought processes. Our goal is to arrive at a better understanding of the nature of visuals that are created spontaneously during brainstorming, thinking, communicating, and general problem solving on whiteboards. We use the qualitative approaches of open coding, interviewing, and affinity diagramming to explore the use of recognizable and novel visuals, and the interplay between visualization and diagrammatic elements with words, numbers and labels. We discuss the potential implications of our findings on information visualization design. © 2011 IEEE

Mechanisms of attention in reading parafoveal words: a cross-linguistic study in children.

PubMed

Siéroff, Eric; Dahmen, Riadh; Fagard, Jacqueline

2012-05-01

The right visual field superiority (RVFS) for words may be explained by the cerebral lateralization for language, the scanning habits in relation to script direction, and spatial attention. The present study explored the influence of spatial attention on the RVFS in relation to scanning habits in school-age children. French second- and fourth-graders identified briefly presented French parafoveal words. Tunisian second- and fourth-graders identified Arabic words, and Tunisian fourth-graders identified French words. The distribution of spatial attention was evaluated by using a distracter in the visual field opposite the word. The results of the correct identification score showed that reading direction had only a partial effect on the identification of parafoveal words and the distribution of attention, with a clear RVFS and a larger effect of the distracter in the left visual field in French children reading French words, and an absence of asymmetry when Tunisian children read Arabic words. Fourth-grade Tunisian children also showed an RVFS when reading French words without an asymmetric distribution of attention, suggesting that their native language may have partially influenced reading strategies in the newly learned language. However, the mode of letter processing, evaluated by a qualitative error score, was only influenced by reading direction, with more sequential processing in the visual field where reading "begins." The distribution of attention when reading parafoveal words is better explained by the interaction between left hemisphere activation and strategies related to reading direction. We discuss these results in light of an attentional theory that dissociates selection and preparation.

RDBMS Based Lexical Resource for Indian Heritage: The Case of Mahābhārata

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mani, Diwakar

The paper describes a lexical resource in the form of a relational database based indexing system for Sanskrit documents - Mahābhārata (MBh) as an example. The system is available online on http://sanskrit.jnu.ac.in/mb with input and output in Devanāgarī Unicode, using technologies such as RDBMS and Java Servlet. The system works as an interactive and multi-dimensional indexing system with search facility for MBh and has potentials for use as a generic system for all Sanskrit texts of similar structure. Currently, the system allows three types of searching facilities- 'Direct Search', 'Alphabetical Search' and 'Search by Classes'. The input triggers an indexing process by which a temporary index is created for the search string, and then clicking on any indexed word displays the details for that word and also a facility to search that word in some other online lexical resources.

Positivity effect in source attributions of arousal-matched emotional and non-emotional words during item-based directed forgetting.

PubMed

Gallant, Sara N; Yang, Lixia

2014-01-01

Consistent with their emphasis on emotional goals, older adults often exhibit a positivity bias in attention and memory relative to their young counterparts (i.e., a positivity effect). The current study sought to determine how this age-related positivity effect would impact intentional forgetting of emotional words, a process critical to efficient operation of memory. Using an item-based directed forgetting task, 36 young and 36 older adults studied a series of arousal-equivalent words that varied in valence (i.e., positive, negative, and neutral). Each word was followed by a cue to either remember or forget the word. A subsequent "tagging" recognition task required classification of items as to-be-remembered (TBR), to-be-forgotten (TBF), or new as a measure of directed forgetting and source attribution in participants' memory. Neither young nor older adults' intentional forgetting was affected by the valence of words. A goal-consistent valence effect did, however, emerge in older adults' source attribution performance. Specifically, older adults assigned more TBR-cues to positive words and more TBF-cues to negative words. Results are discussed in light of existing literature on emotion and directed forgetting as well as the socioemotional selectivity theory underlying the age-related positivity effect.

Positivity effect in source attributions of arousal-matched emotional and non-emotional words during item-based directed forgetting

PubMed Central

Gallant, Sara N.; Yang, Lixia

2014-01-01

Consistent with their emphasis on emotional goals, older adults often exhibit a positivity bias in attention and memory relative to their young counterparts (i.e., a positivity effect). The current study sought to determine how this age-related positivity effect would impact intentional forgetting of emotional words, a process critical to efficient operation of memory. Using an item-based directed forgetting task, 36 young and 36 older adults studied a series of arousal-equivalent words that varied in valence (i.e., positive, negative, and neutral). Each word was followed by a cue to either remember or forget the word. A subsequent “tagging” recognition task required classification of items as to-be-remembered (TBR), to-be-forgotten (TBF), or new as a measure of directed forgetting and source attribution in participants' memory. Neither young nor older adults' intentional forgetting was affected by the valence of words. A goal-consistent valence effect did, however, emerge in older adults' source attribution performance. Specifically, older adults assigned more TBR-cues to positive words and more TBF-cues to negative words. Results are discussed in light of existing literature on emotion and directed forgetting as well as the socioemotional selectivity theory underlying the age-related positivity effect. PMID:25477850

Reading vocabulary in children with and without hearing loss: the roles of task and word type.

PubMed

Coppens, Karien M; Tellings, Agnes; Verhoeven, Ludo; Schreuder, Robert

2013-04-01

To address the problem of low reading comprehension scores among children with hearing impairment, it is necessary to have a better understanding of their reading vocabulary. In this study, the authors investigated whether task and word type differentiate the reading vocabulary knowledge of children with and without severe hearing loss. Seventy-two children with hearing loss and 72 children with normal hearing performed a lexical and a use decision task. Both tasks contained the same 180 words divided over 7 clusters, each cluster containing words with a similar pattern of scores on 8 word properties (word class, frequency, morphological family size, length, age of acquisition, mode of acquisition, imageability, and familiarity). Whereas the children with normal hearing scored better on the 2 tasks than the children with hearing loss, the size of the difference varied depending on the type of task and word. Performance differences between the 2 groups increased as words and tasks became more complex. Despite delays, children with hearing loss showed a similar pattern of vocabulary acquisition as their peers with normal hearing. For the most precise assessment of reading vocabulary possible, a range of tasks and word types should be used.

Effects of visual familiarity for words on interhemispheric cooperation for lexical processing.

PubMed

Yoshizaki, K

2001-12-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of visual familiarity of words on interhemispheric lexical processing. Words and pseudowords were tachistoscopically presented in a left, a right, or bilateral visual fields. Two types of words, Katakana-familiar-type and Hiragana-familiar-type, were used as the word stimuli. The former refers to the words which are more frequently written with Katakana script, and the latter refers to the words which are written predominantly in Hiragana script. Two conditions for the words were set up in terms of visual familiarity for a word. In visually familiar condition, words were presented in familiar script form and in visually unfamiliar condition, words were presented in less familiar script form. The 32 right-handed Japanese students were asked to make a lexical decision. Results showed that a bilateral gain, which indicated that the performance in the bilateral visual fields was superior to that in the unilateral visual field, was obtained only in the visually familiar condition, not in the visually unfamiliar condition. These results suggested that the visual familiarity for a word had an influence on the interhemispheric lexical processing.

The Effect of Pinyin Input Experience on the Link between Semantic and Phonology of Chinese Character in Digital Writing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Jingjun; Luo, Rong; Liu, Huashan

2017-01-01

With the development of ICT, digital writing is becoming much more common in people's life. Differently from keyboarding alphabets directly to input English words, keyboarding Chinese character is always through typing phonetic alphabets and then identify the glyph provided by Pinyin input-method software while in this process which do not need…

Word Skipping During Sentence Reading: Effects of Lexicality on Parafoveal Processing

PubMed Central

Choi, Wonil; Gordon, Peter C.

2013-01-01

Two experiments examined how lexical status affects the targeting of saccades during reading by using the boundary technique to vary independently the content of a letter string when seen in parafoveal preview and when directly fixated. Experiment 1 measured the skipping rate for a target word embedded in a sentence under three parafoveal preview conditions: full preview (e.g. brain-brain), pseudohomophone preview (e.g. brane-brain), and orthographic nonword control preview (e.g. brant-brain); in the first condition the preview string was always an English word while in the second and third conditions it was always a nonword. Experiment 2 investigated three conditions where the preview string was always a word: full preview (e.g. beach-beach), homophone preview (e.g. beech-beach), and orthographic control preview (e.g. bench-beach). None of the letter string manipulations used to create the preview conditions in the experiments disrupted sub-lexical orthographic or phonological patterns. In Experiment 1 higher skipping rates were observed for the full (lexical) preview condition, which consisted of a word, compared to the nonword preview conditions (pseudohomophone and orthographic-control). In contrast Experiment 2 showed no difference in skipping rates across the three types of lexical preview conditions (full, homophone and orthographic control), though preview type did influence reading times. This pattern indicates that skipping depends not only on the presence of disrupted sub-lexical patterns of orthography or phonology but is also critically dependent on processes that are sensitive to the lexical status of letter strings in the parafovea. PMID:24170376

When does word frequency influence written production?

PubMed

Baus, Cristina; Strijkers, Kristof; Costa, Albert

2013-01-01

The aim of the present study was to explore the central (e.g., lexical processing) and peripheral processes (motor preparation and execution) underlying word production during typewriting. To do so, we tested non-professional typers in a picture typing task while continuously recording EEG. Participants were instructed to write (by means of a standard keyboard) the corresponding name for a given picture. The lexical frequency of the words was manipulated: half of the picture names were of high-frequency while the remaining were of low-frequency. Different measures were obtained: (1) first keystroke latency and (2) keystroke latency of the subsequent letters and duration of the word. Moreover, ERPs locked to the onset of the picture presentation were analyzed to explore the temporal course of word frequency in typewriting. The results showed an effect of word frequency for the first keystroke latency but not for the duration of the word or the speed to which letter were typed (interstroke intervals). The electrophysiological results showed the expected ERP frequency effect at posterior sites: amplitudes for low-frequency words were more positive than those for high-frequency words. However, relative to previous evidence in the spoken modality, the frequency effect appeared in a later time-window. These results demonstrate two marked differences in the processing dynamics underpinning typing compared to speaking: First, central processing dynamics between speaking and typing differ already in the manner that words are accessed; second, central processing differences in typing, unlike speaking, do not cascade to peripheral processes involved in response execution.

When does word frequency influence written production?

PubMed Central

Baus, Cristina; Strijkers, Kristof; Costa, Albert

2013-01-01

The aim of the present study was to explore the central (e.g., lexical processing) and peripheral processes (motor preparation and execution) underlying word production during typewriting. To do so, we tested non-professional typers in a picture typing task while continuously recording EEG. Participants were instructed to write (by means of a standard keyboard) the corresponding name for a given picture. The lexical frequency of the words was manipulated: half of the picture names were of high-frequency while the remaining were of low-frequency. Different measures were obtained: (1) first keystroke latency and (2) keystroke latency of the subsequent letters and duration of the word. Moreover, ERPs locked to the onset of the picture presentation were analyzed to explore the temporal course of word frequency in typewriting. The results showed an effect of word frequency for the first keystroke latency but not for the duration of the word or the speed to which letter were typed (interstroke intervals). The electrophysiological results showed the expected ERP frequency effect at posterior sites: amplitudes for low-frequency words were more positive than those for high-frequency words. However, relative to previous evidence in the spoken modality, the frequency effect appeared in a later time-window. These results demonstrate two marked differences in the processing dynamics underpinning typing compared to speaking: First, central processing dynamics between speaking and typing differ already in the manner that words are accessed; second, central processing differences in typing, unlike speaking, do not cascade to peripheral processes involved in response execution. PMID:24399980

Core Vocabulary in Written Personal Narratives of School-Age Children

PubMed Central

Wood, Carla; Appleget, Allyssa; Hart, Sara

2016-01-01

This study aimed to describe core words of written personal narratives to inform the implementation of AAC supports for literacy instruction. Investigators analyzed lexical diversity, frequency of specific word use and types of words that made up 70% of the total words used in 211 written narrative samples from children in first grade (n =94) and fourth grade (n=117). Across grades 191 different words made up 70% of the total words used in the 211 written narrative samples. The top 50 words were comprised of content words (64%) and function words (36%). Grade differences were noted in diversity and types of words, including differences in the number of words comprising the core (132 words for children in first grade and 207 for fourth grade) and a higher proportion of abstract nouns for children in fourth grade based on the 200 most frequently occurring words for each grade. PMID:27559987

Reading "sun" and looking up: the influence of language on saccadic eye movements in the vertical dimension.

PubMed

Dudschig, Carolin; Souman, Jan; Lachmair, Martin; de la Vega, Irmgard; Kaup, Barbara

2013-01-01

Traditionally, language processing has been attributed to a separate system in the brain, which supposedly works in an abstract propositional manner. However, there is increasing evidence suggesting that language processing is strongly interrelated with sensorimotor processing. Evidence for such an interrelation is typically drawn from interactions between language and perception or action. In the current study, the effect of words that refer to entities in the world with a typical location (e.g., sun, worm) on the planning of saccadic eye movements was investigated. Participants had to perform a lexical decision task on visually presented words and non-words. They responded by moving their eyes to a target in an upper (lower) screen position for a word (non-word) or vice versa. Eye movements were faster to locations compatible with the word's referent in the real world. These results provide evidence for the importance of linguistic stimuli in directing eye movements, even if the words do not directly transfer directional information.

Phonological Neighborhood and Word Frequency Effects in the Stuttered Disfluencies of Children Who Stutter

PubMed Central

Anderson, Julie D.

2008-01-01

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine (a) the role of neighborhood density (number of words that are phonologically similar to a target word) and frequency variables on the stuttering-like disfluencies of preschool children who stutter, and (b) whether these variables have an effect on the type of stuttering-like disfluency produced. Method A 500+ word speech sample was obtained from each participant (N = 15). Each stuttered word was randomly paired with the firstly produced word that closely matched it in grammatical class, familiarity, and number of syllables/phonemes. Frequency, neighborhood density, and neighborhood frequency values were obtained for the stuttered and fluent words from an online database. Results Findings revealed that stuttered words were lower in frequency and neighborhood frequency than fluent words. Words containing part-word repetitions and sound prolongations were also lower in frequency and/or neighborhood frequency than fluent words, but these frequency variables did not have an effect on single-syllable word repetitions. Neighborhood density failed to influence the susceptibility of words to stuttering, as well as the type of stuttering-like disfluency produced. Conclusions In general, findings suggest that neighborhood and frequency variables not only influence the fluency with which words are produced in speech, but also have an impact on the type of stuttering-like disfluency produced. PMID:17344561

Remember to blink: Reduced attentional blink following instructions to forget.

PubMed

Taylor, Tracy L

2018-04-24

This study used rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) to determine whether, in an item-method directed forgetting task, study word processing ends earlier for forget words than for remember words. The critical manipulation required participants to monitor an RSVP stream of black nonsense strings in which a single blue word was embedded. The next item to follow the word was a string of red fs that instructed the participant to forget the word or green rs that instructed the participant to remember the word. After the memory instruction, a probe string of black xs or os appeared at postinstruction positions 1-8. Accuracy in reporting the identity of the probe string revealed an attenuated attentional blink following instructions to forget. A yes-no recognition task that followed the study trials confirmed a directed forgetting effect, with better recognition of remember words than forget words. Considered in the context of control conditions that required participants to commit either all or none of the study words to memory, the pattern of probe identification accuracy following the directed forgetting task argues that an intention to forget releases limited-capacity attentional resources sooner than an instruction to remember-despite participants needing to maintain an ongoing rehearsal set in both cases.

Single-Word Reading: Behavioral and Biological Perspectives. New Directions in Communication Disorders Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grigorenko, Elena L., Ed.; Naples, Adam J., Ed.

2007-01-01

As the first title in the new series, "New Directions in Communication Disorders Research: Integrative Approaches", this volume discusses a unique phenomenon in cognitive science, single-word reading, which is an essential element in successful reading competence. Single-word reading is an interdisciplinary area of research that incorporates…

Video Feedback in Key Word Signing Training for Preservice Direct Support Staff

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rombouts, Ellen; Meuris, Kristien; Maes, Bea; De Meyer, Anne-Marie; Zink, Inge

2016-01-01

Purpose: Research has demonstrated that formal training is essential for professionals to learn key word signing. Yet, the particular didactic strategies have not been studied. Therefore, this study compared the effectiveness of verbal and video feedback in a key word signing training for future direct support staff. Method: Forty-nine future…

Information content versus word length in random typing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ferrer-i-Cancho, Ramon; Moscoso del Prado Martín, Fermín

2011-12-01

Recently, it has been claimed that a linear relationship between a measure of information content and word length is expected from word length optimization and it has been shown that this linearity is supported by a strong correlation between information content and word length in many languages (Piantadosi et al 2011 Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 108 3825). Here, we study in detail some connections between this measure and standard information theory. The relationship between the measure and word length is studied for the popular random typing process where a text is constructed by pressing keys at random from a keyboard containing letters and a space behaving as a word delimiter. Although this random process does not optimize word lengths according to information content, it exhibits a linear relationship between information content and word length. The exact slope and intercept are presented for three major variants of the random typing process. A strong correlation between information content and word length can simply arise from the units making a word (e.g., letters) and not necessarily from the interplay between a word and its context as proposed by Piantadosi and co-workers. In itself, the linear relation does not entail the results of any optimization process.

Word retrieval in picture descriptions produced by individuals with Alzheimer's disease

PubMed Central

Kavé, Gitit; Goral, Mira

2016-01-01

What can tests of single-word production tell us about word retrieval in connected speech? We examined this question in 20 people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and in 20 cognitively intact individuals. All participants completed tasks of picture naming and semantic fluency, and provided connected speech through picture descriptions. Picture descriptions were analyzed for total word output, percentages of content words, percentages of nouns, and percentages of pronouns out of all words, type-token ratio of all words and type-token ratio of nouns alone, mean frequency of all words and mean frequency of nouns alone, and mean word length. Individuals with AD performed worse than did cognitively intact individuals on the picture naming and semantic fluency tasks. They also produced a lower proportion of content words overall, a lower proportion of nouns, and a higher proportion of pronouns, as well as more frequent and shorter words on picture descriptions. Group differences in total word output and type-token ratios did not reach significance. Correlations between scores on tasks of single-word retrieval and measures of retrieval in picture descriptions emerged in the AD group but not in the control group. Scores on a picture naming task were associated with difficulties in word retrieval in connected speech in AD, while scores on a task of semantic verbal fluency were less useful in predicting measures of retrieval in context in this population. PMID:27171756

Relations between Semantic and Cognitive Development in the One-Word Stage: The Specificity Hypothesis.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gopnik, Alison; Meltzoff, Andrew N.

1986-01-01

Compares two types of semantic development (the acquisition of disappearance words and success-failure words) to performance on two types of cognitive tasks (object-permanence and means-ends tasks) among infants. (HOD)

Using Word Prediction Software to Increase Typing Fluency with Students with Physical Disabilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tumlin, Jennifer; Heller, Kathryn Wolff

2004-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the use of word prediction software to increase typing speed and decrease spelling errors for students who have physical disabilities that affect hand use. Student perceptions regarding the effectiveness of word prediction was examined as well as their typing rates and spelling accuracy. Four students with…

British English infants segment words only with exaggerated infant-directed speech stimuli.

PubMed

Floccia, Caroline; Keren-Portnoy, Tamar; DePaolis, Rory; Duffy, Hester; Delle Luche, Claire; Durrant, Samantha; White, Laurence; Goslin, Jeremy; Vihman, Marilyn

2016-03-01

The word segmentation paradigm originally designed by Jusczyk and Aslin (1995) has been widely used to examine how infants from the age of 7.5 months can extract novel words from continuous speech. Here we report a series of 13 studies conducted independently in two British laboratories, showing that British English-learning infants aged 8-10.5 months fail to show evidence of word segmentation when tested in this paradigm. In only one study did we find evidence of word segmentation at 10.5 months, when we used an exaggerated infant-directed speech style. We discuss the impact of variations in infant-directed style within and across languages in the course of language acquisition. Crown Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Multiple bottlenecks in hierarchical control of action sequences: what does "response selection" select in skilled typewriting?

PubMed

Yamaguchi, Motonori; Logan, Gordon D; Li, Vanessa

2013-08-01

Does response selection select words or letters in skilled typewriting? Typing performance involves hierarchically organized control processes: an outer loop that controls word level processing, and an inner loop that controls letter (or keystroke) level processing. The present study addressed whether response selection occurs in the outer loop or the inner loop by using the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm in which Task1 required typing single words and Task2 required vocal responses to tones. The number of letters (string length) in the words was manipulated to discriminate selection of words from selection of keystrokes. In Experiment 1, the PRP effect depended on string length of words in Task1, suggesting that response selection occurs in the inner loop. To assess contributions of the outer loop, the influence of string length was examined in a lexical-decision task that also involves word encoding and lexical access (Experiment 2), or to-be-typed words were preexposed so outer-loop processing could finish before typing started (Experiment 3). Response time for Task2 (RT2) did not depend on string length with lexical decision, and RT2 still depended on string length with typing preexposed strings. These results support the inner-loop locus of the PRP effect. In Experiment 4, typing was performed as Task2, and the effect of string length on typing RT interacted with stimulus onset asynchrony superadditively, implying that another bottleneck also exists in the outer loop. We conclude that there are at least two bottleneck processes in skilled typewriting. 2013 APA, all rights reserved

Multiple brain networks underpinning word learning from fluent speech revealed by independent component analysis.

PubMed

López-Barroso, Diana; Ripollés, Pablo; Marco-Pallarés, Josep; Mohammadi, Bahram; Münte, Thomas F; Bachoud-Lévi, Anne-Catherine; Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni; de Diego-Balaguer, Ruth

2015-04-15

Although neuroimaging studies using standard subtraction-based analysis from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have suggested that frontal and temporal regions are involved in word learning from fluent speech, the possible contribution of different brain networks during this type of learning is still largely unknown. Indeed, univariate fMRI analyses cannot identify the full extent of distributed networks that are engaged by a complex task such as word learning. Here we used Independent Component Analysis (ICA) to characterize the different brain networks subserving word learning from an artificial language speech stream. Results were replicated in a second cohort of participants with a different linguistic background. Four spatially independent networks were associated with the task in both cohorts: (i) a dorsal Auditory-Premotor network; (ii) a dorsal Sensory-Motor network; (iii) a dorsal Fronto-Parietal network; and (iv) a ventral Fronto-Temporal network. The level of engagement of these networks varied through the learning period with only the dorsal Auditory-Premotor network being engaged across all blocks. In addition, the connectivity strength of this network in the second block of the learning phase correlated with the individual variability in word learning performance. These findings suggest that: (i) word learning relies on segregated connectivity patterns involving dorsal and ventral networks; and (ii) specifically, the dorsal auditory-premotor network connectivity strength is directly correlated with word learning performance. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Task Effects Reveal Cognitive Flexibility Responding to Frequency and Predictability: Evidence from Eye Movements in Reading and Proofreading

PubMed Central

Schotter, Elizabeth R.; Bicknell, Klinton; Howard, Ian; Levy, Roger; Rayner, Keith

2014-01-01

It is well-known that word frequency and predictability affect processing time. These effects change magnitude across tasks, but studies testing this use tasks with different response types (e.g., lexical decision, naming, and fixation time during reading; Schilling, Rayner & Chumbley, 1998), preventing direct comparison. Recently, Kaakinen and Hyönä (2010) overcame this problem, comparing fixation times in reading for comprehension and proofreading, showing that the frequency effect was larger in proofreading than in reading. This result could be explained by readers exhibiting substantial cognitive flexibility, and qualitatively changing how they process words in the proofreading task in a way that magnifies effects of word frequency. Alternatively, readers may not change word processing so dramatically, and instead may perform more careful identification generally, increasing the magnitude of many word processing effects (e.g., both frequency and predictability). We tested these possibilities with two experiments: subjects read for comprehension and then proofread for spelling errors (letter transpositions) that produce nonwords (e.g., trcak for track as in Kaakinen & Hyönä) or that produce real but unintended words (e.g., trial for trail) to compare how the task changes these effects. Replicating Kaakinen and Hyönä, frequency effects increased during proofreading. However, predictability effects only increased when integration with the sentence context was necessary to detect errors (i.e., when spelling errors produced words that were inappropriate in the sentence; trial for trail). The results suggest that readers adopt sophisticated word processing strategies to accommodate task demands. PMID:24434024

(Con)text-specific effects of visual dysfunction on reading in posterior cortical atrophy.

PubMed

Yong, Keir X X; Shakespeare, Timothy J; Cash, Dave; Henley, Susie M D; Warren, Jason D; Crutch, Sebastian J

2014-08-01

Reading deficits are a common early feature of the degenerative syndrome posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) but are poorly understood even at the single word level. The current study evaluated the reading accuracy and speed of 26 PCA patients, 17 typical Alzheimer's disease (tAD) patients and 14 healthy controls on a corpus of 192 single words in which the following perceptual properties were manipulated systematically: inter-letter spacing, font size, length, font type, case and confusability. PCA reading was significantly less accurate and slower than tAD patients and controls, with performance significantly adversely affected by increased letter spacing, size, length and font (cursive < non-cursive), and characterised by visual errors (69% of all error responses). By contrast, tAD and control accuracy rates were at or near ceiling, letter spacing was the only perceptual factor to influence reading speed in the same direction as controls, and, in contrast to PCA patients, control reading was faster for larger font sizes. The inverse size effect in PCA (less accurate reading of large than small font size print) was associated with lower grey matter volume in the right superior parietal lobule. Reading accuracy was associated with impairments of early visual (especially crowding), visuoperceptual and visuospatial processes. However, these deficits were not causally related to a universal impairment of reading as some patients showed preserved reading for small, unspaced words despite grave visual deficits. Rather, the impact of specific types of visual dysfunction on reading was found to be (con)text specific, being particularly evident for large, spaced, lengthy words. These findings improve the characterisation of dyslexia in PCA, shed light on the causative and associative factors, and provide clear direction for the development of reading aids and strategies to maximise and sustain reading ability in the early stages of disease. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

(Con)text-specific effects of visual dysfunction on reading in posterior cortical atrophy

PubMed Central

Yong, Keir X.X.; Shakespeare, Timothy J.; Cash, Dave; Henley, Susie M.D.; Warren, Jason D.; Crutch, Sebastian J.

2014-01-01

Reading deficits are a common early feature of the degenerative syndrome posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) but are poorly understood even at the single word level. The current study evaluated the reading accuracy and speed of 26 PCA patients, 17 typical Alzheimer's disease (tAD) patients and 14 healthy controls on a corpus of 192 single words in which the following perceptual properties were manipulated systematically: inter-letter spacing, font size, length, font type, case and confusability. PCA reading was significantly less accurate and slower than tAD patients and controls, with performance significantly adversely affected by increased letter spacing, size, length and font (cursive < non-cursive), and characterised by visual errors (69% of all error responses). By contrast, tAD and control accuracy rates were at or near ceiling, letter spacing was the only perceptual factor to influence reading speed in the same direction as controls, and, in contrast to PCA patients, control reading was faster for larger font sizes. The inverse size effect in PCA (less accurate reading of large than small font size print) was associated with lower grey matter volume in the right superior parietal lobule. Reading accuracy was associated with impairments of early visual (especially crowding), visuoperceptual and visuospatial processes. However, these deficits were not causally related to a universal impairment of reading as some patients showed preserved reading for small, unspaced words despite grave visual deficits. Rather, the impact of specific types of visual dysfunction on reading was found to be (con)text specific, being particularly evident for large, spaced, lengthy words. These findings improve the characterisation of dyslexia in PCA, shed light on the causative and associative factors, and provide clear direction for the development of reading aids and strategies to maximise and sustain reading ability in the early stages of disease. PMID:24841985

Aging-related gains and losses associated with word production in connected speech.

PubMed

Dennis, Paul A; Hess, Thomas M

2016-11-01

Older adults have been observed to use more nonnormative, or atypical, words than younger adults in connected speech. We examined whether aging-related losses in word-finding abilities or gains in language expertise underlie these age differences. Sixty younger and 60 older adults described two neutral photographs. These descriptions were processed into word types, and textual analysis was used to identify interrupted speech (e.g., pauses), reflecting word-finding difficulty. Word types were assessed for normativeness, with nonnormative word types defined as those used by six (5%) or fewer participants to describe a particular picture. Accuracy and precision ratings were provided by another sample of 48 high-vocabulary younger and older adults. Older adults produced more interrupted and, as predicted, nonnormative words than younger adults. Older adults were more likely than younger adults to use nonnormative language via interrupted speech, suggesting a compensatory process. However, older adults' nonnormative words were more precise and trended for having higher accuracy, reflecting expertise. In tasks offering response flexibility, like connected speech, older adults may be able to offset instances of aging-related deficits by maximizing their expertise in other instances.

Word Recognition and Word Identification: A Review of Research on Effective Instructional Practices with Learning Disabled Students.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McCormick, Sandra; Becker, Evelyn Z.

1996-01-01

Reviews investigations related to word learning of learning disabled students. Finds that direct word study leads to reading improvement for learning disabled pupils, but that indirect instruction also provides assistance. Finds also that word knowledge instruction not only promotes word learning, but can heighten learning disabled students'…

To Write or to Type? The Effects of Handwriting and Word-Processing on the Written Style of Examination Essays

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mogey, Nora; Hartley, James

2013-01-01

There is much debate about whether or not these days students should be able to word-process essay-type examinations as opposed to handwriting them, particularly when they are asked to word-process everything else. This study used word-processing software to examine the stylistic features of 13 examination essays written by hand and 24 by…

Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition: The Effects of Task Type, Word Occurrence and Their Combination

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Laufer, Batia; Rozovski-Roitblat, Bella

2011-01-01

We investigated how long-term retention of new words was affected by task type, number of word occurrences in the teaching materials and the combination of the two factors. The tasks were: reading a text with occasional Focus on Form when learners used dictionaries (T+F), or reading a text with Focus on Forms, i.e. word focused exercises (T+Fs).…

Processing of Color Words Activates Color Representations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Richter, Tobias; Zwaan, Rolf A.

2009-01-01

Two experiments were conducted to investigate whether color representations are routinely activated when color words are processed. Congruency effects of colors and color words were observed in both directions. Lexical decisions on color words were faster when preceding colors matched the color named by the word. Color-discrimination responses…

Source-constrained retrieval influences the encoding of new information.

PubMed

Danckert, Stacey L; MacLeod, Colin M; Fernandes, Myra A

2011-11-01

Jacoby, Shimizu, Daniels, and Rhodes (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 852-857, 2005) showed that new words presented as foils among a list of old words that had been deeply encoded were themselves subsequently better recognized than new words presented as foils among a list of old words that had been shallowly encoded. In Experiment 1, by substituting a deep-versus-shallow imagery manipulation for the levels-of-processing manipulation, we demonstrated that the effect is robust and that it generalizes, also occurring with a different type of encoding. In Experiment 2, we provided more direct evidence for context-related encoding during tests of deeply encoded words, showing enhanced priming for foils presented among deeply encoded targets when participants made the same deep-encoding judgments on those items as had been made on the targets during study. In Experiment 3, we established that the findings from Experiment 2 are restricted to this specific deep judgment task and are not a general consequence of these foils being associated with deeply encoded items. These findings provide support for the source-constrained retrieval hypothesis of Jacoby, Shimizu, Daniels, and Rhodes: New information can be influenced by how surrounding items are encoded and retrieved, as long as the surrounding items recruit a coherent mode of processing.

Control of Auditory Attention in Children With Specific Language Impairment

PubMed Central

Schwartz, Richard G.

2015-01-01

Purpose Children with specific language impairment (SLI) appear to demonstrate deficits in attention and its control. Selective attention involves the cognitive control of attention directed toward a relevant stimulus and simultaneous inhibition of attention toward irrelevant stimuli. The current study examined attention control during a cross-modal word recognition task. Method Twenty participants with SLI (ages 9–12 years) and 20 age-matched peers with typical language development (TLD) listened to words through headphones and were instructed to attend to the words in 1 ear while ignoring the words in the other ear. They were simultaneously presented with pictures and asked to make a lexical decision about whether the pictures and auditory words were the same or different. Accuracy and reaction time were measured in 5 conditions, in which the stimulus in the unattended channel was manipulated. Results The groups performed with similar accuracy. Compared with their peers with TLD, children with SLI had slower reaction times overall and different within-group patterns of performance by condition. Conclusions Children with TLD showed efficient inhibitory control in conditions that required active suppression of competing stimuli. Participants with SLI had difficulty exerting control over their auditory attention in all conditions, with particular difficulty inhibiting distractors of all types. PMID:26262428

Interword and interletter spacing effects during reading revisited: Interactions with word and font characteristics.

PubMed

Slattery, Timothy J; Yates, Mark; Angele, Bernhard

2016-12-01

Despite the large number of eye movement studies conducted over the past 30+ years, relatively few have examined the influence that font characteristics have on reading. However, there has been renewed interest in 1 particular font characteristic, letter spacing, which has both theoretical (visual word recognition) and applied (font design) importance. Recently published results that letter spacing has a bigger impact on the reading performance of dyslexic children have perhaps garnered the most attention (Zorzi et al., 2012). Unfortunately, the effects of increased interletter spacing have been mixed with some authors reporting facilitation and others reporting inhibition (van den Boer & Hakvoort, 2015). The authors present findings from 3 experiments designed to resolve the seemingly inconsistent letter-spacing effects and provide clarity to researchers and font designers and researchers. The results indicate that the direction of spacing effects depend on the size of the default spacing chosen by font developers. Experiment 3 found that interletter spacing interacts with interword spacing, as the required space between words depends on the amount of space used between letters. Interword spacing also interacted with word type as the inhibition seen with smaller interword spacing was evident with nouns and verbs but not with function words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Use what you can: storage, abstraction processes, and perceptual adjustments help listeners recognize reduced forms

PubMed Central

Poellmann, Katja; Mitterer, Holger; McQueen, James M.

2014-01-01

Three eye-tracking experiments tested whether native listeners recognized reduced Dutch words better after having heard the same reduced words, or different reduced words of the same reduction type and whether familiarization with one reduction type helps listeners to deal with another reduction type. In the exposure phase, a segmental reduction group was exposed to /b/-reductions (e.g., minderij instead of binderij, “book binder”) and a syllabic reduction group was exposed to full-vowel deletions (e.g., p'raat instead of paraat, “ready”), while a control group did not hear any reductions. In the test phase, all three groups heard the same speaker producing reduced-/b/ and deleted-vowel words that were either repeated (Experiments 1 and 2) or new (Experiment 3), but that now appeared as targets in semantically neutral sentences. Word-specific learning effects were found for vowel-deletions but not for /b/-reductions. Generalization of learning to new words of the same reduction type occurred only if the exposure words showed a phonologically consistent reduction pattern (/b/-reductions). In contrast, generalization of learning to words of another reduction type occurred only if the exposure words showed a phonologically inconsistent reduction pattern (the vowel deletions; learning about them generalized to recognition of the /b/-reductions). In order to deal with reductions, listeners thus use various means. They store reduced variants (e.g., for the inconsistent vowel-deleted words) and they abstract over incoming information to build up and apply mapping rules (e.g., for the consistent /b/-reductions). Experience with inconsistent pronunciations leads to greater perceptual flexibility in dealing with other forms of reduction uttered by the same speaker than experience with consistent pronunciations. PMID:24910622

A taste for words and sounds: a case of lexical-gustatory and sound-gustatory synesthesia

PubMed Central

Colizoli, Olympia; Murre, Jaap M. J.; Rouw, Romke

2013-01-01

Gustatory forms of synesthesia involve the automatic and consistent experience of tastes that are triggered by non-taste related inducers. We present a case of lexical-gustatory and sound-gustatory synesthesia within one individual, SC. Most words and a subset of non-linguistic sounds induce the experience of taste, smell and physical sensations for SC. SC's lexical-gustatory associations were significantly more consistent than those of a group of controls. We tested for effects of presentation modality (visual vs. auditory), taste-related congruency, and synesthetic inducer-concurrent direction using a priming task. SC's performance did not differ significantly from a trained control group. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neural correlates of SC's synesthetic experiences by comparing her brain activation to the literature on brain networks related to language, music, and sound processing, in addition to synesthesia. Words that induced a strong taste were contrasted to words that induced weak-to-no tastes (“tasty” vs. “tasteless” words). Brain activation was also measured during passive listening to music and environmental sounds. Brain activation patterns showed evidence that two regions are implicated in SC's synesthetic experience of taste and smell: the left anterior insula and left superior parietal lobe. Anterior insula activation may reflect the synesthetic taste experience. The superior parietal lobe is proposed to be involved in binding sensory information across sub-types of synesthetes. We conclude that SC's synesthesia is genuine and reflected in her brain activation. The type of inducer (visual-lexical, auditory-lexical, and non-lexical auditory stimuli) could be differentiated based on patterns of brain activity. PMID:24167497

Can Infants Use a Nonhuman Agent's Gaze Direction to Establish Word-Object Relations?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Connell, Laura; Poulin-Dubois, Diane; Demke, Tamara; Guay, Amanda

2009-01-01

Adopting a procedure developed with human speakers, we examined infants' ability to follow a nonhuman agent's gaze direction and subsequently to use its gaze to learn new words. When a programmable robot acted as the speaker (Experiment 1), infants followed its gaze toward the word referent whether or not it coincided with their own focus of…

Combined eye tracking and fMRI reveals neural basis of linguistic predictions during sentence comprehension.

PubMed

Bonhage, Corinna E; Mueller, Jutta L; Friederici, Angela D; Fiebach, Christian J

2015-07-01

It is widely agreed upon that linguistic predictions are an integral part of language comprehension. Yet, experimental proof of their existence remains challenging. Here, we introduce a new predictive eye gaze reading task combining eye tracking and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that allows us to infer the existence and timing of linguistic predictions via anticipatory eye-movements. Participants read different types of word sequences (i.e., regular sentences, meaningless jabberwocky sentences, non-word lists) up to the pre-final word. The final target word was displayed with a temporal delay and its screen position was dependent on the syntactic word category (nouns vs verbs). During the delay, anticipatory eye-movements into the correct target word area were indicative of linguistic predictions. For fMRI analysis, the predictive sentence conditions were contrasted to the non-word condition, with the anticipatory eye-movements specifying differences in timing across conditions. A conjunction analysis of both sentence conditions revealed the neural substrate of word category prediction, namely a distributed network of cortical and subcortical brain regions including language systems, basal ganglia, thalamus, and hippocampus. Direct contrasts between the regular sentence condition and the jabberwocky condition indicate that prediction of word category in meaningless jabberwocky sentences relies on classical left-hemispheric language systems involving Brodman's area 44/45 in the left inferior frontal gyrus, left superior temporal areas, and the dorsal caudate nucleus. Regular sentences, in contrast, allowed for the prediction of specific words. Word-specific predictions were specifically associated with more widely distributed temporal and parietal cortical systems, most prominently in the right hemisphere. Our results support the presence of linguistic predictions during sentence processing and demonstrate the validity of the predictive eye gaze paradigm for measuring syntactic and semantic aspects of linguistic predictions, as well as for investigating their neural substrates. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Parallel Episodic Processing (PEP) model: dissociating contingency and conflict adaptation in the item-specific proportion congruent paradigm.

PubMed

Schmidt, James R

2013-01-01

The present work introduces a computational model, the Parallel Episodic Processing (PEP) model, which demonstrates that contingency learning achieved via simple storage and retrieval of episodic memories can explain the item-specific proportion congruency effect in the colour-word Stroop paradigm. The current work also presents a new experimental procedure to more directly dissociate contingency biases from conflict adaptation (i.e., proportion congruency). This was done with three different types of incongruent words that allow a comparison of: (a) high versus low contingency while keeping proportion congruency constant, and (b) high versus low proportion congruency while keeping contingency constant. Results demonstrated a significant contingency effect, but no effect of proportion congruence. It was further shown that the proportion congruency associated with the colour does not matter, either. Thus, the results quite directly demonstrate that ISPC effects are not due to conflict adaptation, but instead to contingency learning biases. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The ERP signature of the contextual diversity effect in visual word recognition.

PubMed

Vergara-Martínez, Marta; Comesaña, Montserrat; Perea, Manuel

2017-06-01

Behavioral experiments have revealed that words appearing in many different contexts are responded to faster than words that appear in few contexts. Although this contextual diversity (CD) effect has been found to be stronger than the word-frequency (WF) effect, it is a matter of debate whether the facilitative effects of CD and WF reflect the same underlying mechanisms. The analysis of the electrophysiological correlates of CD may shed some light on this issue. This experiment is the first to examine the ERPs to high- and low-CD words when WF is controlled for. Results revealed that while high-CD words produced faster responses than low-CD words, their ERPs showed larger negativities (225-325 ms) than low-CD words. This result goes in the opposite direction of the ERP WF effect (high-frequency words elicit smaller N400 amplitudes than low-frequency words). The direction and scalp distribution of the CD effect resembled the ERP effects associated with "semantic richness." Thus, while apparently related, CD and WF originate from different sources during the access of lexical-semantic representations.

Keyword extraction by nonextensivity measure.

PubMed

Mehri, Ali; Darooneh, Amir H

2011-05-01

The presence of a long-range correlation in the spatial distribution of a relevant word type, in spite of random occurrences of an irrelevant word type, is an important feature of human-written texts. We classify the correlation between the occurrences of words by nonextensive statistical mechanics for the word-ranking process. In particular, we look at the nonextensivity parameter as an alternative metric to measure the spatial correlation in the text, from which the words may be ranked in terms of this measure. Finally, we compare different methods for keyword extraction. © 2011 American Physical Society

The effects of taboo-related distraction on driving performance.

PubMed

Chan, Michelle; Madan, Christopher R; Singhal, Anthony

2016-07-01

Roadside billboards containing negative and positive emotional content have been shown to influence driving performance, however, the impact of highly arousing taboo information is unknown. Taboo information more reliably evokes emotional arousal and can lead to greater attentional capture due to its inherent 'shock value.' The objective of the present study was to examine driver distraction associated with four types of information presented on roadside billboards: highly arousing taboo words, moderately arousing positive and negative words, and non-arousing neutral words. Participants viewed blocks of taboo, positive, negative and neutral words presented on roadside billboards while operating a driving simulator. They also responded to target (household-related) words by pressing a button on the steering wheel. At the end of the session, a surprise recall task was completed for all the words they saw while driving. Results showed that taboo words captured the most attention as revealed by better memory recall compared to all the other word types. Interestingly, taboo words were associated with better lane control compared to the other word types. We suggest that taboo-related arousal can enhance attentional focus during a complex task like simulated driving. That is, in a highly arousing situation, attention is selectively narrowed to the road ahead, resulting in better lane control. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The articulatory in-out effect resists oral motor interference.

PubMed

Lindau, Berit; Topolinski, Sascha

2018-02-01

People prefer words with inward directed consonantal patterns (e.g., MENIKA) compared to outward patterns (KENIMA), because inward (outward) articulation movements resemble positive (negative) mouth actions such as swallowing (spitting). This effect might rely on covert articulation simulations, or subvocalizations, since it occurs also under silent reading. We tested to what degree these underlying articulation simulations are disturbed by oral motor interference. In 3 experiments (total N = 465) we interfered with these articulation simulations by employing concurrent oral exercises that induce oral motor noise while judging inward and outward words (chewing gum, Experiment 1; executing meaningless tongue movements, Experiment 2; concurrent verbalizations, Experiment 3). Across several word stimulus types, the articulatory in-out effect was not modulated by these tasks. This finding introduces a theoretically interesting case, because in contrast to many previous demonstrations regarding other motor-preference effects, the covert simulations in this effect are not susceptible to selective motor interference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Comparing Teacher-Directed and Computer-Assisted Constant Time Delay for Teaching Functional Sight Words to Students with Moderate Intellectual Disability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coleman, Mari Beth; Hurley, Kevin J.; Cihak, David F.

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of teacher-directed and computer-assisted constant time delay strategies for teaching three students with moderate intellectual disability to read functional sight words. Target words were those found in recipes and were taught via teacher-delivered constant time delay or…

Detecting letters in continuous text: effects of display size.

PubMed

Healy, A F; Oliver, W L; McNamara, T P

1987-05-01

In three letter detection experiments, subjects responded to each instance of the letter t in continuous text typed in a standard paragraph, typed with one to four words per line, or shown for a fixed duration on a computer screen either one or four words at a time. In the multiword and the standard paragraph conditions, errors were greatest and latencies longest on the word the when it was correctly spelled. This effect was diminished or reversed in the one-word conditions. These findings support a set of unitization hypotheses about the reading process, according to which subjects do not process the constituent letters of a word once that word has been identified unless no other word is in view.

The company objects keep: Linking referents together during cross-situational word learning.

PubMed

Zettersten, Martin; Wojcik, Erica; Benitez, Viridiana L; Saffran, Jenny

2018-04-01

Learning the meanings of words involves not only linking individual words to referents but also building a network of connections among entities in the world, concepts, and words. Previous studies reveal that infants and adults track the statistical co-occurrence of labels and objects across multiple ambiguous training instances to learn words. However, it is less clear whether, given distributional or attentional cues, learners also encode associations amongst the novel objects. We investigated the consequences of two types of cues that highlighted object-object links in a cross-situational word learning task: distributional structure - how frequently the referents of novel words occurred together - and visual context - whether the referents were seen on matching backgrounds. Across three experiments, we found that in addition to learning novel words, adults formed connections between frequently co-occurring objects. These findings indicate that learners exploit statistical regularities to form multiple types of associations during word learning.

Solving Word Problems using Schemas: A Review of the Literature

PubMed Central

Powell, Sarah R.

2011-01-01

Solving word problems is a difficult task for students at-risk for or with learning disabilities (LD). One instructional approach that has emerged as a valid method for helping students at-risk for or with LD to become more proficient at word-problem solving is using schemas. A schema is a framework for solving a problem. With a schema, students are taught to recognize problems as falling within word-problem types and to apply a problem solution method that matches that problem type. This review highlights two schema approaches for 2nd- and 3rd-grade students at-risk for or with LD: schema-based instruction and schema-broadening instruction. A total of 12 schema studies were reviewed and synthesized. Both types of schema approaches enhanced the word-problem skill of students at-risk for or with LD. Based on the review, suggestions are provided for incorporating word-problem instruction using schemas. PMID:21643477

A direct intracranial record of emotions evoked by subliminal words.

PubMed

Naccache, Lionel; Gaillard, Raphaël; Adam, Claude; Hasboun, Dominique; Clémenceau, Stéphane; Baulac, Michel; Dehaene, Stanislas; Cohen, Laurent

2005-05-24

A classical but still open issue in cognitive psychology concerns the depth of subliminal processing. Can the meaning of undetected words be accessed in the absence of consciousness? Subliminal priming experiments in normal subjects have revealed only small effects whose interpretation remains controversial. Here, we provide a direct demonstration of semantic access for unseen masked words. In three epileptic patients with intracranial electrodes, we recorded brain potentials from the amygdala, a neural structure that responds to fearful or threatening stimuli presented in various modalities, including written words. We show that the subliminal presentation of emotional words modulates the activity of the amygdala at a long latency (>800 ms). Our result indicates that subliminal words can trigger long-lasting cerebral processes, including semantic access to emotional valence.

Task effects reveal cognitive flexibility responding to frequency and predictability: evidence from eye movements in reading and proofreading.

PubMed

Schotter, Elizabeth R; Bicknell, Klinton; Howard, Ian; Levy, Roger; Rayner, Keith

2014-04-01

It is well-known that word frequency and predictability affect processing time. These effects change magnitude across tasks, but studies testing this use tasks with different response types (e.g., lexical decision, naming, and fixation time during reading; Schilling, Rayner, & Chumbley, 1998), preventing direct comparison. Recently, Kaakinen and Hyönä (2010) overcame this problem, comparing fixation times in reading for comprehension and proofreading, showing that the frequency effect was larger in proofreading than in reading. This result could be explained by readers exhibiting substantial cognitive flexibility, and qualitatively changing how they process words in the proofreading task in a way that magnifies effects of word frequency. Alternatively, readers may not change word processing so dramatically, and instead may perform more careful identification generally, increasing the magnitude of many word processing effects (e.g., both frequency and predictability). We tested these possibilities with two experiments: subjects read for comprehension and then proofread for spelling errors (letter transpositions) that produce nonwords (e.g., trcak for track as in Kaakinen & Hyönä) or that produce real but unintended words (e.g., trial for trail) to compare how the task changes these effects. Replicating Kaakinen and Hyönä, frequency effects increased during proofreading. However, predictability effects only increased when integration with the sentence context was necessary to detect errors (i.e., when spelling errors produced words that were inappropriate in the sentence; trial for trail). The results suggest that readers adopt sophisticated word processing strategies to accommodate task demands. Copyright © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Cluster analysis of the clinical histories of cattle affected with bovine anaemia associated with Theileria orientalis Ikeda type infection.

PubMed

Lawrence, K E; Forsyth, S F; Vaatstra, B L; McFadden, Amj; Pulford, D J; Govindaraju, K; Pomroy, W E

2017-11-01

AIM To determine the most commonly used words in the clinical histories of animals naturally infected with Theileria orientalis Ikeda type; whether these words differed between cases categorised by age, farm type or haematocrit (HCT), and if there was any clustering of the common words in relation to these categories. METHODS Clinical histories were transcribed for 605 cases of bovine anaemia associated with T. orientalis (TABA), that were submitted to laboratories with blood samples which tested positive for T. orientalis Ikeda type infection by PCR analysis, between October 2012 and November 2014. χ 2 tests were used to determine whether the proportion of submissions for each word was similar across the categories of HCT (normal, moderate anaemia or severe anaemia), farm type (dairy or beef) and age (young or old). Correspondence analysis (CA) was carried out on a contingency table of the frequency of the 28 most commonly used history words, cross-tabulated by age categories (young, old or unknown). Agglomerative hierarchical clustering, using Ward's method, was then performed on the coordinates from the correspondence analysis. RESULTS The six most commonly used history words were jaundice (204/605), lethargic (162/605), pale mucous membranes (161/605), cow (151/605), anaemia (147/605), and off milk (115/605). The proportion of cases with some history words differed between categories of age, farm type and HCT. The cluster analysis indicated that the recorded history words were grouped in two main clusters. The first included the words weight loss, tachycardia, pale mucous membranes, anaemia, lethargic and thin, and was associated with adult (p<0.001), severe anaemia (p<0.001) and dairy (p<0.001). The second cluster included the words deaths, ill-thrift, calves, calf and diarrhoea, and was associated with young (p<0.001), normal HCT (p<0.001), beef (p<0.001) and moderate anaemia (p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Cluster analysis of words recorded in clinical histories submitted with blood samples from cases of TABA indicates that two potentially different disease syndromes were associated with T. orientalis Ikeda type infection. One was consistent with the affected cattle suffering from a severe regenerative extravascular haemolytic anaemia, the second displaying as ill thrift and diarrhoea, particularly in young beef cattle.

The neural basis of visual word form processing: a multivariate investigation.

PubMed

Nestor, Adrian; Behrmann, Marlene; Plaut, David C

2013-07-01

Current research on the neurobiological bases of reading points to the privileged role of a ventral cortical network in visual word processing. However, the properties of this network and, in particular, its selectivity for orthographic stimuli such as words and pseudowords remain topics of significant debate. Here, we approached this issue from a novel perspective by applying pattern-based analyses to functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Specifically, we examined whether, where and how, orthographic stimuli elicit distinct patterns of activation in the human cortex. First, at the category level, multivariate mapping found extensive sensitivity throughout the ventral cortex for words relative to false-font strings. Secondly, at the identity level, the multi-voxel pattern classification provided direct evidence that different pseudowords are encoded by distinct neural patterns. Thirdly, a comparison of pseudoword and face identification revealed that both stimulus types exploit common neural resources within the ventral cortical network. These results provide novel evidence regarding the involvement of the left ventral cortex in orthographic stimulus processing and shed light on its selectivity and discriminability profile. In particular, our findings support the existence of sublexical orthographic representations within the left ventral cortex while arguing for the continuity of reading with other visual recognition skills.

Patterns of linguistic and numerical performance in aphasia.

PubMed

Rath, Dajana; Domahs, Frank; Dressel, Katharina; Claros-Salinas, Dolores; Klein, Elise; Willmes, Klaus; Krinzinger, Helga

2015-02-04

Empirical research on the relationship between linguistic and numerical processing revealed inconsistent results for different levels of cognitive processing (e.g., lexical, semantic) as well as different stimulus materials (e.g., Arabic digits, number words, letters, non-number words). Information of dissociation patterns in aphasic patients was used in order to investigate the dissociability of linguistic and numerical processes. The aim of the present prospective study was a comprehensive, specific, and systematic investigation of relationships between linguistic and numerical processing, considering the impact of asemantic vs. semantic processing and the type of material employed (numbers compared to letters vs. words). A sample of aphasic patients (n = 60) was assessed with a battery of linguistic and numerical tasks directly comparable for their cognitive processing levels (e.g., perceptual, morpho-lexical, semantic). Mean performance differences and frequencies of (complementary) dissociations in individual patients revealed the most prominent numerical advantage for asemantic tasks when comparing the processing of numbers vs. letters, whereas the least numerical advantage was found for semantic tasks when comparing the processing of numbers vs. words. Different patient subgroups showing differential dissociation patterns were further analysed and discussed. A comprehensive model of linguistic and numerical processing should take these findings into account.

Descriptive analysis and comparison of strategic incremental rehearsal to "Business as Usual" sight-word instruction for an adult nonreader with intellectual disability.

PubMed

Richman, David M; Grubb, Laura; Thompson, Samuel

2018-01-01

Strategic Incremental Rehearsal (SIR) is an effective method for teaching sight-word acquisition, but has neither been evaluated for use in adults with an intellectual disability, nor directly compared to the ongoing instruction in the natural environment. Experimental analysis of sight word acquisition via an alternating treatment design was conducted with a 23-year-old woman with Down syndrome. SIR was compared to the current reading instruction (CRI) in a classroom for young adults with intellectual disabilities. CRI procedures included non-contingent praise, receptive touch prompts ("touch the word bat"), echoic prompts ("say bat"), textual prompts ("read the word"), and pre-determined introduction of new words. SIR procedures included textual prompts on flash cards, contingent praise, corrective feedback, and mastery-based introduction of new words. The results indicated that SIR was associated with more rapid acquisition of sight words than CRI. Directions for future research could include systematic comparisons to other procedures, and evaluations of procedural permutations of SIR.

Teaching Sight Words to Elementary Students With Intellectual Disability and Autism: A Comparison of Teacher-Directed Versus Computer-Assisted Simultaneous Prompting.

PubMed

Coleman, Mari Beth; Cherry, Rebecca A; Moore, Tara C; Park, Yujeong; Cihak, David F

2015-06-01

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of teacher-directed simultaneous prompting to computer-assisted simultaneous prompting for teaching sight words to 3 elementary school students with intellectual disability. Activities in the computer-assisted condition were designed with Intellitools Classroom Suite software whereas traditional materials (i.e., flashcards) were used in the teacher-directed condition. Treatment conditions were compared using an adapted alternating treatments design. Acquisition of sight words occurred in both conditions for all 3 participants; however, each participant either clearly responded better in the teacher-directed condition or reported a preference for the teacher-directed condition when performance was similar with computer-assisted instruction being more efficient. Practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Evidence for age-related equivalence in the directed forgetting paradigm.

PubMed

Gamboz, Nadia; Russo, Riccardo

2002-01-01

The directed forgetting paradigm involves, under particular experimental circumstances, inhibitory mechanisms, which operate to the successful forgetting of irrelevant words. The item-by-item cueing method (e.g., Basden & Basden, 1996) was used to investigate the directed forgetting effect in young and old adults. Processing of the experimental words was manipulated between subjects by asking participants to perform either a deep or a shallow orienting task on each word of the study list before the occurrence of the cue (to remember of to forget). Results indicated that the instruction to process deeply both to-be-remembered and to-be-forgotten words led to equivalent directed forgetting effects in young and old adults. These results are discussed with respect to the implications they have for the Inhibitory Deficit theory (e.g., Hasher & Zacks, 1988), which suggests that cognitive aging is mainly characterized by a reduction in the efficiency of inhibitory processes.

Technology and the Oops! Effect: Finding a Bias against Word Processing.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roblyer, M. D.

1997-01-01

Introduced to aid writing, word processing can cause unexpected problems for those who use it. Describes four studies in which raters gave word-processed essays consistently lower scores than handwritten essays. Reasons for the discrepancies were higher expectations for typed essays, ease of spotting text errors in typed text, and more difficulty…

Electrophysiological Correlates of Stimulus Equivalence Processes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haimson, Barry; Wilkinson, Krista M.; Rosenquist, Celia; Ouimet, Carolyn; McIlvane, William J.

2009-01-01

Research reported here concerns neural processes relating to stimulus equivalence class formation. In Experiment 1, two types of word pairs were presented successively to normally capable adults. In one type, the words had related usage in English (e.g., uncle, aunt). In the other, the two words were not typically related in their usage (e.g.,…

The Effect of Lexical Content on Dichotic Speech Recognition in Older Adults.

PubMed

Findlen, Ursula M; Roup, Christina M

2016-01-01

Age-related auditory processing deficits have been shown to negatively affect speech recognition for older adult listeners. In contrast, older adults gain benefit from their ability to make use of semantic and lexical content of the speech signal (i.e., top-down processing), particularly in complex listening situations. Assessment of auditory processing abilities among aging adults should take into consideration semantic and lexical content of the speech signal. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of lexical and attentional factors on dichotic speech recognition performance characteristics for older adult listeners. A repeated measures design was used to examine differences in dichotic word recognition as a function of lexical and attentional factors. Thirty-five older adults (61-85 yr) with sensorineural hearing loss participated in this study. Dichotic speech recognition was evaluated using consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) word and nonsense CVC syllable stimuli administered in the free recall, directed recall right, and directed recall left response conditions. Dichotic speech recognition performance for nonsense CVC syllables was significantly poorer than performance for CVC words. Dichotic recognition performance varied across response condition for both stimulus types, which is consistent with previous studies on dichotic speech recognition. Inspection of individual results revealed that five listeners demonstrated an auditory-based left ear deficit for one or both stimulus types. Lexical content of stimulus materials affects performance characteristics for dichotic speech recognition tasks in the older adult population. The use of nonsense CVC syllable material may provide a way to assess dichotic speech recognition performance while potentially lessening the effects of lexical content on performance (i.e., measuring bottom-up auditory function both with and without top-down processing). American Academy of Audiology.

Baby's first 10 words.

PubMed

Tardif, Twila; Fletcher, Paul; Liang, Weilan; Zhang, Zhixiang; Kaciroti, Niko; Marchman, Virginia A

2008-07-01

Although there has been much debate over the content of children's first words, few large sample studies address this question for children at the very earliest stages of word learning. The authors report data from comparable samples of 265 English-, 336 Putonghua- (Mandarin), and 369 Cantonese-speaking 8- to 16-month-old infants whose caregivers completed MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories and reported them to produce between 1 and 10 words. Analyses of individual words indicated striking commonalities in the first words that children learn. However, substantive cross-linguistic differences appeared in the relative prevalence of common nouns, people terms, and verbs as well as in the probability that children produced even one of these word types when they had a total of 1-3, 4-6, or 7-10 words in their vocabularies. These data document cross-linguistic differences in the types of words produced even at the earliest stages of vocabulary learning and underscore the importance of parental input and cross-linguistic/cross-cultural variations in children's early word-learning.

Developmental change in children's sensitivity to sound symbolism.

PubMed

Tzeng, Christina Y; Nygaard, Lynne C; Namy, Laura L

2017-08-01

The current study examined developmental change in children's sensitivity to sound symbolism. Three-, five-, and seven-year-old children heard sound symbolic novel words and foreign words meaning round and pointy and chose which of two pictures (one round and one pointy) best corresponded to each word they heard. Task performance varied as a function of both word type and age group such that accuracy was greater for novel words than for foreign words, and task performance increased with age for both word types. For novel words, children in all age groups reliably chose the correct corresponding picture. For foreign words, 3-year-olds showed chance performance, whereas 5- and 7-year-olds showed reliably above-chance performance. Results suggest increased sensitivity to sound symbolic cues with development and imply that although sensitivity to sound symbolism may be available early and facilitate children's word-referent mappings, sensitivity to subtler sound symbolic cues requires greater language experience. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

What types of learning are enhanced by a cued recall test?

PubMed

Carpenter, Shana K; Pashler, Harold; Vul, Edward

2006-10-01

In two experiments, we investigated what types of learning benefit from a cued recall test. After initial exposure to a word pair (A+B), subjects experienced either an intervening cued recall test (A-->?) with feedback, or a restudy presentation (A-->B). The final test could be cued recall in the same (A-->?) or opposite (?-->B) direction, or free recall of just the cues (Recall As) or just the targets (Recall Bs). All final tests revealed a benefit for testing as opposed to restudying. Tests produced a direct benefit for information that was retrieved on the intervening test (B). This benefit also "spilled over" to facilitate recall of information that was present on the test but not retrieved (A). Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Assessing health risk behaviors among adolescents: the effect of question wording and appeals for honesty.

PubMed

Brener, Nancy D; Grunbaum, Jo Anne; Kann, Laura; McManus, Tim; Ross, Jim

2004-08-01

To understand how methodological factors influence prevalence estimates of health-risk behaviors obtained from surveys, we examined the effect of varying question wording and honesty appeals while holding other aspects of the surveys constant. A convenience sample of students (n = 4140) in grades 9 through 12 was randomly assigned to complete one of six versions of a paper-and-pencil questionnaire in classrooms. Each questionnaire version represented a different combination of honesty appeal (standard vs. strong) and questionnaire type. The questionnaire types varied in wording and in the number of questions assessing particular types of behaviors. The questionnaires were based on those used in three national surveys--the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, Monitoring the Future, and the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. Logistic regression analyses examined how responses to each survey question assessing behavior were associated with questionnaire type, honesty appeal, and the interaction of those two variables. Among 32 behaviors with different question wording across questionnaire types, 12 showed a significant effect of questionnaire type. Among 45 behaviors with identical question wording across questionnaire types, five showed a significant main effect of questionnaire type. Among all 77 behaviors, one showed a significant main effect for honesty appeal and two showed a significant interaction between honesty appeal and questionnaire type. When population, setting, questionnaire context, mode of administration, and data-editing protocols are held constant, differences in question wording can create statistically significant differences in some prevalence estimates. Varying honesty appeals does not have an effect on prevalence estimates.

Attention to gaze and emotion in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Schwartz, Barbara L; Vaidya, Chandan J; Howard, James H; Deutsch, Stephen I

2010-11-01

Individuals with schizophrenia have difficulty interpreting social and emotional cues such as facial expression, gaze direction, body position, and voice intonation. Nonverbal cues are powerful social signals but are often processed implicitly, outside the focus of attention. The aim of this research was to assess implicit processing of social cues in individuals with schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and matched controls performed a primary task of word classification with social cues in the background. Participants were asked to classify target words (LEFT/RIGHT) by pressing a key that corresponded to the word, in the context of facial expressions with eye gaze averted to the left or right. Although facial expression and gaze direction were irrelevant to the task, these facial cues influenced word classification performance. Participants were slower to classify target words (e.g., LEFT) that were incongruent to gaze direction (e.g., eyes averted to the right) compared to target words (e.g., LEFT) that were congruent to gaze direction (e.g., eyes averted to the left), but this only occurred for expressions of fear. This pattern did not differ for patients and controls. The results showed that threat-related signals capture the attention of individuals with schizophrenia. These data suggest that implicit processing of eye gaze and fearful expressions is intact in schizophrenia. (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved

Short-term retention of pictures and words: evidence for dual coding systems.

PubMed

Pellegrino, J W; Siegel, A W; Dhawan, M

1975-03-01

The recall of picture and word triads was examined in three experiments that manipulated the type of distraction in a Brown-Peterson short-term retention task. In all three experiments recall of pictures was superior to words under auditory distraction conditions. Visual distraction produced high performance levels with both types of stimuli, whereas combined auditory and visual distraction significantly reduced picture recall without further affecting word recall. The results were interpreted in terms of the dual coding hypothesis and indicated that pictures are encoded into separate visual and acoustic processing systems while words are primarily acoustically encoded.

Left-frontal brain potentials index conceptual implicit memory for words initially viewed subliminally.

PubMed

Chen, Jason C W; Li, Wen; Lui, Ming; Paller, Ken A

2009-08-18

Neural correlates of explicit and implicit memory tend to co-occur and are therefore difficult to measure independently, posing problems for understanding the unique nature of different types of memory processing. To circumvent this problem, we developed an experimental design wherein subjects acquired information from words presented in a subliminal manner, such that conscious remembering was minimized. Cross-modal word repetition was used so that perceptual implicit memory would also be limited. Healthy human subjects viewed subliminal words six times each and about 2 min later heard the same words interspersed with new words in a category-verification test. Electrophysiological correlates of word repetition included negative brain potentials over left-frontal locations beginning approximately 500 ms after word onset. Behavioral responses were slower for repeated words than for new words. Differential processing of word meaning in the absence of explicit memory was most likely responsible for differential electrical and behavioral responses to old versus new words. Moreover, these effects were distinct from neural correlates of explicit memory observed in prior experiments, and were observed here in two separate experiments, thus providing a foundation for further investigations of relationships and interactions between different types of memory engaged when words repeat.

Effects of Induced Memory Strategies on Children's Memory for Pictures and Words.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Filan, Gary; Sullivan, Howard

In this study of children's memory, two types of presentation modes (pictures or words) were crossed with two levels of memory strategy ("make a picture in your mind" or "think of the word") to comprise four treatments: see picture/think picture, see picture/think word, see word/think picture, see word/think word. The study was conducted with 144…

The QWERTY effect: how typing shapes the meanings of words.

PubMed

Jasmin, Kyle; Casasanto, Daniel

2012-06-01

The QWERTY keyboard mediates communication for millions of language users. Here, we investigated whether differences in the way words are typed correspond to differences in their meanings. Some words are spelled with more letters on the right side of the keyboard and others with more letters on the left. In three experiments, we tested whether asymmetries in the way people interact with keys on the right and left of the keyboard influence their evaluations of the emotional valence of the words. We found the predicted relationship between emotional valence and QWERTY key position across three languages (English, Spanish, and Dutch). Words with more right-side letters were rated as more positive in valence, on average, than words with more left-side letters: the QWERTY effect. This effect was strongest in new words coined after QWERTY was invented and was also found in pseudowords. Although these data are correlational, the discovery of a similar pattern across languages, which was strongest in neologisms, suggests that the QWERTY keyboard is shaping the meanings of words as people filter language through their fingers. Widespread typing introduces a new mechanism by which semantic changes in language can arise.

Frequent frames as a cue for grammatical categories in child directed speech.

PubMed

Mintz, Toben H

2003-11-01

This paper introduces the notion of frequent frames, distributional patterns based on co-occurrence patterns of words in sentences, then investigates the usefulness of this information in grammatical categorization. A frame is defined as two jointly occurring words with one word intervening. Qualitative and quantitative results from distributional analyses of six different corpora of child directed speech are presented in two experiments. In the analyses, words that were surrounded by the same frequent frame were categorized together. The results show that frequent frames yield very accurate categories. Furthermore, evidence from behavioral studies suggests that infants and adults are sensitive to frame-like units, and that adults use them to categorize words. This evidence, along with the success of frames in categorizing words, provides support for frames as a basis for the acquisition of grammatical categories.

A Critical Boundary to the Left-Hemisphere Advantage in Visual-Word Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Deason, R.G.; Marsolek, C.J.

2005-01-01

Two experiments explored boundary conditions for the ubiquitous left-hemisphere advantage in visual-word recognition. Subjects perceptually identified words presented directly to the left or right hemisphere. Strong left-hemisphere advantages were observed for UPPERCASE and lowercase words. However, only a weak effect was observed for…

Students' Choices between Typing and Handwriting in Examinations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mogey, Nora; Cowan, John; Paterson, Jessie; Purcell, Mike

2012-01-01

Keyboarding (typing) is a ubiquitous skill for most UK students, and most coursework essays must be word processed. However, few examinations, other than for students with disabilities, permit the use of a word processor. It is not known how students would respond given a free choice between handwriting and word processing in an essay examination.…

Lexical Competition is Enhanced in the Left Hemisphere: Evidence from Different Types of Orthographic Neighbors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Perea, Manuel; Acha, Joana; Fraga, Isabel

2008-01-01

Two divided visual field lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine the role of the cerebral hemispheres in orthographic neighborhood effects. In Experiment 1, we employed two types of words: words with many substitution neighbors (high-"N") and words with few substitution neighbors (low-"N"). Results showed a facilitative effect of…

Testing of Error-Correcting Sparse Permutation Channel Codes

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shcheglov, Kirill, V.; Orlov, Sergei S.

2008-01-01

A computer program performs Monte Carlo direct numerical simulations for testing sparse permutation channel codes, which offer strong error-correction capabilities at high code rates and are considered especially suitable for storage of digital data in holographic and volume memories. A word in a code of this type is characterized by, among other things, a sparseness parameter (M) and a fixed number (K) of 1 or "on" bits in a channel block length of N.

Strategic value-directed learning and memory in Alzheimer's disease and behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia.

PubMed

Wong, Stephanie; Irish, Muireann; Savage, Greg; Hodges, John R; Piguet, Olivier; Hornberger, Michael

2018-02-12

In healthy adults, the ability to prioritize learning of highly valued information is supported by executive functions and enhances subsequent memory retrieval for this information. In Alzheimer's disease (AD) and behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), marked deficits are evident in learning and memory, presenting in the context of executive dysfunction. It is unclear whether these patients show a typical memory bias for higher valued stimuli. We administered a value-directed word-list learning task to AD (n = 10) and bvFTD (n = 21) patients and age-matched healthy controls (n = 22). Each word was assigned a low, medium or high point value, and participants were instructed to maximize the number of points earned across three learning trials. Participants' memory for the words was assessed on a delayed recall trial, followed by a recognition test for the words and corresponding point values. Relative to controls, both patient groups showed poorer overall learning, delayed recall and recognition. Despite these impairments, patients with AD preferentially recalled high-value words on learning trials and showed significant value-directed enhancement of recognition memory for the words and points. Conversely, bvFTD patients did not prioritize recall of high-value words during learning trials, and this reduced selectivity was related to inhibitory dysfunction. Nonetheless, bvFTD patients showed value-directed enhancement of recognition memory for the point values, suggesting a mismatch between memory of high-value information and the ability to apply this in a motivationally salient context. Our findings demonstrate that value-directed enhancement of memory may persist to some degree in patients with dementia, despite pronounced deficits in learning and memory. © 2018 The British Psychological Society.

A Play on Words: Using Cognitive Computing as a Basis for AI Solvers in Word Puzzles

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Manzini, Thomas; Ellis, Simon; Hendler, James

2015-12-01

In this paper we offer a model, drawing inspiration from human cognition and based upon the pipeline developed for IBM's Watson, which solves clues in a type of word puzzle called syllacrostics. We briefly discuss its situation with respect to the greater field of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and how this process and model might be applied to other types of word puzzles. We present an overview of a system that has been developed to solve syllacrostics.

An object cue is more effective than a word in ERP-based detection of deception.

PubMed

Cutmore, Tim R H; Djakovic, Tatjana; Kebbell, Mark R; Shum, David H K

2009-03-01

Recent studies of deception have used a form of the guilty knowledge test along with the oddball P300 event-related potential (ERP) to uncover hidden memories. These studies typically have used words as the cuing stimuli. In the present study, a mock crime was enacted by participants to prime their episodic memory and different memory cue types (Words, Pictures of Objects and Faces) were created to investigate their relative efficacy in identifying guilt. A peak-to peak (p-p) P300 response was computed for rare known non-guilty item (target), rare guilty knowledge item (probe) and frequently presented unknown items (irrelevant). Difference in this P300 measure between the probe and irrelevant was the key dependent variable. Object cues were found to be the most effective, particularly at the parietal site. A bootstrap procedure commonly used to detect deception in individual participants by comparing their probe and irrelevant P300 p-p showed the object cues to provide the best discrimination. Furthermore, using all three of the cue types together provided high detection accuracy (94%). These results confirm prior findings on the utility of ERPs for detecting deception. More importantly, they provide support for the hypothesis that direct cueing with a picture of the crime object may be more effective than using a word (consistent with the picture superiority effect reported in the literature). Finally, a face cue (e.g., crime victim) may also provide a useful probe for detection of guilty knowledge but this stimulus form needs to be chosen with due caution.

[Connection between the evaluation of positive or negative valence and verbal responses to a lexical decision making task].

PubMed

Brouillet, Thibaut; Syssau, Arielle

2005-12-01

Evaluation of the positive or negative valence of a stimulus is an activity that is part of any emotional experience that has been mostly studied using the affective priming paradigm. When the prime and the target have the same valence (e.g. positive prime and positive target), the target response is facilitated as a function of opposing valence conditions (e.g. negative prime and positive target). These studies show that this evaluation is automatic but depends on the nature of the task's implied response because the priming effects are only observed for positive responses, not for negative responses. This result was explained in automatic judgmental tendency model put forth by Abelson and Rosenberg (1958) and Klauer and Stern (1992). In this model, affective priming assumes there is an overlap between both responses, the first response taking precedence as a function of the prime-target valence, and the second response one that is required by the task. We are assuming that another type of response was not foreseen under this model. In fact, upon activating the valence for each of the prime-target elements, two preliminary responses would be activated before the response on the prime-target valence relationship. These responses are directly linked to the prime and target evaluation independently of the prime-target relationship. This hypothesis can be linked to the larger hypothesis whereby the evaluative process is related to two distinct motivational systems corresponding to approach and avoidance behaviour responses (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1990; Neuman & Strack, 2000; Cacciopo, Piester & Bernston, 1993). In this study, we use the hypothesis that when a word leads to a positive valence evaluation, this favours a positive verbal response and inversely, a negative valence word favours a negative response. We are testing this hypothesis outside the affective priming paradigm to study to what extent evaluating a word, even when it is not primed, activates both motivational systems and consequently, positive verbal responses for approach and negative responses for avoidance. To validate this hypothesis, we are re-using both versions of the lexical decision task proposed by Wentura (2000). The classic version leads participants to a positive response for words, and the modified version leads to a no response. This experiment, carried out with thirty-two participants, measures the influence on response time of two experimental factors, the intrasubject valence of words (positive and negative) and the inter-subject factor (yes and no responses to words). Results show an interaction between the type of response and word valence. It is temporally more onerous to give a no response to positive words than to negative words. This result confirms that there is a direct relation between the evaluation of a valence stimulus and the response to this stimulus, a relation that had up to now been essentially observed with motor behaviours, and more rarely with verbal responses. We propose integrating the existence of this link between evaluation and verbal response (yes and no) in interpreting the effects of affective priming.

The Effects of Visual Attention Span and Phonological Decoding in Reading Comprehension in Dyslexia: A Path Analysis.

PubMed

Chen, Chen; Schneps, Matthew H; Masyn, Katherine E; Thomson, Jennifer M

2016-11-01

Increasing evidence has shown visual attention span to be a factor, distinct from phonological skills, that explains single-word identification (pseudo-word/word reading) performance in dyslexia. Yet, little is known about how well visual attention span explains text comprehension. Observing reading comprehension in a sample of 105 high school students with dyslexia, we used a pathway analysis to examine the direct and indirect path between visual attention span and reading comprehension while controlling for other factors such as phonological awareness, letter identification, short-term memory, IQ and age. Integrating phonemic decoding efficiency skills in the analytic model, this study aimed to disentangle how visual attention span and phonological skills work together in reading comprehension for readers with dyslexia. We found visual attention span to have a significant direct effect on more difficult reading comprehension but not on an easier level. It also had a significant direct effect on pseudo-word identification but not on word identification. In addition, we found that visual attention span indirectly explains reading comprehension through pseudo-word reading and word reading skills. This study supports the hypothesis that at least part of the dyslexic profile can be explained by visual attention abilities. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Influence of Child-Directed Speech on Word Learning and Comprehension.

PubMed

Foursha-Stevenson, Cassandra; Schembri, Taylor; Nicoladis, Elena; Eriksen, Cody

2017-04-01

This paper describes an investigation into the function of child-directed speech (CDS) across development. In the first experiment, 10-21-month-olds were presented with familiar words in CDS and trained on novel words in CDS or adult-directed speech (ADS). All children preferred the matching display for familiar words. However, only older toddlers in the CDS condition preferred the matching display for novel words. In Experiment 2, children 3-6 years of age were presented with a sentence comprehension task in CDS or ADS. Older children performed better overall than younger children with 5- and 6-year-olds performing above chance regardless of speech condition, while 3- and 4-year-olds only performed above chance when the sentences were presented in CDS. These findings provide support for the theory that CDS is most effective at the beginning of acquisition for particular constructions (e.g. vocabulary acquisition, syntactic comprehension) rather than at a particular age or for a particular task.

Investigating the functional neuroanatomy of concrete and abstract word processing through direct electric stimulation (DES) during awake surgery.

PubMed

Orena, E F; Caldiroli, D; Acerbi, F; Barazzetta, I; Papagno, C

2018-06-05

Neuropsychological, neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies demonstrate that abstract and concrete word processing relies not only on the activity of a common bilateral network but also on dedicated networks. The neuropsychological literature has shown that a selective sparing of abstract relative to concrete words can be documented in lesions of the left anterior temporal regions. We investigated concrete and abstract word processing in 10 patients undergoing direct electrical stimulation (DES) for brain mapping during awake surgery in the left hemisphere. A lexical decision and a concreteness judgment task were added to the neuropsychological assessment during intra-operative monitoring. On the concreteness judgment, DES delivered over the inferior frontal gyrus significantly decreased abstract word accuracy while accuracy for concrete words decreased when the anterior temporal cortex was stimulated. These results are consistent with a lexical-semantic model that distinguishes between concrete and abstract words related to different neural substrates in the left hemisphere.

Word embeddings and recurrent neural networks based on Long-Short Term Memory nodes in supervised biomedical word sense disambiguation.

PubMed

Jimeno Yepes, Antonio

2017-09-01

Word sense disambiguation helps identifying the proper sense of ambiguous words in text. With large terminologies such as the UMLS Metathesaurus ambiguities appear and highly effective disambiguation methods are required. Supervised learning algorithm methods are used as one of the approaches to perform disambiguation. Features extracted from the context of an ambiguous word are used to identify the proper sense of such a word. The type of features have an impact on machine learning methods, thus affect disambiguation performance. In this work, we have evaluated several types of features derived from the context of the ambiguous word and we have explored as well more global features derived from MEDLINE using word embeddings. Results show that word embeddings improve the performance of more traditional features and allow as well using recurrent neural network classifiers based on Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) nodes. The combination of unigrams and word embeddings with an SVM sets a new state of the art performance with a macro accuracy of 95.97 in the MSH WSD data set. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Speed-Accuracy Trade-Off in Skilled Typewriting: Decomposing the Contributions of Hierarchical Control Loops

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yamaguchi, Motonori; Crump, Matthew J. C.; Logan, Gordon D.

2013-01-01

Typing performance involves hierarchically structured control systems: At the higher level, an outer loop generates a word or a series of words to be typed; at the lower level, an inner loop activates the keystrokes comprising the word in parallel and executes them in the correct order. The present experiments examined contributions of the outer-…

Hippocampal damage equally impairs memory for single items and memory for conjunctions.

PubMed

Stark, Craig E L; Squire, Larry R

2003-01-01

In a prior study of continuous recognition performance, data were reported in support of the hypothesis that the hippocampus is not needed to remember the individual components of a stimulus but is important for remembering associations between its components (Kroll et al. 1996. J Mem Lang 35:176-196). Patients with left hippocampal damage were able to endorse recently encountered words and to reject novel words, as well as disyllabic words in which one of the syllables had been previously encountered. However, they failed to reject words in which both syllables had been encountered independently in different words. We present data from five experiments designed to examine this finding in more detail. In each experiment, five patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and eight controls were tested using the same protocol as Kroll et al. (1996). On each trial, a two-component stimulus was presented. Stimuli could be entirely novel, novel with one previously encountered (repeated) component, novel but with both components repeated, or a true repetition. The first experiment was a direct replication using the same disyllabic words as Kroll et al. (1996). The second experiment used pseudo-words, constructed of two monosyllabic words (e.g., jambark). The third experiment used the same pairs of monosyllabic words, but presented separately on the screen to encourage participants to treat each component independently. The fourth experiment used pairs of objects, and the fifth experiment used face-house pairs. In all five experiments, patients with hippocampal damage exhibited impaired recognition memory. The impairment extended across all trial types with no evidence that hippocampal damage selectively (or disproportionately) impaired the associative or conjunctive component of memory. We discuss our findings in the light of the work by Kroll et al. (1996) and other recent neuropsychological, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging studies of hippocampal function and single-item and associative memory.

Line and word bisection in right-brain-damaged patients with left spatial neglect.

PubMed

Veronelli, Laura; Vallar, Giuseppe; Marinelli, Chiara V; Primativo, Silvia; Arduino, Lisa S

2014-01-01

Right-brain-damaged patients with left unilateral spatial neglect typically set the mid-point of horizontal lines to the right of the objective center. By contrast, healthy participants exhibit a reversed bias (pseudoneglect). The same effect has been described also when bisecting orthographic strings. In particular, for this latter kind of stimulus, some recent studies have shown that visuo-perceptual characteristics, like stimulus length, may contribute to both the magnitude and the direction bias of the bisection performance (Arduino et al. in Neuropsychologia 48:2140-2146, 2010). Furthermore, word stress was shown to modulate reading performances in both healthy participants, and patients with left spatial neglect and neglect dyslexia (Cubelli and Beschin in Brain Lang 95:319-326, 2005; Rusconi et al. in Neuropsychology 18:135-140, 2004). In Experiment I, 22 right-brain-damaged patients (11 with left visuo-spatial neglect) and 11 matched neurologically unimpaired control participants were asked to set the subjective mid-point of word letter strings, and of lines of comparable length. Most patients exhibited an overall disproportionate rightward bias, sensitive to stimulus length, and similar for words and lines. Importantly, in individual patients, biases differed according to stimulus type (words vs. lines), indicating that at least partly different mechanisms may be involved. In Experiment II, the putative effects on the bisection bias of ortho-phonological information (i.e., word stress endings), arising from the non-neglected right hand side of the stimulus were investigated. The orthographic cue induced a rightward shift of the perceived mid-point in both patients and controls, with short words stressed on the antepenultimate final sequence inducing a smaller rightward deviation with respect to short words stressed on the penultimate final sequence. In conclusion, partly different mechanisms, including both visuo-spatial and lexical factors, may support line and word bisection performance of right-brain-damaged patients with left spatial neglect, and healthy participants.

Who chooses, who uses, who rates: the impact of agency on electronic word-of-mouth about hospitals stays.

PubMed

Drevs, Florian; Hinz, Vera

2014-01-01

Patients' agents rather than patients themselves often choose hospitals and rehabilitation centers and evaluate inpatient stays. Thus, online reviews of a hospital may reflect a service experience the patient is not responsible for in two ways. First, a patient may evaluate a hospital that a physician as agent has selected, although he still received the service and is qualified to evaluate it. Second, relatives who may not be directly involved in the inpatient stay may write online reviews, which reflect their own experiences and evaluations. The study analyzes patient satisfaction data in online hospitals reviews and patients' underlying motives for electronic word-of-mouth according to the type of hospital admission and the perspective of the reviewer. The study uses a sample of 822 reviews from an online platform for hospital reviews and primary data generated by an online survey distributed to the writers of these reviews. Patients who choose a hospital themselves write more positive online reviews than those with an other-directed choice. Relatives' online reviews more often deal with negative hospital experiences and are more likely to reflect a desire for retaliation. The study results imply that medical care centers (hospitals and rehabilitation facilities) should pay more attention to agency by focusing on the needs and perceptions of relatives who often act as the critical voice of patients in electronic word-of-mouth behavior.

Decoding and disrupting left midfusiform gyrus activity during word reading

PubMed Central

Hirshorn, Elizabeth A.; Ward, Michael J.; Fiez, Julie A.; Ghuman, Avniel Singh

2016-01-01

The nature of the visual representation for words has been fiercely debated for over 150 y. We used direct brain stimulation, pre- and postsurgical behavioral measures, and intracranial electroencephalography to provide support for, and elaborate upon, the visual word form hypothesis. This hypothesis states that activity in the left midfusiform gyrus (lmFG) reflects visually organized information about words and word parts. In patients with electrodes placed directly in their lmFG, we found that disrupting lmFG activity through stimulation, and later surgical resection in one of the patients, led to impaired perception of whole words and letters. Furthermore, using machine-learning methods to analyze the electrophysiological data from these electrodes, we found that information contained in early lmFG activity was consistent with an orthographic similarity space. Finally, the lmFG contributed to at least two distinguishable stages of word processing, an early stage that reflects gist-level visual representation sensitive to orthographic statistics, and a later stage that reflects more precise representation sufficient for the individuation of orthographic word forms. These results provide strong support for the visual word form hypothesis and demonstrate that across time the lmFG is involved in multiple stages of orthographic representation. PMID:27325763

Decoding and disrupting left midfusiform gyrus activity during word reading.

PubMed

Hirshorn, Elizabeth A; Li, Yuanning; Ward, Michael J; Richardson, R Mark; Fiez, Julie A; Ghuman, Avniel Singh

2016-07-19

The nature of the visual representation for words has been fiercely debated for over 150 y. We used direct brain stimulation, pre- and postsurgical behavioral measures, and intracranial electroencephalography to provide support for, and elaborate upon, the visual word form hypothesis. This hypothesis states that activity in the left midfusiform gyrus (lmFG) reflects visually organized information about words and word parts. In patients with electrodes placed directly in their lmFG, we found that disrupting lmFG activity through stimulation, and later surgical resection in one of the patients, led to impaired perception of whole words and letters. Furthermore, using machine-learning methods to analyze the electrophysiological data from these electrodes, we found that information contained in early lmFG activity was consistent with an orthographic similarity space. Finally, the lmFG contributed to at least two distinguishable stages of word processing, an early stage that reflects gist-level visual representation sensitive to orthographic statistics, and a later stage that reflects more precise representation sufficient for the individuation of orthographic word forms. These results provide strong support for the visual word form hypothesis and demonstrate that across time the lmFG is involved in multiple stages of orthographic representation.

Serial Recall, Word Frequency, and Mixed Lists: The Influence of Item Arrangement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miller, Leonie M.; Roodenrys, Steven

2012-01-01

Studies of the effect of word frequency in the serial recall task show that lists of high-frequency words are better recalled than lists of low-frequency words; however, when high- and low-frequency words are alternated within a list, there is no difference in the level of recall for the two types of words, and recall is intermediate between lists…

Directed Forgetting in Direct and Indirect Tests of Memory: Seeking Evidence of Retrieval Inhibition Using Electrophysiological Measures

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Van Hooff, Johanna C.; Whitaker, T. Aisling; Ford, Ruth M.

2009-01-01

We investigated whether directed forgetting as elicited by the item-cueing method results solely from "differential rehearsal" of to-be-remembered vs. to-be-forgotten words or, additionally, from "inhibitory" processes that actively impair retrieval of to-be-forgotten words. During study, participants (N = 24) were instructed to remember half of a…

Phonology without semantics? Good enough for verbal short-term memory. Evidence from a patient with semantic dementia.

PubMed

Papagno, Costanza; Vernice, Mirta; Cecchetto, Carlo

2013-03-01

There is considerable evidence that long-term knowledge has an influence on short-term memory (STM) performance. This reflects the activation of long-term representations involved in perceiving and comprehending spoken language. Still, this type of long-term knowledge might be of two different kinds. STM performance might be facilitated by information about the meaning of the word, or, alternatively, by familiarity with its phonological form. We investigated these two alternatives by assessing word span in MC, a patient with semantic dementia. Four different lists of words were used: known words, words whose phonological form was known by the patient although she could not report its meaning, words that the patient did not recognize as words and judged as nonwords, nonwords. The patient's performance was compared to that of six matched controls. MC did not differ from controls in the first two types of lists and performed at the same level with both, while for words whose phonological form was unknown (and therefore not recognized as words) her performance was comparable to that with nonwords; also, with this type of item, she produced significantly more phonemic substitutions than controls. The results show that long-term knowledge facilitates immediate serial recall. However, this facilitation is due to familiarity with phonological representations rather than to knowledge of meaning. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Constructivism in Reading Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stanovich, Keith

1994-01-01

In the development of word recognition skills, self-discovery may not be the most efficacious mode of learning, and it may be useful to isolate or fractionate cognitive components. Successful intervention directed at word recognition involves exogenous constructivism, in which explicit instruction and teacher-directed strategy teaching are not…

How different location modes influence responses in a Simon-like task.

PubMed

Luo, Chunming; Proctor, Robert W

2017-11-01

Spatial information can be conveyed not only by stimulus position but by the meaning of a location word or direction of an arrow. We examined whether all the location-, arrow- and word-based Simon effects or some of them can be observed when a location word or an arrow is presented eccentrically and a left-right keypress is made to indicate its ink color. Results showed that only the location-based Simon effect was observed for location words, whereas an additional smaller arrow-based Simon effect, compared to the location-based Simon effect was observed, for arrows. These results showed spatial location, arrow direction, and location word stimulus dimensions affect response position codes in a spatial-to-verbal priority order, consistent with the possibility that they can activate mode-specific spatial representations.

Structured Semantic Knowledge Can Emerge Automatically from Predicting Word Sequences in Child-Directed Speech

PubMed Central

Huebner, Philip A.; Willits, Jon A.

2018-01-01

Previous research has suggested that distributional learning mechanisms may contribute to the acquisition of semantic knowledge. However, distributional learning mechanisms, statistical learning, and contemporary “deep learning” approaches have been criticized for being incapable of learning the kind of abstract and structured knowledge that many think is required for acquisition of semantic knowledge. In this paper, we show that recurrent neural networks, trained on noisy naturalistic speech to children, do in fact learn what appears to be abstract and structured knowledge. We trained two types of recurrent neural networks (Simple Recurrent Network, and Long Short-Term Memory) to predict word sequences in a 5-million-word corpus of speech directed to children ages 0–3 years old, and assessed what semantic knowledge they acquired. We found that learned internal representations are encoding various abstract grammatical and semantic features that are useful for predicting word sequences. Assessing the organization of semantic knowledge in terms of the similarity structure, we found evidence of emergent categorical and hierarchical structure in both models. We found that the Long Short-term Memory (LSTM) and SRN are both learning very similar kinds of representations, but the LSTM achieved higher levels of performance on a quantitative evaluation. We also trained a non-recurrent neural network, Skip-gram, on the same input to compare our results to the state-of-the-art in machine learning. We found that Skip-gram achieves relatively similar performance to the LSTM, but is representing words more in terms of thematic compared to taxonomic relations, and we provide reasons why this might be the case. Our findings show that a learning system that derives abstract, distributed representations for the purpose of predicting sequential dependencies in naturalistic language may provide insight into emergence of many properties of the developing semantic system. PMID:29520243

The Colour of Words.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Farrar, Bernice Lever

Students from the ages of 13 or 14 onward need to know the "colours of words" which can let them live fully in the rainbow of life, thus eliminating student fears associated with written language and of being pawns of those who have the power of words, especially written words. Colour coding the eight basic types of work that words can…

Using the Word Processor in Writing Groups.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Melia, Josie

Writing groups can use word processors or microcomputers in many different types of writing activities. Four hour-long sessions at a word processor with the help of a skilled word processing tutor have been found to be sufficient to provide a working knowledge of word processing. When two or three students enrolled in a writing class are assigned…

Lexical Representation of Schwa Words: Two Mackerels, but Only One Salami

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burki, Audrey; Gaskell, M. Gareth

2012-01-01

The present study investigated the lexical representations underlying the production of English schwa words. Two types of schwa words were compared: words with a schwa in poststress position (e.g., mack"e"rel), whose schwa and reduced variants differ in a categorical way, and words with a schwa in prestress position (e.g.,…

When Does Length Cause the Word Length Effect?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jalbert, Annie; Neath, Ian; Bireta, Tamra J.; Surprenant, Aimee M.

2011-01-01

The word length effect, the finding that lists of short words are better recalled than lists of long words, has been termed one of the benchmark findings that any theory of immediate memory must account for. Indeed, the effect led directly to the development of working memory and the phonological loop, and it is viewed as the best remaining…

Categorizing Words Using "Frequent Frames": What Cross-Linguistic Analyses Reveal about Distributional Acquisition Strategies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chemla, Emmanuel; Mintz, Toben H.; Bernal, Savita; Christophe, Anne

2009-01-01

Mintz (2003 ) described a distributional environment called a frame, defined as the co-occurrence of two context words with one intervening target word. Analyses of English child-directed speech showed that words that fell within any frequently occurring frame consistently belonged to the same grammatical category (e.g. noun, verb, adjective,…

Caregivers' Gestures Direct Infant Attention during Early Word Learning: The Importance of Dynamic Synchrony

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rader, Nancy de Villiers; Zukow-Goldring, Patricia

2012-01-01

How do young infants discover word meanings? We have theorized that caregivers educate infants' attention (cf. Gibson, J.J., 1966) by synchronizing the saying of a word with a dynamic gesture displaying the object/referent (Zukow-Goldring, 1997). Detecting an amodal invariant across gesture and speech brackets the word and object within the…

[A study on English loan words in French plastic surgery].

PubMed

Hansson, E; Tegelberg, E

2014-10-01

The French language is less and less used as an international scientific language and many French researchers publish their work in English. Nowadays, Annales de Chirurgie Plastique Esthétique is the only international plastic surgical journal published completely in French. The use of English loan words in French plastic surgery has never been studied. The aim of this study was to describe the frequency and types of English loan words in French plastic surgery. A corpus consisting of all the articles in a number of Annales de Chirurgie Plastique Esthethique, chosen by default, was created. The frequency of English loan words was calculated and the types of words were analysed. The corpus contains 367 (0.8%) English loan words. Most of them are non-integrated loan words and calques. The majority of the plastic surgical loan words describe surgical techniques. The French plastic surgical language seems to be influenced by English. The usage of loan words does not always follow the recommendations and the usage is sometimes ambiguous. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Word Processors: A Look at Four Popular Programs.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Press, Larry

1980-01-01

Described are types of programs used for processing text (editors, print formatters, and word processors), followed by the comparison of four word-processing packages: Auto Scribe, Electric Pencil, Magic Want and Word Star. With the exception of Auto Scribe, all programs reviewed are CP/M versions. (KC)

Exploring Differential Effects across Two Decoding Treatments on Item-Level Transfer in Children with Significant Word Reading Difficulties: A New Approach for Testing Intervention Elements

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Steacy, Laura M.; Elleman, Amy M.; Lovett, Maureen W.; Compton, Donald L.

2016-01-01

In English, gains in decoding skill do not map directly onto increases in word reading. However, beyond the Self-Teaching Hypothesis, little is known about the transfer of decoding skills to word reading. In this study, we offer a new approach to testing specific decoding elements on transfer to word reading. To illustrate, we modeled word-reading…

Intonation and dialog context as constraints for speech recognition.

PubMed

Taylor, P; King, S; Isard, S; Wright, H

1998-01-01

This paper describes a way of using intonation and dialog context to improve the performance of an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system. Our experiments were run on the DCIEM Maptask corpus, a corpus of spontaneous task-oriented dialog speech. This corpus has been tagged according to a dialog analysis scheme that assigns each utterance to one of 12 "move types," such as "acknowledge," "query-yes/no" or "instruct." Most ASR systems use a bigram language model to constrain the possible sequences of words that might be recognized. Here we use a separate bigram language model for each move type. We show that when the "correct" move-specific language model is used for each utterance in the test set, the word error rate of the recognizer drops. Of course when the recognizer is run on previously unseen data, it cannot know in advance what move type the speaker has just produced. To determine the move type we use an intonation model combined with a dialog model that puts constraints on possible sequences of move types, as well as the speech recognizer likelihoods for the different move-specific models. In the full recognition system, the combination of automatic move type recognition with the move specific language models reduces the overall word error rate by a small but significant amount when compared with a baseline system that does not take intonation or dialog acts into account. Interestingly, the word error improvement is restricted to "initiating" move types, where word recognition is important. In "response" move types, where the important information is conveyed by the move type itself--for example, positive versus negative response--there is no word error improvement, but recognition of the response types themselves is good. The paper discusses the intonation model, the language models, and the dialog model in detail and describes the architecture in which they are combined.

Prosodic disambiguation of noun/verb homophones in child-directed speech.

PubMed

Conwell, Erin

2017-05-01

One strategy that children might use to sort words into grammatical categories such as noun and verb is distributional bootstrapping, in which local co-occurrence information is used to distinguish between categories. Words that can be used in more than one grammatical category could be problematic for this approach. Using naturalistic corpus data, this study asks whether noun and verb uses of ambiguous words might differ prosodically as a function of their grammatical category in child-directed speech. The results show that noun and verb uses of ambiguous words in sentence-medial positions do differ from one another in terms of duration, vowel duration, pitch change, and vowel quality measures. However, sentence-final tokens are not different as a function of the category in which they were used. The availability of prosodic cues to category in natural child-directed speech could allow learners using a distributional bootstrapping approach to avoid conflating grammatical categories.

Eye Movements and the Use of Parafoveal Word Length Information in Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Juhasz, Barbara J.; White, Sarah J.; Liversedge, Simon P.; Rayner, Keith

2008-01-01

Eye movements were monitored in 4 experiments that explored the role of parafoveal word length in reading. The experiments employed a type of compound word where the deletion of a letter results in 2 short words (e.g., backhand, back and). The boundary technique (K. Rayner, 1975) was employed to manipulate word length information in the parafovea.…

Manipulating Instructions Strategically Affects Reliance on the Ventral-Lexical Reading Stream: Converging Evidence from Neuroimaging and Reaction Time

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cummine, Jacqueline; Gould, Layla; Zhou, Crystal; Hrybouski, Stan; Siddiqi, Zohaib; Chouinard, Brea; Borowsky, Ron

2013-01-01

Neurobiology of reading research has yet to explore whether reliance on the ventral-lexical stream during word reading can be enhanced by the instructed reading strategy, or whether it is impervious to such strategies. We examined Instructions: "name all" vs. "name words" (based on spelling), Word Type: "regular words" vs. "exception words", and…

A WordNet-Based Near-Synonyms and Similar-Looking Word Learning System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sun, Koun-Tem; Huang, Yueh-Min; Liu, Ming-Chi

2011-01-01

Near-Synonyms and Similar-Looking (NSSL) words can create confusion for English as Foreign Language Learners as a result of a type of lexical error that often occurs when they confuse similar-looking words that are near synonyms to have the same meaning. Particularly, this may occur if the similar-looking words have the same translated meaning.…

The Magic of Words Reconsidered: Investigating the Automaticity of Reading Color-Neutral Words in the Stroop Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kinoshita, Sachiko; De Wit, Bianca; Norris, Dennis

2017-01-01

In 2 variants of the color-word Stroop task, we compared 5 types of color-neutral distractors--real words (e.g., "HAT"), pseudowords (e.g., "HIX"), consonant strings (e.g., "HDK"), symbol strings (e.g., #$%), and a row of Xs (e.g., "XXX")--as well as incongruent color words (e.g., "GREEN" displayed…

Ixpantepec Nieves Mixtec Word Prosody

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Carroll, Lucien Serapio

This dissertation presents a phonological description and acoustic analysis of the word prosody of Ixpantepec Nieves Mixtec, which involves both a complex tone system and a default stress system. The analysis of Nieves Mixtec word prosody is complicated by a close association between morphological structure and prosodic structure, and by the interactions between word prosody and phonation type, which has both contrastive and non-contrastive roles in the phonology. I contextualize these systems within the phonology of Nieves Mixtec as a whole, within the literature on other Mixtec varieties, and within the literature on cross-linguistic prosodic typology. The literature on prosodic typology indicates that stress is necessarily defined abstractly, as structured prominence realized differently in each language. Descriptions of stress in other Mixtec varieties widely report default stress on the initial syllable of the canonical bimoraic root, though some descriptions suggest final stress or mobile stress. I first present phonological evidence---from distributional restrictions, phonological processes, and loanword adaptation---that Nieves Mixtec word prosody does involve a stress system, based on trochaic feet aligned to the root. I then present an acoustic study comparing stressed syllables to unstressed syllables, for ten potential acoustic correlates of stress. The results indicate that the acoustic correlates of stress in Nieves Mixtec include segmental duration, intensity and periodicity. Building on analyses of other Mixtec tone systems, I show that the distribution of tone and the tone processes in Nieves Mixtec support an analysis in which morae may bear H, M or L tone, where M tone is underlyingly unspecified, and each morpheme may sponsor a final +H or +L floating tone. Bimoraic roots thus host up to two linked tones and one floating tone, while monomoraic clitics host just one linked tone and one floating tone, and tonal morphemes are limited to a single floating tone. I then present three studies describing the acoustic realization of tone and comparing the realization of tone in different prosodic types. The findings of these studies include a strong directional asymmetry in tonal coarticulation, increased duration at the word or phrase boundary, phonation differences among the tone categories, and F0 differences between the glottalization categories.

Word problems: a review of linguistic and numerical factors contributing to their difficulty

PubMed Central

Daroczy, Gabriella; Wolska, Magdalena; Meurers, Walt Detmar; Nuerk, Hans-Christoph

2015-01-01

Word problems (WPs) belong to the most difficult and complex problem types that pupils encounter during their elementary-level mathematical development. In the classroom setting, they are often viewed as merely arithmetic tasks; however, recent research shows that a number of linguistic verbal components not directly related to arithmetic contribute greatly to their difficulty. In this review, we will distinguish three components of WP difficulty: (i) the linguistic complexity of the problem text itself, (ii) the numerical complexity of the arithmetic problem, and (iii) the relation between the linguistic and numerical complexity of a problem. We will discuss the impact of each of these factors on WP difficulty and motivate the need for a high degree of control in stimuli design for experiments that manipulate WP difficulty for a given age group. PMID:25883575

'Who's a good boy?!' Dogs prefer naturalistic dog-directed speech.

PubMed

Benjamin, Alex; Slocombe, Katie

2018-05-01

Infant-directed speech (IDS) is a special speech register thought to aid language acquisition and improve affiliation in human infants. Although IDS shares some of its properties with dog-directed speech (DDS), it is unclear whether the production of DDS is functional, or simply an overgeneralisation of IDS within Western cultures. One recent study found that, while puppies attended more to a script read with DDS compared with adult-directed speech (ADS), adult dogs displayed no preference. In contrast, using naturalistic speech and a more ecologically valid set-up, we found that adult dogs attended to and showed more affiliative behaviour towards a speaker of DDS than of ADS. To explore whether this preference for DDS was modulated by the dog-specific words typically used in DDS, the acoustic features (prosody) of DDS or a combination of the two, we conducted a second experiment. Here the stimuli from experiment 1 were produced with reversed prosody, meaning the prosody and content of ADS and DDS were mismatched. The results revealed no significant effect of speech type, or content, suggesting that it is maybe the combination of the acoustic properties and the dog-related content of DDS that modulates the preference shown for naturalistic DDS. Overall, the results of this study suggest that naturalistic DDS, comprising of both dog-directed prosody and dog-relevant content words, improves dogs' attention and may strengthen the affiliative bond between humans and their pets.

The inhibition of proactive interference among adults with Internet gaming disorder.

PubMed

Ko, Chih-Hung; Wang, Peng-Wei; Liu, Tai-Ling; Yen, Cheng-Fang; Chen, Cheng-Sheng; Yen, Ju-Yu

2015-06-01

Cognitive control plays a pivotal role in the mechanism of addictive behavior. The aim of the study was to evaluate the deficit in inhibition of proactive interference of Internet gaming disorder (IGD) using a directed forgetting task among young adults. A total of 64 participants with IGD and 69 controls were recruited on a university campus. They completed the directed forgetting task for online gaming words and neutral words. The results demonstrated that the IGD group had a poorer performance on the directed forgetting task, and this represented a deficit in inhibition of proactive interference. They also had a higher tendency to remember online gaming words rather than neutral words in comparison with the control group. This demonstrated memory bias toward online gaming words. These results suggested that more attention should be paid to deficits in inhibition of proactive interference and memory bias toward gaming content when treating subjects with IGD. Furthermore, it is essential and practical to prevent exposure to online gaming-related cues when endeavoring to control online gaming behavior. © 2014 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.

Real-time multi-mode neutron multiplicity counter

DOEpatents

Rowland, Mark S; Alvarez, Raymond A

2013-02-26

Embodiments are directed to a digital data acquisition method that collects data regarding nuclear fission at high rates and performs real-time preprocessing of large volumes of data into directly useable forms for use in a system that performs non-destructive assaying of nuclear material and assemblies for mass and multiplication of special nuclear material (SNM). Pulses from a multi-detector array are fed in parallel to individual inputs that are tied to individual bits in a digital word. Data is collected by loading a word at the individual bit level in parallel, to reduce the latency associated with current shift-register systems. The word is read at regular intervals, all bits simultaneously, with no manipulation. The word is passed to a number of storage locations for subsequent processing, thereby removing the front-end problem of pulse pileup. The word is used simultaneously in several internal processing schemes that assemble the data in a number of more directly useable forms. The detector includes a multi-mode counter that executes a number of different count algorithms in parallel to determine different attributes of the count data.

Cross-format physical similarity effects and their implications for the numerical cognition architecture

PubMed Central

Cohen, Dale J.; Warren, Erin; Blanc-Goldhammer, Daryn

2013-01-01

The sound |faiv| is visually depicted as a written number word “five” and as an Arabic digit “5.” Here, we present four experiments – two quantity same/different experiments and two magnitude comparison experiments – that assess whether auditory number words (|faiv|), written number words (“five”), and Arabic digits (“5”) directly activate one another and/or their associated quantity. The quantity same/different experiments reveal that the auditory number words, written number words, and Arabic digits directly activate one another without activating their associated quantity. That is, there are cross-format physical similarity effects but no numerical distance effects. The cross-format magnitude comparison experiments reveal significant effects of both physical similarity and numerical distance. We discuss these results in relation to the architecture of numerical cognition. PMID:23624377

Development of a hybrid mental speller combining EEG-based brain-computer interface and webcam-based eye-tracking.

PubMed

Lee, Jun-Hak; Lim, Jeong-Hwan; Hwang, Han-Jeong; Im, Chang-Hwan

2013-01-01

The main goal of this study was to develop a hybrid mental spelling system combining a steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) technology and a webcam-based eye-tracker, which utilizes information from the brain electrical activity and eye gaze direction at the same time. In the hybrid mental spelling system, a character decoded using SSVEP was not typed if the position of the selected character was not matched with the eye direction information ('left' or 'right') obtained from the eye-tracker. Thus, the users did not need to correct a misspelled character using a 'BACKSPACE' key. To verify the feasibility of the developed hybrid mental spelling system, we conducted online experiments with ten healthy participants. Each participant was asked to type 15 English words consisting of 68 characters. As a result, 16.6 typing errors could be prevented on average, demonstrating that the implemented hybrid mental spelling system could enhance the practicality of our mental spelling system.

Modelling the Effects of Semantic Ambiguity in Word Recognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rodd, Jennifer M.; Gaskell, M. Gareth; Marslen-Wilson, William D.

2004-01-01

Most words in English are ambiguous between different interpretations; words can mean different things in different contexts. We investigate the implications of different types of semantic ambiguity for connectionist models of word recognition. We present a model in which there is competition to activate distributed semantic representations. The…

A Neurocomputational Account of Taxonomic Responding and Fast Mapping in Early Word Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mayor, Julien; Plunkett, Kim

2010-01-01

We present a neurocomputational model with self-organizing maps that accounts for the emergence of taxonomic responding and fast mapping in early word learning, as well as a rapid increase in the rate of acquisition of words observed in late infancy. The quality and efficiency of generalization of word-object associations is directly related to…

An Investigation into the Culture-Loaded Words Learning by English Majors in a Vocational College in China

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yuewu, Lin; Qin, Yang

2015-01-01

Culture-loaded words and expressions are loaded with specific national cultural information and indicate deep national culture. They are the direct and indirect reflection of national culture in the structure of words and expressions. The improper use of culture-loaded words often leads to misunderstanding in cross-cultural communication. However,…

A Comparison of Medical Terminology Exam Scores of Students Studying by Computer with Students Studying by Slide-Tape.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dunkle, Sondra

Learning medical terminology requires an ability to memorize word definitions, to spell the words, and to know the meaning of word parts so that new words can be analyzed. Students who enroll in the medical terminology course at California State University, Fresno, come from a variety of backgrounds, abilities, and directions. Past experience…

Lessons from Television: Children's Word Learning When Viewing.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rice, Mabel L.; Woodsmall, Linda

1988-01-01

Preschoolers were assigned to experimental and control groups to investigate whether they could learn novel words when viewing television and whether the learning was influenced by age or type of word. (PCB)

Examining the direct and indirect effects of visual-verbal paired associate learning on Chinese word reading.

PubMed

Georgiou, George; Liu, Cuina; Xu, Shiyang

2017-08-01

Associative learning, traditionally measured with paired associate learning (PAL) tasks, has been found to predict reading ability in several languages. However, it remains unclear whether it also predicts word reading in Chinese, which is known for its ambiguous print-sound correspondences, and whether its effects are direct or indirect through the effects of other reading-related skills such as phonological awareness and rapid naming. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the direct and indirect effects of visual-verbal PAL on word reading in an unselected sample of Chinese children followed from the second to the third kindergarten year. A sample of 141 second-year kindergarten children (71 girls and 70 boys; mean age=58.99months, SD=3.17) were followed for a year and were assessed at both times on measures of visual-verbal PAL, rapid naming, and phonological awareness. In the third kindergarten year, they were also assessed on word reading. The results of path analysis showed that visual-verbal PAL exerted a significant direct effect on word reading that was independent of the effects of phonological awareness and rapid naming. However, it also exerted significant indirect effects through phonological awareness. Taken together, these findings suggest that variations in cross-modal associative learning (as measured by visual-verbal PAL) place constraints on the development of word recognition skills irrespective of the characteristics of the orthography children are learning to read. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Masked syllable priming effects in word and picture naming in Chinese.

PubMed

You, Wenping; Zhang, Qingfang; Verdonschot, Rinus G

2012-01-01

Four experiments investigated the role of the syllable in Chinese spoken word production. Chen, Chen and Ferrand (2003) reported a syllable priming effect when primes and targets shared the first syllable using a masked priming paradigm in Chinese. Our Experiment 1 was a direct replication of Chen et al.'s (2003) Experiment 3 employing CV (e.g., ,/ba2.ying2/, strike camp) and CVG (e.g., ,/bai2.shou3/, white haired) syllable types. Experiment 2 tested the syllable priming effect using different syllable types: e.g., CV (,/qi4.qiu2/, balloon) and CVN (,/qing1.ting2/, dragonfly). Experiment 3 investigated this issue further using line drawings of common objects as targets that were preceded either by a CV (e.g., ,/qi3/, attempt), or a CVN (e.g., ,/qing2/, affection) prime. Experiment 4 further examined the priming effect by a comparison between CV or CVN priming and an unrelated priming condition using CV-NX (e.g., ,/mi2.ni3/, mini) and CVN-CX (e.g., ,/min2.ju1/, dwellings) as target words. These four experiments consistently found that CV targets were named faster when preceded by CV primes than when they were preceded by CVG, CVN or unrelated primes, whereas CVG or CVN targets showed the reverse pattern. These results indicate that the priming effect critically depends on the match between the structure of the prime and that of the first syllable of the target. The effect obtained in this study was consistent across different stimuli and different tasks (word and picture naming), and provides more conclusive and consistent data regarding the role of the syllable in Chinese speech production.

Identifying selective visual attention biases related to fear of pain by tracking eye movements within a dot-probe paradigm.

PubMed

Yang, Zhou; Jackson, Todd; Gao, Xiao; Chen, Hong

2012-08-01

This research examined selective biases in visual attention related to fear of pain by tracking eye movements (EM) toward pain-related stimuli among the pain-fearful. EM of 21 young adults scoring high on a fear of pain measure (H-FOP) and 20 lower-scoring (L-FOP) control participants were measured during a dot-probe task that featured sensory pain-neutral, health catastrophe-neutral and neutral-neutral word pairs. Analyses indicated that the H-FOP group was more likely to direct immediate visual attention toward sensory pain and health catastrophe words than was the L-FOP group. The H-FOP group also had comparatively shorter first fixation latencies toward sensory pain and health catastrophe words. Conversely, groups did not differ on EM indices of attentional maintenance (i.e., first fixation duration, gaze duration, and average fixation duration) or reaction times to dot probes. Finally, both groups showed a cycle of disengagement followed by re-engagement toward sensory pain words relative to other word types. In sum, this research is the first to reveal biases toward pain stimuli during very early stages of visual information processing among the highly pain-fearful and highlights the utility of EM tracking as a means to evaluate visual attention as a dynamic process in the context of FOP. Copyright © 2012 International Association for the Study of Pain. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Abstract knowledge versus direct experience in processing of binomial expressions

PubMed Central

Morgan, Emily; Levy, Roger

2016-01-01

We ask whether word order preferences for binomial expressions of the form A and B (e.g. bread and butter) are driven by abstract linguistic knowledge of ordering constraints referencing the semantic, phonological, and lexical properties of the constituent words, or by prior direct experience with the specific items in questions. Using forced-choice and self-paced reading tasks, we demonstrate that online processing of never-before-seen binomials is influenced by abstract knowledge of ordering constraints, which we estimate with a probabilistic model. In contrast, online processing of highly frequent binomials is primarily driven by direct experience, which we estimate from corpus frequency counts. We propose a trade-off wherein processing of novel expressions relies upon abstract knowledge, while reliance upon direct experience increases with increased exposure to an expression. Our findings support theories of language processing in which both compositional generation and direct, holistic reuse of multi-word expressions play crucial roles. PMID:27776281

[Medical Image Registration Method Based on a Semantic Model with Directional Visual Words].

PubMed

Jin, Yufei; Ma, Meng; Yang, Xin

2016-04-01

Medical image registration is very challenging due to the various imaging modality,image quality,wide inter-patients variability,and intra-patient variability with disease progressing of medical images,with strict requirement for robustness.Inspired by semantic model,especially the recent tremendous progress in computer vision tasks under bag-of-visual-word framework,we set up a novel semantic model to match medical images.Since most of medical images have poor contrast,small dynamic range,and involving only intensities and so on,the traditional visual word models do not perform very well.To benefit from the advantages from the relative works,we proposed a novel visual word model named directional visual words,which performs better on medical images.Then we applied this model to do medical registration.In our experiment,the critical anatomical structures were first manually specified by experts.Then we adopted the directional visual word,the strategy of spatial pyramid searching from coarse to fine,and the k-means algorithm to help us locating the positions of the key structures accurately.Sequentially,we shall register corresponding images by the areas around these positions.The results of the experiments which were performed on real cardiac images showed that our method could achieve high registration accuracy in some specific areas.

Canonical Word Order of Japanese Ditransitive Sentences: A Preliminary Investigation through a Grammaticality Judgment Survey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shigenaga, Yasumasa

2014-01-01

There have been three competing analyses regarding the canonical word order of Japanese ditransitive sentences: a) "S-'ga' IO-'ni' DO-'o' V" is the canonical word order rather than "S-'ga' DO-'o' IO-'ni' V", b) both word orders are canonical, and c) the canonical word order depends on the type of the verb. The present study…

Optokinetic Stimulation Affects Word Omissions but Not Stimulus-Centered Reading Errors in Paragraph Reading in Neglect Dyslexia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reinhart, Stefan; Schindler, Igor; Kerkhoff, Georg

2011-01-01

Patients with right hemisphere lesions often omit or misread words on the left side of a text or the initial letters of single words, a phenomenon termed neglect dyslexia (ND). Omissions of words on the contralesional side of the page are considered as egocentric or space-based errors, whereas misread words can be viewed as a type of…

CMOS array design automation techniques

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lombardi, T.; Feller, A.

1976-01-01

The design considerations and the circuit development for a 4096-bit CMOS SOS ROM chip, the ATL078 are described. Organization of the ATL078 is 512 words by 8 bits. The ROM was designed to be programmable either at the metal mask level or by a directed laser beam after processing. The development of a 4K CMOS SOS ROM fills a void left by available ROM chip types, and makes the design of a totally major high speed system more realizable.

Recognition and reading aloud of kana and kanji word: an fMRI study.

PubMed

Ino, Tadashi; Nakai, Ryusuke; Azuma, Takashi; Kimura, Toru; Fukuyama, Hidenao

2009-03-16

It has been proposed that different brain regions are recruited for processing two Japanese writing systems, namely, kanji (morphograms) and kana (syllabograms). However, this difference may depend upon what type of word was used and also on what type of task was performed. Using fMRI, we investigated brain activation for processing kanji and kana words with similar high familiarity in two tasks: word recognition and reading aloud. During both tasks, words and non-words were presented side by side, and the subjects were required to press a button corresponding to the real word in the word recognition task and were required to read aloud the real word in the reading aloud task. Brain activations were similar between kanji and kana during reading aloud task, whereas during word recognition task in which accurate identification and selection were required, kanji relative to kana activated regions of bilateral frontal, parietal and occipitotemporal cortices, all of which were related mainly to visual word-form analysis and visuospatial attention. Concerning the difference of brain activity between two tasks, differential activation was found only in the regions associated with task-specific sensorimotor processing for kana, whereas visuospatial attention network also showed greater activation during word recognition task than during reading aloud task for kanji. We conclude that the differences in brain activation between kanji and kana depend on the interaction between the script characteristics and the task demands.

Phonemic Code Dependence Varies with Previous Exposure to Words.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rabin, Jeffrey L.; Zecker, Steven G.

Reading researchers and theorists are sharply divided as to how meaning is obtained from the printed word. Three current explanations are that (1) meaning is accessed directly, without any intermediate processes; (2) meaning is accessed only through an intermediate phonemic stage; and (3) both direct access and phonemic mediation can occur. To…

Type-2 fuzzy set extension of DEMATEL method combined with perceptual computing for decision making

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hosseini, Mitra Bokaei; Tarokh, Mohammad Jafar

2013-05-01

Most decision making methods used to evaluate a system or demonstrate the weak and strength points are based on fuzzy sets and evaluate the criteria with words that are modeled with fuzzy sets. The ambiguity and vagueness of the words and different perceptions of a word are not considered in these methods. For this reason, the decision making methods that consider the perceptions of decision makers are desirable. Perceptual computing is a subjective judgment method that considers that words mean different things to different people. This method models words with interval type-2 fuzzy sets that consider the uncertainty of the words. Also, there are interrelations and dependency between the decision making criteria in the real world; therefore, using decision making methods that cannot consider these relations is not feasible in some situations. The Decision-Making Trail and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method considers the interrelations between decision making criteria. The current study used the combination of DEMATEL and perceptual computing in order to improve the decision making methods. For this reason, the fuzzy DEMATEL method was extended into type-2 fuzzy sets in order to obtain the weights of dependent criteria based on the words. The application of the proposed method is presented for knowledge management evaluation criteria.

Not All Ambiguous Words Are Created Equal: An EEG Investigation of Homonymy and Polysemy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Klepousniotou, Ekaterini; Pike, G. Bruce; Steinhauer, Karsten; Gracco, Vincent

2012-01-01

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the time-course of meaning activation of different types of ambiguous words. Unbalanced homonymous ("pen"), balanced homonymous ("panel"), metaphorically polysemous ("lip"), and metonymically polysemous words ("rabbit") were used in a visual single-word priming delayed lexical decision task.…

How Linearity and Structural Complexity Interact and Affect the Recognition of Italian Derived Words.

PubMed

Bridgers, Franca Ferrari; Kacinik, Natalie

2017-02-01

The majority of words in most languages consist of derived poly-morphemic words but a cross-linguistic review of the literature (Amenta and Crepaldi in Front Psychol 3:232-243, 2012) shows a contradictory picture with respect to how such words are represented and processed. The current study examined the effects of linearity and structural complexity on the processing of Italian derived words. Participants performed a lexical decision task on three types of prefixed and suffixed words and nonwords differing in the complexity of their internal structure. The processing of these words was indeed found to vary according to the nature of the affixes, the order in which they appear, and the type of information the affix encodes. The results thus indicate that derived words are not a uniform class and the best account of these findings appears to be a constraint-based or probabilistic multi-route processing model (e.g., Kuperman et al. in Lang Cogn Process 23:1089-1132, 2008; J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 35:876-895, 2009; J Mem Lang 62:83-97, 2010).

Prosodic differences between declaratives and interrogatives in infant-directed speech.

PubMed

Geffen, Susan; Mintz, Toben H

2017-07-01

In many languages, declaratives and interrogatives differ in word order properties, and in syntactic organization more broadly. Thus, in order to learn the distinct syntactic properties of the two sentence types, learners must first be able to distinguish them using non-syntactic information. Prosodic information is often assumed to be a useful basis for this type of discrimination, although no systematic studies of the prosodic cues available to infants have been reported. Analysis of maternal speech in three Standard American English-speaking mother-infant dyads found that polar interrogatives differed from declaratives on the patterning of pitch and duration on the final two syllables, but wh-questions did not. Thus, while prosody is unlikely to aid discrimination of declaratives from wh-questions, infant-directed speech provides prosodic information that infants could use to distinguish declaratives and polar interrogatives. We discuss how learners could leverage this information to identify all question forms, in the context of syntax acquisition.

Effects of Morphology and Semantic Transparency on Typing Latencies in English Compound and Pseudocompound Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gagné, Christina L.; Spalding, Thomas L.

2016-01-01

We used a typing task to measure the written production of compounds, pseudocompounds, and monomorphemic words on a letter-by-letter basis to determine whether written production (as measured by interletter typing speed) was affected by morphemic structure and semantic transparency of the constituents. Semantic transparency was analyzed using a…

Is the masked priming same-different task a pure measure of prelexical processing?

PubMed

Kelly, Andrew N; van Heuven, Walter J B; Pitchford, Nicola J; Ledgeway, Timothy

2013-01-01

To study prelexical processes involved in visual word recognition a task is needed that only operates at the level of abstract letter identities. The masked priming same-different task has been purported to do this, as the same pattern of priming is shown for words and nonwords. However, studies using this task have consistently found a processing advantage for words over nonwords, indicating a lexicality effect. We investigated the locus of this word advantage. Experiment 1 used conventional visually-presented reference stimuli to test previous accounts of the lexicality effect. Results rule out the use of different strategies, or strength of representations, for words and nonwords. No interaction was shown between prime type and word type, but a consistent word advantage was found. Experiment 2 used novel auditorally-presented reference stimuli to restrict nonword matching to the sublexical level. This abolished scrambled priming for nonwords, but not words. Overall this suggests the processing advantage for words over nonwords results from activation of whole-word, lexical representations. Furthermore, the number of shared open-bigrams between primes and targets could account for scrambled priming effects. These results have important implications for models of orthographic processing and studies that have used this task to investigate prelexical processes.

Top-down modulation of ventral occipito-temporal responses during visual word recognition.

PubMed

Twomey, Tae; Kawabata Duncan, Keith J; Price, Cathy J; Devlin, Joseph T

2011-04-01

Although interactivity is considered a fundamental principle of cognitive (and computational) models of reading, it has received far less attention in neural models of reading that instead focus on serial stages of feed-forward processing from visual input to orthographic processing to accessing the corresponding phonological and semantic information. In particular, the left ventral occipito-temporal (vOT) cortex is proposed to be the first stage where visual word recognition occurs prior to accessing nonvisual information such as semantics and phonology. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate whether there is evidence that activation in vOT is influenced top-down by the interaction of visual and nonvisual properties of the stimuli during visual word recognition tasks. Participants performed two different types of lexical decision tasks that focused on either visual or nonvisual properties of the word or word-like stimuli. The design allowed us to investigate how vOT activation during visual word recognition was influenced by a task change to the same stimuli and by a stimulus change during the same task. We found both stimulus- and task-driven modulation of vOT activation that can only be explained by top-down processing of nonvisual aspects of the task and stimuli. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that vOT acts as an interface linking visual form with nonvisual processing in both bottom up and top down directions. Such interactive processing at the neural level is in agreement with cognitive and computational models of reading but challenges some of the assumptions made by current neuro-anatomical models of reading. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Performance of Chinese Primary School Students on Realistic Arithmetic Word Problems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xin, Ziqiang; Lin, Chongde; Zhang, Li; Yan, Rong

2007-01-01

Compared with standard arithmetic word problems demanding only the direct use of number operations and computations, realistic problems are harder to solve because children need to incorporate "real-world" knowledge into their solutions. Using the realistic word problem testing materials developed by Verschaffel, De Corte, and Lasure…

Are Homophones Acoustically Distinguished in Child-Directed Speech?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Conwell, Erin

2017-01-01

Many approaches to early word learning posit that children assume a one-to-one mapping of form and meaning. However, children's early vocabularies contain homophones, words that violate that assumption. Children might learn such words by exploiting prosodic differences between homophone meanings that are associated with lemma frequency (Gahl,…

The Effects of Object Orientation and Object Type on Children's Interpretation of the Word BIG.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coley, John D.; Gelman, Susan A.

1989-01-01

Investigated the interpretation of the word "big" by 40 children of 3 to 5 years. The type and orientation of objects used in the study were varied. Results demonstrated that contextual factors influenced children's responses. (RJC)

WordlePlus: Expanding Wordle's Use through Natural Interaction and Animation.

PubMed

Jo, Jaemin; Lee, Bongshin; Seo, Jinwook

2015-01-01

Wordle has been commonly used to summarize texts, with each word size-coded by its frequency of occurrences--the more often a word occurs in texts, the bigger it is. The interactive authoring tool WordlePlus leverages natural interaction and animation to give users more control over wordle development. WordlePlus supports direct manipulation of words with pen and touch interaction. It introduces two-word multitouch manipulation, such as concatenating and grouping two words, and provides pen interaction for adding and deleting words. In addition, WordlePlus employs animation to help users create more dynamic and engaging wordles.

Control over the strength of connections between modules: a double dissociation between stimulus format and task revealed by Granger causality mapping in fMRI

PubMed Central

Anderson, Britt; Soliman, Sherif; O’Malley, Shannon; Danckert, James; Besner, Derek

2015-01-01

Drawing on theoretical and computational work with the localist dual route reading model and results from behavioral studies, Besner et al. (2011) proposed that the ability to perform tasks that require overriding stimulus-specific defaults (e.g., semantics when naming Arabic numerals, and phonology when evaluating the parity of number words) necessitate the ability to modulate the strength of connections between cognitive modules for lexical representation, semantics, and phonology on a task- and stimulus-specific basis. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to evaluate this account by assessing changes in functional connectivity while participants performed tasks that did and did not require such stimulus-task default overrides. The occipital region showing the greatest modulation of BOLD signal strength for the two stimulus types was used as the seed region for Granger causality mapping (GCM). Our GCM analysis revealed a region of rostromedial frontal cortex with a crossover interaction. When participants performed tasks that required overriding stimulus type defaults (i.e., parity judgments of number words and naming Arabic numerals) functional connectivity between the occipital region and rostromedial frontal cortex was present. Statistically significant functional connectivity was absent when the tasks were the default for the stimulus type (i.e., parity judgments of Arabic numerals and reading number words). This frontal region (BA 10) has previously been shown to be involved in goal-directed behavior and maintenance of a specific task set. We conclude that overriding stimulus-task defaults requires a modulation of connection strengths between cognitive modules and that the override mechanism predicted from cognitive theory is instantiated by frontal modulation of neural activity of brain regions specialized for sensory processing. PMID:25870571

Why the Body Comes First: Effects of Experimenter Touch on Infants' Word Finding

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Seidl, Amanda; Tincoff, Ruth; Baker, Christopher; Cristia, Alejandrina

2015-01-01

The lexicon of 6-month-olds is comprised of names and body part words. Unlike names, body part words do not often occur in isolation in the input. This presents a puzzle: How have infants been able to pull out these words from the continuous stream of speech at such a young age? We hypothesize that caregivers' interactions directed at and on…

The Role of Feedback and Differences between Good and Poor Decoders in a Repeated Word Reading Paradigm in First Grade

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

van Gorp, Karly; Segers, Eliane; Verhoeven, Ludo

2017-01-01

The direct, retention, and transfer effects of repeated word and pseudoword reading were studied in a pretest, training, posttest, retention design. First graders (48 good readers, 47 poor readers) read 25 CVC words and 25 CVC pseudowords in ten repeated word reading sessions, preceded and followed by a transfer task with a different set of items.…

Interference Effects on the Recall of Pictures, Printed Words and Spoken Words.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burton, John K.; Bruning, Roger H.

Thirty college undergraduates participated in a study of the effects of acoustic and visual interference on the recall of word and picture triads in both short-term and long-term memory. The subjects were presented 24 triads of monosyllabic nouns representing all of the possible combinations of presentation types: pictures, printed words, and…

Interference Effects on the Recall of Pictures, Printed Words, and Spoken Words.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burton, John K.; Bruning, Roger H.

1982-01-01

Nouns were presented in triads as pictures, printed words, or spoken words and followed by various types of interference. Measures of short- and long-term memory were obtained. In short-term memory, pictorial superiority occurred with acoustic, and visual and acoustic, but not visual interference. Long-term memory showed superior recall for…

Retention of New Words: Quantity of Encounters, Quality of Task, and Degree of Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Laufer, Batia; Rozovski-Roitblat, Bella

2015-01-01

We examined how learning new second language (L2) words was affected by three "task type" conditions (reading only, reading with a dictionary, reading and word focused exercises), three "number of encounters" conditions and their combinations. Three groups of L2 learners (n = 185) were exposed to 30 target words (one group in…

Object Permanence and Relational Words: A Lexical Training Study.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tomasello, Michael; Farrar, Michael Jeffrey

1986-01-01

Describes a lexical training program developed to teach object, visible movement, and invisible movement words to children at stage 5 (N=7) and stage 6 (N=16) object permanence development. Stage 6 children learned all three types of words equally well, while stage 5 children learned object and visible movement but not invisible movement words.…

Emotion and Emotion-Laden Words in the Bilingual Lexicon

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pavlenko, Aneta

2008-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to draw on recent studies of bilingualism and emotions to argue for three types of modifications to the current models of the bilingual lexicon. The first modification involves word categories: I will show that emotion words need to be considered as a separate class of words in the mental lexicon, represented and…

Speed-accuracy trade-off in skilled typewriting: decomposing the contributions of hierarchical control loops.

PubMed

Yamaguchi, Motonori; Crump, Matthew J C; Logan, Gordon D

2013-06-01

Typing performance involves hierarchically structured control systems: At the higher level, an outer loop generates a word or a series of words to be typed; at the lower level, an inner loop activates the keystrokes comprising the word in parallel and executes them in the correct order. The present experiments examined contributions of the outer- and inner-loop processes to the control of speed and accuracy in typewriting. Experiments 1 and 2 involved discontinuous typing of single words, and Experiments 3 and 4 involved continuous typing of paragraphs. Across experiments, typists were able to trade speed for accuracy but were unable to type at rates faster than 100 ms/keystroke, implying limits to the flexibility of the underlying processes. The analyses of the component latencies and errors indicated that the majority of the trade-offs were due to inner-loop processing. The contribution of outer-loop processing to the trade-offs was small, but it resulted in large costs in error rate. Implications for strategic control of automatic processes are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

Color-Word Stroop test performance across the adult life span.

PubMed

Uttl, B; Graf, P

1997-06-01

In the Color-Word Stroop test (CWST), the basic task is to name the ink color of rows of XXXs, and performance in this condition is compared with performance in naming the ink-color of color words under conditions where word meanings and ink colors mismatch or are incongruent (e.g., the word red printed in green ink). The present study investigated whether Stroop test interference, defined as the cost associated with ink-color naming in the incongruous stimulus condition versus in the basic color-naming condition, provides positive evidence for a kind of processing qualitatively different than that which is required for color naming or for word reading. Does the pattern of age-related differences in Stroop interference force the conclusion that the incongruous condition taps a qualitatively different kind of processing than that required for color naming or for word reading? We gave the CWST to 310 healthy adults. Their performance in each condition of the test replicates and extends previous findings. Structural equation modeling of the data showed a significant, direct link between age and performance in the latent factor associated with the incongruent condition. However, this direct link with age produced a relatively small increase in the model's fit; it amounted to only a .024 increase in the proportion of variance explained in the incongruent condition. In light of this small direct influence due to age, the most parsimonious explanation of our findings is that age effects in Stroop interference are due to age-related slowing (which is also indexed by color naming and by word reading) primarily; the findings do not provide evidence for a qualitatively different kind of processing that declines with age.

The Secret Is in the Sound

PubMed Central

Christiansen, Morten H.; Onnis, Luca; Hockema, Stephen A.

2009-01-01

When learning language young children are faced with many seemingly formidable challenges, including discovering words embedded in a continuous stream of sounds and determining what role these words play in syntactic constructions. We suggest that knowledge of phoneme distributions may play a crucial part in helping children segment words and determine their lexical category, and propose an integrated model of how children might go from unsegmented speech to lexical categories. We corroborated this theoretical model using a two-stage computational analysis of a large corpus of English child-directed speech. First, we used transition probabilities between phonemes to find words in unsegmented speech. Second, we used distributional information about word edges—the beginning and ending phonemes of words—to predict whether the segmented words from the first stage were nouns, verbs, or something else. The results indicate that discovering lexical units and their associated syntactic category in child-directed speech is possible by attending to the statistics of single phoneme transitions and word-initial and final phonemes. Thus, we suggest that a core computational principle in language acquisition is that the same source of information is used to learn about different aspects of linguistic structure. PMID:19371361

Rerating the Movie Scores in Douban through Word Embedding

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cui, Mingyu

2018-04-01

The movie scores in the social networking service website such as IMDb, Totten Tomatoes and Douban are important references to evaluate the movies. Always, it will influence the box office directly. However, the public rating has strong bias depended on the types of movies, release time, and ages and background of the audiences. To fix the bias and give a movie a fair judgement is an important problem. In the paper, we focus on the movie scores on Douban, which is one of the most famous Chinese movie network community. We decompose the movie scores into two parts. One is the basis scores based on the basic properties of movies. The other is the extra scores which represent the excess value of the movies. We use the word-embedding technique to reduce the movies in a small dense subspace. Then, in the reduced subspace, we use the k-means method to offer the similar movies a basis scores.

Cortical areas involved in Arabic number reading.

PubMed

Roux, F-E; Lubrano, V; Lauwers-Cances, V; Giussani, C; Démonet, J-F

2008-01-15

Distinct functional pathways for processing words and numbers have been hypothesized from the observation of dissociated impairments of these categories in brain-damaged patients. We aimed to identify the cortical areas involved in Arabic number reading process in patients operated on for various brain lesions. Direct cortical electrostimulation was prospectively used in 60 brain mappings. We used object naming and two reading tasks: alphabetic script (sentences and number words) and Arabic number reading. Cortical areas involved in Arabic number reading were identified according to location, type of interference, and distinctness from areas associated with other language tasks. Arabic number reading was sustained by small cortical areas, often extremely well localized (<1 cm(2)). Over 259 language sites detected, 43 (17%) were exclusively involved in Arabic number reading (no sentence or word number reading interference detected in these sites). Specific Arabic number reading interferences were mainly found in three regions: the Broca area (Brodmann area 45), the anterior part of the dominant supramarginal gyrus (Brodmann area 40; p < 0.0001), and the temporal-basal area (Brodmann area 37; p < 0.05). Diverse types of interferences were observed (reading arrest, phonemic or semantic paraphasia). Error patterns were fairly similar across temporal, parietal, and frontal stimulation sites, except for phonemic paraphasias, which were found only in supramarginal gyrus. Our findings strongly support the fact that the acquisition through education of specific symbolic entities, such as Arabic numbers, could result in the segregation and the specialization of anatomically distinct brain areas.

Video Feedback in Key Word Signing Training for Preservice Direct Support Staff.

PubMed

Rombouts, Ellen; Meuris, Kristien; Maes, Bea; De Meyer, Anne-Marie; Zink, Inge

2016-04-01

Research has demonstrated that formal training is essential for professionals to learn key word signing. Yet, the particular didactic strategies have not been studied. Therefore, this study compared the effectiveness of verbal and video feedback in a key word signing training for future direct support staff. Forty-nine future direct support staff were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 key word signing training programs: modeling and verbal feedback (classical method [CM]), additional video feedback (+ViF), and additional video feedback and photo reminder (+ViF/R). Signing accuracy and training acceptability were measured 1 week after and 7 months after training. Participants from the +ViF/R program achieved significantly higher signing accuracy compared with the CM group. Acceptability ratings did not differ between any of the groups. Results suggest that at an equal time investment, the programs containing more training components were more effective. Research on the effect of rehearsal on signing maintenance is warranted.

Interplay between morphology and frequency in lexical access: The case of the base frequency effect

PubMed Central

Vannest, Jennifer; Newport, Elissa L.; Newman, Aaron J.; Bavelier, Daphne

2011-01-01

A major issue in lexical processing concerns storage and access of lexical items. Here we make use of the base frequency effect to examine this. Specifically, reaction time to morphologically complex words (words made up of base and suffix, e.g., agree+able) typically reflects frequency of the base element (i.e., total frequency of all words in which agree appears) rather than surface word frequency (i.e., frequency of agreeable itself). We term these complex words decomposable. However, a class of words termed whole-word do not show such sensitivity to base frequency (e.g., serenity). Using an event-related MRI design, we exploited the fact that processing low-frequency words increases BOLD activity relative to high frequency ones, and examined effects of base frequency on brain activity for decomposable and whole-word items. Morphologically complex words, half high and half low base frequency, were compared to matched high and low frequency simple monomorphemic words using a lexical decision task. Morphologically complex words increased activation in left inferior frontal and left superior temporal cortices versus simple words. The only area to mirror the behavioral distinction between decomposable and whole-word types was the thalamus. Surprisingly, most frequency-sensitive areas failed to show base frequency effects. This variety of responses to frequency and word type across brain areas supports an integrative view of multiple variables during lexical access, rather than a dichotomy between memory-based access and on-line computation. Lexical access appears best captured as interplay of several neural processes with different sensitivities to various linguistic factors including frequency and morphological complexity. PMID:21167136

Memory capacity, selective control, and value-directed remembering in children with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

PubMed

Castel, Alan D; Lee, Steve S; Humphreys, Kathryn L; Moore, Amy N

2011-01-01

The ability to select what is important to remember, to attend to this information, and to recall high-value items leads to the efficient use of memory. The present study examined how children with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) performed on an incentive-based selectivity task in which to-be-remembered items were worth different point values. Participants were 6-9 year old children with ADHD (n = 57) and without ADHD (n = 59). Using a selectivity task, participants studied words paired with point values and were asked to maximize their score, which was the overall value of the items they recalled. This task allows for measures of memory capacity and the ability to selectively remember high-value items. Although there were no significant between-groups differences in the number of words recalled (memory capacity), children with ADHD were less selective than children in the control group in terms of the value of the items they recalled (control of memory). All children recalled more high-value items than low-value items and showed some learning with task experience, but children with ADHD Combined type did not efficiently maximize memory performance (as measured by a selectivity index) relative to children with ADHD Inattentive type and healthy controls, who did not differ significantly from one another. Children with ADHD Combined type exhibit impairments in the strategic and efficient encoding and recall of high-value items. The findings have implications for theories of memory dysfunction in childhood ADHD and the key role of metacognition, cognitive control, and value-directed remembering when considering the strategic use of memory. (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved

Automatic Text Analysis Based on Transition Phenomena of Word Occurrences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pao, Miranda Lee

1978-01-01

Describes a method of selecting index terms directly from a word frequency list, an idea originally suggested by Goffman. Results of the analysis of word frequencies of two articles seem to indicate that the automated selection of index terms from a frequency list holds some promise for automatic indexing. (Author/MBR)

Coregistration of Eye Movements and EEG in Natural Reading: Analyses and Review

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dimigen, Olaf; Sommer, Werner; Hohlfeld, Annette; Jacobs, Arthur M.; Kliegl, Reinhold

2011-01-01

Brain-electric correlates of reading have traditionally been studied with word-by-word presentation, a condition that eliminates important aspects of the normal reading process and precludes direct comparisons between neural activity and oculomotor behavior. In the present study, we investigated effects of word predictability on eye movements (EM)…

Frequent Frames as a Cue for Grammatical Categories in Child Directed Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mintz, Toben H.

2003-01-01

This paper introduces the notion of frequent frames, distributional patterns based on co-occurrence patterns of words in sentences, then investigates the usefulness of this information in grammatical categorization. A frame is defined as two jointly occurring words with one word intervening. Qualitative and quantitative results from distributional…

The effect of cue content on retrieval from autobiographical memory.

PubMed

Uzer, Tugba; Brown, Norman R

2017-01-01

It has long been argued that personal memories are usually generated in an effortful search process in word-cueing studies. However, recent research (Uzer, Lee, & Brown, 2012) shows that direct retrieval of autobiographical memories, in response to word cues, is common. This invites the question of whether direct retrieval phenomenon is generalizable beyond the standard laboratory paradigm. Here we investigated prevalence of direct retrieval of autobiographical memories cued by specific and individuated cues versus generic cues. In Experiment 1, participants retrieved memories in response to cues from their own life (e.g., the names of friends) and generic words (e.g., chair). In Experiment 2, participants provided their personal cues two or three months prior to coming to the lab (min: 75days; max: 100days). In each experiment, RT was measured and participants reported whether memories were directly retrieved or generated on each trial. Results showed that personal cues elicited a high rate of direct retrieval. Personal cues were more likely to elicit direct retrieval than generic word cues, and as a consequence, participants responded faster, on average, to the former than to the latter. These results challenge the constructive view of autobiographical memory and suggest that autobiographical memories consist of pre-stored event representations, which are largely governed by associative mechanisms. These demonstrations offer theoretically interesting questions such as why are we not overwhelmed with directly retrieved memories cued by everyday familiar surroundings? Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Word Frequency Effects in Dual-Task Studies Using Lexical Decision and Naming as Task 2

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Remington, Roger W.; McCann, Robert S.; VanSelst, Mark; Shafto, Michael G. (Technical Monitor)

1997-01-01

Word frequency effects in dual-task lexical decision are variously reported to be additive or underadditive across SOA. We replicate and extend earlier lexical decision studies and find word frequency to be additive across SOA. To more directly capture lexical processing, we examine dual-task naming. Once again, we find word frequency to be additive across SOA. Lexical processing appears to be constrained by central processing limitations.

Word Effects in Dual-Task Studies Using Lexical Decision and Naming as Task 2

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Remington, Roger; McCann, Robert S.; VanSelst, Mark; Shafto, Michael (Technical Monitor)

1997-01-01

Word frequency effects in dual-task, lexical decision are variously reported to be additive or under-additive across SOA. We replicate and extend earlier lexical decision studies and find word frequency to be additive across SOA. To more directly capture lexical processing, we examine dual-task naming. Once again we find word frequency to be additive across SOA. Lexical processing appears to be constrained by central processing limitations.

Is Word Shape Still in Poor Shape for the Race to the Lexicon?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hill, Jessica C.

2010-01-01

Current models of normal reading behavior emphasize not only the recognition and processing of the word being fixated (n) but also processing of the upcoming parafoveal word (n + 1). Gaze contingent displays employing the boundary paradigm often mask words in order to understand how much and what type of processing is completed on the parafoveal…

Investigating the Effect of Contextual Clues on the Processing of Unfamiliar Words in Second Language Listening Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cai, Wei; Lee, Benny P. H.

2010-01-01

This study examines the effect of contextual clues on the use of strategies (inferencing and ignoring) and knowledge sources (semantics, morphology, world knowledge, and others) for processing unfamiliar words in listening comprehension. Three types of words were investigated: words with local co-text clues, global co-text clues and extra-textual…

The Effects of Three Types of Verbal Cues on the Accuracy and Latency of Aphasic Subjects' Naming Responses.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Teubner-Rhodes, Louise A.

This study deals with word retrieval problems of aphasic patients. This word-finding difficulty is a common characteristic of aphasics and many methods have been used by aphasia clinicians to attempt to remediate word retrieval skills. Cueing, one of the methods used, presumably facilitates word-finding by supplying additional information to the…

Effects of Head Rotation on Space- and Word-Based Reading Errors in Spatial Neglect

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reinhart, Stefan; Keller, Ingo; Kerkhoff, Georg

2010-01-01

Patients with right hemisphere lesions often omit or misread words on the left side of a text or the beginning letters of single words which is termed neglect dyslexia (ND). Two types of reading errors are typically observed in ND: omissions and word-based reading errors. The prior are considered as space-based omission errors on the…

Analysis of Malay Word Structure by Pre-Service Special Education Teachers: Foundation-Level Knowledge for Remedial Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Lay Wah; Low, Hui Min

2014-01-01

Pre-service special educators' Malay word structure knowledge was assessed through their analysis of words. A total of 69 participants analysed a vocabulary list based on a set of criteria formulated from the Malay language word structure. Results indicated that they were able to count syllables and phonemes, and identify types of affixations;…

Universals of Word Order in Esperanto. Lektos: Interdisciplinary Working Papers in Language Sciences, Vol. 3, No. 2.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

St. Clair, Robert N.

The contention that Esperanto is a natural linguistic system is discussed. Research is cited concerning universals of word order, dominant word order, polar type languages, Esperanto as a verb-subject-object language, and gapping in Esperanto. It is concluded that contrary to grammatical tradition, word order is not and cannot be completely free.…

A Dynamic Systems Account of Learning a Word: From Ecology to Form Relations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Churchill, Eton

2008-01-01

This paper responds to calls for studies that investigate multiple types of word knowledge and the processes of word learning. Focusing on a single word, this three-month diary study describes the micro-development of an adult male's Japanese L2 lexical knowledge. In contrast to most L2 vocabulary acquisition studies, this study posits a dynamic…

Assessing the Effectiveness of Monolingual, Bilingual, and "Bilingualised" Dictionaries in the Comprehension and Production of New Words.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Laufer, Batia; Hadar, Linor

1997-01-01

Examines the differences in effectiveness of three types of dictionaries--monolingual, bilingual, and "bilingualised" in the comprehension and production of new words by learners of English as a foreign language. The study tested participants on the comprehension of target words and on their ability to use these words in their own sentences. (16…

The Neural Basis of Competition in Auditory Word Recognition and Spoken Word Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Righi, Giulia

2010-01-01

The goal of this dissertation is to examine how brain regions respond to different types of competition during word comprehension and word production. I will present three studies that attempt to enhance the current understanding of which brain regions are sensitive to different aspects of competition and how the nature of the stimuli and the…

The impact of task demand on visual word recognition.

PubMed

Yang, J; Zevin, J

2014-07-11

The left occipitotemporal cortex has been found sensitive to the hierarchy of increasingly complex features in visually presented words, from individual letters to bigrams and morphemes. However, whether this sensitivity is a stable property of the brain regions engaged by word recognition is still unclear. To address the issue, the current study investigated whether different task demands modify this sensitivity. Participants viewed real English words and stimuli with hierarchical word-likeness while performing a lexical decision task (i.e., to decide whether each presented stimulus is a real word) and a symbol detection task. General linear model and independent component analysis indicated strong activation in the fronto-parietal and temporal regions during the two tasks. Furthermore, the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and insula showed significant interaction effects between task demand and stimulus type in the pseudoword condition. The occipitotemporal cortex showed strong main effects for task demand and stimulus type, but no sensitivity to the hierarchical word-likeness was found. These results suggest that different task demands on semantic, phonological and orthographic processes can influence the involvement of the relevant regions during visual word recognition. Copyright © 2014 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Object words modulate the activity of the mirror neuron system during action imitation.

PubMed

Wu, Haiyan; Tang, Honghong; Ge, Yue; Yang, Suyong; Mai, Xiaoqin; Luo, Yue-Jia; Liu, Chao

2017-11-01

Although research has demonstrated that the mirror neuron system (MNS) plays a crucial role in both action imitation and action-related semantic processing, whether action-related words can inversely modulate the MNS activity remains unclear. Here, three types of task-irrelevant words (body parts, verbs, and manufactured objects) were presented to examine the modulation effect of these words on the MNS activity during action observation and imitation. Twenty-two participants were recruited for the fMRI scanning and remaining data from 19 subjects were reported here. Brain activity results showed that word types elicited different modulation effects over nodes of the MNS (i.e., the right inferior frontal gyrus, premotor cortex, inferior parietal lobule, and STS), especially during the imitation stage. Compared with other word conditions, action imitation following manufactured objects words induced stronger activation in these brain regions during the imitation stage. These results were consistent in both task-dependent and -independent ROI analysis. Our findings thus provide evidence for the unique effect of object words on the MNS during imitation of action, which may also confirm the key role of goal inference in action imitation.

The time course of morphological processing during spoken word recognition in Chinese.

PubMed

Shen, Wei; Qu, Qingqing; Ni, Aiping; Zhou, Junyi; Li, Xingshan

2017-12-01

We investigated the time course of morphological processing during spoken word recognition using the printed-word paradigm. Chinese participants were asked to listen to a spoken disyllabic compound word while simultaneously viewing a printed-word display. Each visual display consisted of three printed words: a semantic associate of the first constituent of the compound word (morphemic competitor), a semantic associate of the whole compound word (whole-word competitor), and an unrelated word (distractor). Participants were directed to detect whether the spoken target word was on the visual display. Results indicated that both the morphemic and whole-word competitors attracted more fixations than the distractor. More importantly, the morphemic competitor began to diverge from the distractor immediately at the acoustic offset of the first constituent, which was earlier than the whole-word competitor. These results suggest that lexical access to the auditory word is incremental and morphological processing (i.e., semantic access to the first constituent) that occurs at an early processing stage before access to the representation of the whole word in Chinese.

Neural Correlates of Direct and Indirect Suppression of Autobiographical Memories

PubMed Central

Noreen, Saima; O’Connor, Akira R.; MacLeod, Malcolm D.

2016-01-01

Research indicates that there are two possible mechanisms by which particular target memories can be intentionally forgotten. Direct suppression, which involves the suppression of the unwanted memory directly, and is dependent on a fronto-hippocampal modulatory process, and, memory substitution, which includes directing one’s attention to an alternative memory in order to prevent the unwanted memory from coming to mind, and involves engaging the caudal prefrontal cortex (cPFC) and the mid-ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) regions. Research to date, however, has investigated the neural basis of memory suppression of relatively simple information. The aim of the current study was to use fMRI to identify the neural mechanisms associated with the suppression of autobiographical memories. In the present study, 22 participants generated memories in response to a series of cue words. In a second session, participants learnt these cue-memory pairings, and were subsequently presented with a cue word and asked either to recall (think) or to suppress (no-think) the associated memory, or to think of an alternative memory in order to suppress the original memory (memory-substitution). Our findings demonstrated successful forgetting effects in the no-think and memory substitution conditions. Although we found no activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, there was reduced hippocampal activation during direct suppression. In the memory substitution condition, however, we failed to find increased activation in the cPFC and VLPFC regions. Our findings suggest that the suppression of autobiographical memories may rely on different neural mechanisms to those established for other types of material in memory. PMID:27047412

Neural Correlates of Direct and Indirect Suppression of Autobiographical Memories.

PubMed

Noreen, Saima; O'Connor, Akira R; MacLeod, Malcolm D

2016-01-01

Research indicates that there are two possible mechanisms by which particular target memories can be intentionally forgotten. Direct suppression, which involves the suppression of the unwanted memory directly, and is dependent on a fronto-hippocampal modulatory process, and, memory substitution, which includes directing one's attention to an alternative memory in order to prevent the unwanted memory from coming to mind, and involves engaging the caudal prefrontal cortex (cPFC) and the mid-ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) regions. Research to date, however, has investigated the neural basis of memory suppression of relatively simple information. The aim of the current study was to use fMRI to identify the neural mechanisms associated with the suppression of autobiographical memories. In the present study, 22 participants generated memories in response to a series of cue words. In a second session, participants learnt these cue-memory pairings, and were subsequently presented with a cue word and asked either to recall (think) or to suppress (no-think) the associated memory, or to think of an alternative memory in order to suppress the original memory (memory-substitution). Our findings demonstrated successful forgetting effects in the no-think and memory substitution conditions. Although we found no activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, there was reduced hippocampal activation during direct suppression. In the memory substitution condition, however, we failed to find increased activation in the cPFC and VLPFC regions. Our findings suggest that the suppression of autobiographical memories may rely on different neural mechanisms to those established for other types of material in memory.

Lexical reorganization in Brazilian Portuguese: an articulatory study

PubMed Central

Meireles, A. R.; Barbosa, P. A.

2008-01-01

This work, which is couched in the theoretical framework of Articulatory Phonology, deals with the influence of speech rate on the change/variation from antepenultimate stress words into penultimate stress words in Brazilian Portuguese. Both acoustic and articulatory (EMMA) studies were conducted. On the acoustic side, results show different patterns of post-stressed vowel reduction according to the word type. Some words reduced their medial post-stressed vowels more than their final post-stressed vowels, and others reduced their final post-stressed vowels more than their medial post-stressed vowels. On the articulatory side, results show that the coarticulation degree of the post-stressed consonants increases with speech rate. Also, with the use of a measure called proportional consonantal interval (PCI), it was found in measurements of articulation that such measure is influenced by the word type. Three different groups of words were found according to their PCI. These results show how dynamical aspects influenced by speech rate increase are related to the lexical process of change/variation from antepenultimate stress words into penultimate ones. PMID:19885366

Teaching Sight Words to Elementary Students with Intellectual Disability and Autism: A Comparison of Teacher-Directed versus Computer-Assisted Simultaneous Prompting

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coleman, Mari Beth; Cherry, Rebecca A.; Moore, Tara C.; Yujeong, Park; Cihak, David F.

2015-01-01

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of teacher-directed simultaneous prompting to computer-assisted simultaneous prompting for teaching sight words to 3 elementary school students with intellectual disability. Activities in the computer-assisted condition were designed with Intellitools Classroom Suite software whereas traditional…

The Direct and Indirect Effects of Word Reading and Vocabulary on Adolescents' Reading Comprehension: Comparing Struggling and Adequate Comprehenders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oslund, Eric L.; Clemens, Nathan H.; Simmons, Deborah C.; Simmons, Leslie E.

2018-01-01

The current study examined statistically significant differences between struggling and adequate readers using a multicomponent model of reading comprehension in 796 sixth through eighth graders, with a primary focus on word reading and vocabulary. Path analyses and Wald tests were used to investigate the direct and indirect relations of word…

Defining and measuring cyberbullying within the larger context of bullying victimization

PubMed Central

Ybarra, Michele; boyd, danah; Korchmaros, Josephine; Oppenheim, Jay (Koby)

2012-01-01

Methods Two split-form surveys were conducted online among 6–17 year olds (n=1,200 each) to inform recommendations for cyberbullying measurement. Results Measures that use the word ‘bully’ result in prevalence rates similar to each other whether or not a definition is included, whereas measures not using the word ‘bully’ are similar to each other whether or not a definition is included. A behavioral list of bullying experiences without either a definition or the word ‘bully’ results in higher prevalence rates and likely measures experiences that are beyond the definition of ‘bullying’. Follow-up questions querying differential power, repetition, and bullying over time were used to examine misclassification. The measure using a definition but not the word ‘bully’ appeared to have the highest rate of false positives and, therefore, the highest rate of misclassification. Across two studies, an average of 25% reported being bullied at least monthly in person compared with an average of 10% bullied online, 7% via telephone (cell or landline), and 8% via text messaging. Conclusions Measures of bullying among English-speaking samples in the US should include the word ‘bully’ when possible. The definition may be a useful tool for researchers, but results suggest that it does not necessarily yield a more rigorous measure of bullying victimization. Directly measuring aspects of bullying (i.e., differential power, repetition, over time) reduces misclassification. To prevent double counting across categories, we conceptualize cyberbullying as bullying communicated through the online mode; type (e.g., verbal, relational), and environment (e.g., school, home) are additional domains of bullying. PMID:22727077

Do word-problem features differentially affect problem difficulty as a function of students' mathematics difficulty with and without reading difficulty?

PubMed

Powell, Sarah R; Fuchs, Lynn S; Fuchs, Douglas; Cirino, Paul T; Fletcher, Jack M

2009-01-01

This study examined whether and, if so, how word-problem features differentially affect problem difficulty as a function of mathematics difficulty (MD) status: no MD (n = 109), MD only (n = 109), or MD in combination with reading difficulties (MDRD; n = 109). The problem features were problem type (total, difference, or change) and position of missing information in the number sentence representing the word problem (first, second, or third position). Students were assessed on 14 word problems near the beginning of third grade. Consistent with the hypothesis that mathematical cognition differs as a function of MD subtype, problem type affected problem difficulty differentially for MDRD versus MD-only students; however, the position of missing information in word problems did not. Implications for MD subtyping and for instruction are discussed.

Neural correlates of visualizations of concrete and abstract words in preschool children: a developmental embodied approach

PubMed Central

D’Angiulli, Amedeo; Griffiths, Gordon; Marmolejo-Ramos, Fernando

2015-01-01

The neural correlates of visualization underlying word comprehension were examined in preschool children. On each trial, a concrete or abstract word was delivered binaurally (part 1: post-auditory visualization), followed by a four-picture array (a target plus three distractors; part 2: matching visualization). Children were to select the picture matching the word they heard in part 1. Event-related potentials (ERPs) locked to each stimulus presentation and task interval were averaged over sets of trials of increasing word abstractness. ERP time-course during both parts of the task showed that early activity (i.e., <300 ms) was predominant in response to concrete words, while activity in response to abstract words became evident only at intermediate (i.e., 300–699 ms) and late (i.e., 700–1000 ms) ERP intervals. Specifically, ERP topography showed that while early activity during post-auditory visualization was linked to left temporo-parietal areas for concrete words, early activity during matching visualization occurred mostly in occipito-parietal areas for concrete words, but more anteriorly in centro-parietal areas for abstract words. In intermediate ERPs, post-auditory visualization coincided with parieto-occipital and parieto-frontal activity in response to both concrete and abstract words, while in matching visualization a parieto-central activity was common to both types of words. In the late ERPs for both types of words, the post-auditory visualization involved right-hemispheric activity following a “post-anterior” pathway sequence: occipital, parietal, and temporal areas; conversely, matching visualization involved left-hemispheric activity following an “ant-posterior” pathway sequence: frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital areas. These results suggest that, similarly, for concrete and abstract words, meaning in young children depends on variably complex visualization processes integrating visuo-auditory experiences and supramodal embodying representations. PMID:26175697

Neuroticism as Distancing: Perceptual Sources of Evidence

PubMed Central

Liu, Tianwei; Ode, Scott; Moeller, Sara K.; Robinson, Michael D.

2013-01-01

Several theories and self-reported sources of data link individual differences in negative affectivity to avoidance motivation. Chronic avoidance motivation, through repeated practice, may result in a relatively cognitive distance-enhancing dynamic whereby events and stimuli are perceived as further away from the self, even when they are not threatening. Such predictions are novel, but follow from cybernetic theories of self-regulation. In five studies (total N = 463), relations of this type were investigated. Study 1 presented participants with phrases that were ambiguous and found that trait negative affect predicted phrase interpretation in a distance-enhancing temporal direction. Study 2 replicated this effect across a systematic manipulation of event valence. Study 3 asked individuals to estimate the size of words and found that individuals higher in neuroticism generally perceived words to be smaller than did individuals lower in neuroticism. In Study 4, people high (but not low) in neuroticism perceived words to be shrinking faster than they were growing. In Study 5, greater perceptual distancing, in a font size estimation task, predicted more adverse reactions to negative events in daily life. Although normative effects varied across studies, consistent support for a chronic distancing perspective of individual differences in negative affectivity was found. PMID:23527850

Modulation of alpha oscillations is required for the suppression of semantic interference.

PubMed

Melnik, Natalia; Mapelli, Igor; Özkurt, Tolga Esat

2017-10-01

Recent findings on alpha band oscillations suggest their important role in memory consolidation and suppression of external distractors such as environmental noise. However, less attention was given to the phenomenon of internal distracting information being solely inherent to the stimuli content. Human memory may be prone to internal distractions caused by semantic relatedness between the meaning of words (e.g., atom, neutron, nucleus, etc.) to be encoded, i.e., semantic interference. Our study investigates the brain oscillatory dynamics behind the semantic interference phenomenon, whose possible outcome is known as false memories. In this direction, Deese-Roediger-McDermott word lists were appropriated for a modified Sternberg paradigm in auditory modality. Participants received semantically related and unrelated word lists via headphones while EEG data were acquired. Semantic interference triggered the false memory rates to be higher than those of other types of memory errors. Analysis demonstrated that the upper part of alpha band (∼10-12Hz) power decreases on parieto-occipital channels in the retention interval, prior to the probe item for semantically related condition. Our study elucidates the oscillatory mechanisms behind semantic interference by relying on alpha functional inhibition theory. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Word Association in L1 and L2: An Exploratory Study of Response Types, Response Times, and Interlingual Mediation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fitzpatrick, Tess; Izura, Cristina

2011-01-01

Word association responses in first-language (L1) Spanish and second-language (L2) English were investigated by means of response latencies and types of associative response produced. The primary aims were to establish whether (a) some response types are produced more often or faster than others, (b) participants' L2 response time profiles mirror…

Swearing, Euphemisms, and Linguistic Relativity

PubMed Central

Bowers, Jeffrey S.; Pleydell-Pearce, Christopher W.

2011-01-01

Participants read aloud swear words, euphemisms of the swear words, and neutral stimuli while their autonomic activity was measured by electrodermal activity. The key finding was that autonomic responses to swear words were larger than to euphemisms and neutral stimuli. It is argued that the heightened response to swear words reflects a form of verbal conditioning in which the phonological form of the word is directly associated with an affective response. Euphemisms are effective because they replace the trigger (the offending word form) by another word form that expresses a similar idea. That is, word forms exert some control on affect and cognition in turn. We relate these findings to the linguistic relativity hypothesis, and suggest a simple mechanistic account of how language may influence thinking in this context. PMID:21799832

Posttraumatic Stress and Attentional Bias towards Cancer-Related Stimuli in Parents of Children Recently Diagnosed with Cancer.

PubMed

Cernvall, Martin; Hovén, Emma; Ljungman, Lisa; Ljungman, Gustaf; Carlbring, Per; von Essen, Louise

2016-01-01

To investigate whether posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are related to attentional bias towards cancer-related stimuli among parents of children recently diagnosed with cancer. Sixty-two parents completed questionnaires measuring PTSS, depression, and anxiety and the emotional Stroop task via the Internet. The emotional Stroop task included cancer-related words, cardiovascular disease-related words, and neutral words. Participants were split in two groups based on the median of PTSS: High-PTSS and Low-PTSS. There was a significant interaction between word-type and group and a planned contrast test of this interaction indicated that the High-PTSS group had longer response latencies on cancer-related words compared to the other word-type and group combinations. Findings suggest that PTSS are related to attentional bias towards cancer-related stimuli among parents of children recently diagnosed with cancer. Implications of this finding for the understanding of PTSS in this population, future research, and clinical practice are discussed.

Prevalence and determinants of direct and generative modes of production of episodic future thoughts in the word cueing paradigm.

PubMed

Jeunehomme, Olivier; D'Argembeau, Arnaud

2016-01-01

Recent research suggests that episodic future thoughts can be formed through the same dual mechanisms, direct and generative, as autobiographical memories. However, the prevalence and determinants of the direct production of future event representations remain unclear. Here, we addressed this issue by collecting self-reports of production modes, response times (RTs), and verbal protocols for the production past and future events in the word cueing paradigm. Across three experiments, we found that both past and future events were frequently reported to come directly to mind in response to the cue, and RTs confirmed that events were produced faster for direct than for generative responses. When looking at the determinants of direct responses, we found that most past and future events that were directly produced had already been thought of on a previous occasion, and the frequency of previous thoughts predicted the occurrence of direct access. The direct production of autobiographical thoughts was also more frequent for past and future events that were judged important and emotionally intense. Collectively, these findings provide novel evidence that the direct production of episodic future thoughts is frequent in the word cueing paradigm and often involves the activation of personally significant "memories of the future."

ULTRA: Universal Grammar as a Universal Parser

PubMed Central

Medeiros, David P.

2018-01-01

A central concern of generative grammar is the relationship between hierarchy and word order, traditionally understood as two dimensions of a single syntactic representation. A related concern is directionality in the grammar. Traditional approaches posit process-neutral grammars, embodying knowledge of language, put to use with infinite facility both for production and comprehension. This has crystallized in the view of Merge as the central property of syntax, perhaps its only novel feature. A growing number of approaches explore grammars with different directionalities, often with more direct connections to performance mechanisms. This paper describes a novel model of universal grammar as a one-directional, universal parser. Mismatch between word order and interpretation order is pervasive in comprehension; in the present model, word order is language-particular and interpretation order (i.e., hierarchy) is universal. These orders are not two dimensions of a unified abstract object (e.g., precedence and dominance in a single tree); rather, both are temporal sequences, and UG is an invariant real-time procedure (based on Knuth's stack-sorting algorithm) transforming word order into hierarchical order. This shift in perspective has several desirable consequences. It collapses linearization, displacement, and composition into a single performance process. The architecture provides a novel source of brackets (labeled unambiguously and without search), which are understood not as part-whole constituency relations, but as storage and retrieval routines in parsing. It also explains why neutral word order within single syntactic cycles avoids 213-like permutations. The model identifies cycles as extended projections of lexical heads, grounding the notion of phase. This is achieved with a universal processor, dispensing with parameters. The empirical focus is word order in noun phrases. This domain provides some of the clearest evidence for 213-avoidance as a cross-linguistic word order generalization. Importantly, recursive phrase structure “bottoms out” in noun phrases, which are typically a single cycle (though further cycles may be embedded, e.g., relative clauses). By contrast, a simple transitive clause plausibly involves two cycles (vP and CP), embedding further nominal cycles. In the present theory, recursion is fundamentally distinct from structure-building within a single cycle, and different word order restrictions might emerge in larger domains like clauses. PMID:29497394

Neural competition as a developmental process: Early hemispheric specialization for word processing delays specialization for face processing

PubMed Central

Li, Su; Lee, Kang; Zhao, Jing; Yang, Zhi; He, Sheng; Weng, Xuchu

2013-01-01

Little is known about the impact of learning to read on early neural development for word processing and its collateral effects on neural development in non-word domains. Here, we examined the effect of early exposure to reading on neural responses to both word and face processing in preschool children with the use of the Event Related Potential (ERP) methodology. We specifically linked children’s reading experience (indexed by their sight vocabulary) to two major neural markers: the amplitude differences between the left and right N170 on the bilateral posterior scalp sites and the hemispheric spectrum power differences in the γ band on the same scalp sites. The results showed that the left-lateralization of both the word N170 and the spectrum power in the γ band were significantly positively related to vocabulary. In contrast, vocabulary and the word left-lateralization both had a strong negative direct effect on the face right-lateralization. Also, vocabulary negatively correlated with the right-lateralized face spectrum power in the γ band even after the effects of age and the word spectrum power were partialled out. The present study provides direct evidence regarding the role of reading experience in the neural specialization of word and face processing above and beyond the effect of maturation. The present findings taken together suggest that the neural development of visual word processing competes with that of face processing before the process of neural specialization has been consolidated. PMID:23462239

It takes just one word to quash a SNARC.

PubMed

Fischer, Martin H; Shaki, Samuel; Cruise, Alexander

2009-01-01

Our directional reading habit seems to contribute to the widely reported association of small numbers with left space and larger numbers with right space (the spatial-numerical association of response codes, SNARC, effect). But how can this association be so flexible when reading habits are not? To address this question, we asked bilingual Russian-Hebrew readers to classify numbers by parity and alternated the number format from trial to trial between written words and Arabic digits. The number words were randomly printed in either Cyrillic or Hebrew script, thus inducing left-to-right or right-to-left reading, respectively. Classification performance indicated that the digits were spatially mapped when they followed a Russian word but not when they followed a Hebrew word. An auditory control experiment revealed left-to-right SNARC effects with different strengths in both languages. These results suggest that the SNARC effect reflects recent spatial experiences, cross-modal associations, and long-standing directional habits but not an attribute of the number concepts themselves.

Children and computer use in the home: workstations, behaviors and parental attitudes.

PubMed

Kimmerly, Lisa; Odell, Dan

2009-01-01

This study examines the home computer use of 26 children (aged 6-18) in ten upper middle class families using direct observation, typing tests, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The goals of the study were to gather information on how children use computers in the home and to understand how both parents and children perceive this computer use. Large variations were seen in computing skills, behaviors, and opinions, as well as equipment and workstation setups. Typing speed averaged over 40 words per minute for children over 13 years old, and less than 10 words per minute for children younger than 10. The results show that for this sample, Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI) concerns ranked very low among parents, whereas security and privacy concerns ranked much higher. Meanwhile, children's behaviors and workstations were observed to place children in awkward working postures. Photos showing common postures are presented. The greatest opportunity to improve children's work postures appears to be in providing properly-sized work surfaces and chairs, as well as education. Possible explanations for the difference between parental perception of computing risks and the physical reality of children's observed ergonomics are discussed and ideas for further research are proposed.

Try a Little Bit of Teaching: A Dynamic Assessment of Word Decoding as a Kindergarten Predictor of Word Reading Difficulties at the End of Grade 1

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gellert, Anna S.; Elbro, Carsten

2017-01-01

The present study examined the construct and predictive validity of a dynamic test of decoding. In theory, a dynamic test provides a direct measure of potential for learning. In this study, children were taught 3 novel letters and how to blend the sounds of those into new words, then they were tested on different words comprising the 3 letters.…

Time flies when we read taboo words.

PubMed

Tipples, Jason

2010-08-01

Does time fly or stand still when one is reading highly arousing words? A temporal bisection task was used to test the effects of sexual taboo words on time perception. Forty participants judged the duration of sexual taboo, high-arousal negative, high-arousal positive, low-arousal negative, low-arousal positive, and category-related neutral words. The results support the hypothesis that sexual taboo stimuli receive more attention and reduce the perceived time that has passed ("time flies")-the duration of high sexual taboo words was underestimated for taboo-word stimuli relative to all other word types. The findings are discussed in the context of internal clock theories of time perception.

Relationships between Structural and Acoustic Properties of Maternal Talk and Children's Early Word Recognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Suttora, Chiara; Salerni, Nicoletta; Zanchi, Paola; Zampini, Laura; Spinelli, Maria; Fasolo, Mirco

2017-01-01

This study aimed to investigate specific associations between structural and acoustic characteristics of infant-directed (ID) speech and word recognition. Thirty Italian-acquiring children and their mothers were tested when the children were 1;3. Children's word recognition was measured with the looking-while-listening task. Maternal ID speech was…

Models of Vocabulary Acquisition: Direct Tests and Text-Derived Simulations of Vocabulary Growth

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Biemiller, Andrew; Rosenstein, Mark; Sparks, Randall; Landauer, Thomas K.; Foltz, Peter W.

2014-01-01

Determining word meanings that ought to be taught or introduced is important for educators. A sequence for vocabulary growth can be inferred from many sources, including testing children's knowledge of word meanings at various ages, predicting from print frequency, or adult-recalled Age of Acquisition. A new approach, Word Maturity, is based on…

Effectiveness of Scaffolding Interrogatives Method: Teaching Reading Comprehension to Young Children with Hyperlexia in Singapore

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chia, Noel Kok Hwee; Kee, Norman Kiak Nam

2013-01-01

Children with hyperlexia display spontaneous superior word decoding ability before the age of five but impaired listening and reading comprehension. They have direct phonological processing of any given text with apparent ease and often well beyond their vocabulary usage. Though they can recognise and read words, words appear meaningless. As a…

Dynamics of the Attentional Control of Word Retrieval: Analyses of Response Time Distributions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roelofs, Ardi

2008-01-01

Since W. Wundt (1904) and H. J. Watt (1906), researchers have found no agreement on how goals direct word retrieval. A prevailing associative account (E. K. Miller & J. D. Cohen, 2001) holds that goals bias association strength, which determines retrieval latency and whether irrelevant words interfere. A symbolic account (A. Roelofs, 2003) holds…

Optimal Contrast: Competition between Two Referents Improves Word Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zosh, Jennifer M.; Brinster, Meredith; Halberda, Justin

2013-01-01

Does making an inference lead to better learning than being instructed directly? Two experiments evaluated preschoolers' ability to learn new words, comparing their memory for words learned via inference or instruction. On Inference trials, one familiar and one novel object was presented and children were asked to "Point at the [object name (i.e.,…

The Effects of Video Self-Modeling on the Decoding Skills of Children at Risk for Reading Disabilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ayala, Sandra M.

2010-01-01

Ten first grade students, participating in a Tier II response to intervention (RTI) reading program received an intervention of video self modeling to improve decoding skills and sight word recognition. The students were video recorded blending and segmenting decodable words, and reading sight words taken directly from their curriculum…

Evaluating Word Prediction Software for Students with Physical Disabilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mezei, Peter; Heller, Kathryn Wolff

2005-01-01

Although word prediction software was originally developed for individuals with physical disabilities, little research has been conducted featuring participants with physical disabilities. Using the Co:Writer 4000 word prediction software, three participants with physical disabilities improved typing rate and spelling accuracy, and two of these…

Administrative Assistant and Correspondence Specialist: Task List Competency Record.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Minnesota Instructional Materials Center, White Bear Lake.

One of a series of 12 in the secretarial/clerical area, this booklet for the vocational instructor contains job descriptions for two word processing occupations, the non-typing administrative assistant and the correspondence specialist (also called word processing correspondence specialist, magnetic keyboard specialist, or word processing…

Selective rehearsal is affected by the emotionality of the encoding context in item-method directed forgetting: An event-related potential study.

PubMed

Liu, Tzu-Ling; Chen, Nai-Feng; Cheng, Shih-Kuen

2017-02-01

Emotional items are often remembered more clearly than neutral items. However, whether stimuli embedded in an emotional context are more resistant to directed forgetting than those presented in a neutral context remains unclear. This question was tested by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) in an item-method directed forgetting paradigm involving neutral words that were embedded in neutral or negative contexts. During the study phase, participants were asked to associate a neutral word with a negative or neutral picture. A remember (R) or forget (F) cue was then designated to indicate whether the word was a to-be-remembered (TBR) or to-be-forgotten (TBF) word. In the test phase, participants were asked to identify all previously presented old words regardless of the R/F cues. The behavioral results indicated a significant interaction between the valence of the encoding contexts and the R/F cues. The hit rate was lower for the TBR words encoded in negative contexts relative to those encoded in neutral contexts. No such valence effect was observed in the hit rates of the TBF words. For the ERP data, the R cues elicited a P3b-like effect that has been linked to the selective rehearsal of the TBR items. This effect was more sustained in the negative encoding context than in the neutral context. The F cues elicited a frontal positivity that has been linked to the active inhibition of the TBF words; however, this positivity was not modulated by the valence of the encoding context. The sustained P3b-like effect for the R cues in the negative encoding context might reflect a compensative encoding for the TBR words caused by the attention-capturing negative contexts. Therefore, we argue that the emotional context affected the selective elaboration of the TBR words; however, we also argue that there was no supportive evidence of an emotional effect on the forgetting of TBF items. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Word pair classification during imagined speech using direct brain recordings

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Martin, Stephanie; Brunner, Peter; Iturrate, Iñaki; Millán, José Del R.; Schalk, Gerwin; Knight, Robert T.; Pasley, Brian N.

2016-05-01

People that cannot communicate due to neurological disorders would benefit from an internal speech decoder. Here, we showed the ability to classify individual words during imagined speech from electrocorticographic signals. In a word imagery task, we used high gamma (70-150 Hz) time features with a support vector machine model to classify individual words from a pair of words. To account for temporal irregularities during speech production, we introduced a non-linear time alignment into the SVM kernel. Classification accuracy reached 88% in a two-class classification framework (50% chance level), and average classification accuracy across fifteen word-pairs was significant across five subjects (mean = 58% p < 0.05). We also compared classification accuracy between imagined speech, overt speech and listening. As predicted, higher classification accuracy was obtained in the listening and overt speech conditions (mean = 89% and 86%, respectively; p < 0.0001), where speech stimuli were directly presented. The results provide evidence for a neural representation for imagined words in the temporal lobe, frontal lobe and sensorimotor cortex, consistent with previous findings in speech perception and production. These data represent a proof of concept study for basic decoding of speech imagery, and delineate a number of key challenges to usage of speech imagery neural representations for clinical applications.

Word pair classification during imagined speech using direct brain recordings

PubMed Central

Martin, Stephanie; Brunner, Peter; Iturrate, Iñaki; Millán, José del R.; Schalk, Gerwin; Knight, Robert T.; Pasley, Brian N.

2016-01-01

People that cannot communicate due to neurological disorders would benefit from an internal speech decoder. Here, we showed the ability to classify individual words during imagined speech from electrocorticographic signals. In a word imagery task, we used high gamma (70–150 Hz) time features with a support vector machine model to classify individual words from a pair of words. To account for temporal irregularities during speech production, we introduced a non-linear time alignment into the SVM kernel. Classification accuracy reached 88% in a two-class classification framework (50% chance level), and average classification accuracy across fifteen word-pairs was significant across five subjects (mean = 58%; p < 0.05). We also compared classification accuracy between imagined speech, overt speech and listening. As predicted, higher classification accuracy was obtained in the listening and overt speech conditions (mean = 89% and 86%, respectively; p < 0.0001), where speech stimuli were directly presented. The results provide evidence for a neural representation for imagined words in the temporal lobe, frontal lobe and sensorimotor cortex, consistent with previous findings in speech perception and production. These data represent a proof of concept study for basic decoding of speech imagery, and delineate a number of key challenges to usage of speech imagery neural representations for clinical applications. PMID:27165452

Separating the influences of prereading skills on early word and nonword reading.

PubMed

Shapiro, Laura R; Carroll, Julia M; Solity, Jonathan E

2013-10-01

The essential first step for a beginning reader is to learn to match printed forms to phonological representations. For a new word, this is an effortful process where each grapheme must be translated individually (serial decoding). The role of phonological awareness in developing a decoding strategy is well known. We examined whether beginning readers recruit different skills depending on the nature of the words being read (familiar words vs. nonwords). Print knowledge, phoneme and rhyme awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological short-term memory (STM), nonverbal reasoning, vocabulary, auditory skills, and visual attention were measured in 392 prereaders 4 and 5 years of age. Word and nonword reading were measured 9 months later. We used structural equation modeling to examine the skills-reading relationship and modeled correlations between our two reading outcomes and among all prereading skills. We found that a broad range of skills were associated with reading outcomes: early print knowledge, phonological STM, phoneme awareness and RAN. Whereas all of these skills were directly predictive of nonword reading, early print knowledge was the only direct predictor of word reading. Our findings suggest that beginning readers draw most heavily on their existing print knowledge to read familiar words. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Effects of Direct Instruction Rewards Program Strategies to Teach Separation of Complex Words to Two High School Students with Disabilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mullaney, Lauren; Baker, Megan; Rutherford, Katie; Neyman, Jennifer; McLaughlin, T. F.; Stookey, Susan

2014-01-01

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effects of the Direct Instruction REWARDS® program on reading complex words of two fifteen-year-old boys in a reading resource room. Both participants had difficulty in reading and were diagnosed as learning disabled. During baseline, both participants had difficulty in syllabication. The results showed…

Direct and Indirect Teaching: Using E-Books for Supporting Vocabulary, Word Reading, and Story Comprehension for Young Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Korat, Ofra; Shamir, Adina

2012-01-01

We examine the effect of direct and indirect teaching of vocabulary and word reading on pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children following use of an electronic storybook (e-book). The children in each age group were randomly assigned to an intervention group which read the e-book or to a control group which was afforded the regular school…

An acoustic comparison of two women's infant- and adult-directed speech

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Andruski, Jean; Katz-Gershon, Shiri

2003-04-01

In addition to having prosodic characteristics that are attractive to infant listeners, infant-directed (ID) speech shares certain characteristics of adult-directed (AD) clear speech, such as increased acoustic distance between vowels, that might be expected to make ID speech easier for adults to perceive in noise than AD conversational speech. However, perceptual tests of two women's ID productions by Andruski and Bessega [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 112, 2355] showed that is not always the case. In a word identification task that compared ID speech with AD clear and conversational speech, one speaker's ID productions were less well-identified than AD clear speech, but better identified than AD conversational speech. For the second woman, ID speech was the least accurately identified of the three speech registers. For both speakers, hard words (infrequent words with many lexical neighbors) were also at an increased disadvantage relative to easy words (frequent words with few lexical neighbors) in speech registers that were less accurately perceived. This study will compare several acoustic properties of these women's productions, including pitch and formant-frequency characteristics. Results of the acoustic analyses will be examined with the original perceptual results to suggest reasons for differences in listener's accuracy in identifying these two women's ID speech in noise.

Representation Learning of Logic Words by an RNN: From Word Sequences to Robot Actions

PubMed Central

Yamada, Tatsuro; Murata, Shingo; Arie, Hiroaki; Ogata, Tetsuya

2017-01-01

An important characteristic of human language is compositionality. We can efficiently express a wide variety of real-world situations, events, and behaviors by compositionally constructing the meaning of a complex expression from a finite number of elements. Previous studies have analyzed how machine-learning models, particularly neural networks, can learn from experience to represent compositional relationships between language and robot actions with the aim of understanding the symbol grounding structure and achieving intelligent communicative agents. Such studies have mainly dealt with the words (nouns, adjectives, and verbs) that directly refer to real-world matters. In addition to these words, the current study deals with logic words, such as “not,” “and,” and “or” simultaneously. These words are not directly referring to the real world, but are logical operators that contribute to the construction of meaning in sentences. In human–robot communication, these words may be used often. The current study builds a recurrent neural network model with long short-term memory units and trains it to learn to translate sentences including logic words into robot actions. We investigate what kind of compositional representations, which mediate sentences and robot actions, emerge as the network's internal states via the learning process. Analysis after learning shows that referential words are merged with visual information and the robot's own current state, and the logical words are represented by the model in accordance with their functions as logical operators. Words such as “true,” “false,” and “not” work as non-linear transformations to encode orthogonal phrases into the same area in a memory cell state space. The word “and,” which required a robot to lift up both its hands, worked as if it was a universal quantifier. The word “or,” which required action generation that looked apparently random, was represented as an unstable space of the network's dynamical system. PMID:29311891

Representation Learning of Logic Words by an RNN: From Word Sequences to Robot Actions.

PubMed

Yamada, Tatsuro; Murata, Shingo; Arie, Hiroaki; Ogata, Tetsuya

2017-01-01

An important characteristic of human language is compositionality. We can efficiently express a wide variety of real-world situations, events, and behaviors by compositionally constructing the meaning of a complex expression from a finite number of elements. Previous studies have analyzed how machine-learning models, particularly neural networks, can learn from experience to represent compositional relationships between language and robot actions with the aim of understanding the symbol grounding structure and achieving intelligent communicative agents. Such studies have mainly dealt with the words (nouns, adjectives, and verbs) that directly refer to real-world matters. In addition to these words, the current study deals with logic words, such as "not," "and," and "or" simultaneously. These words are not directly referring to the real world, but are logical operators that contribute to the construction of meaning in sentences. In human-robot communication, these words may be used often. The current study builds a recurrent neural network model with long short-term memory units and trains it to learn to translate sentences including logic words into robot actions. We investigate what kind of compositional representations, which mediate sentences and robot actions, emerge as the network's internal states via the learning process. Analysis after learning shows that referential words are merged with visual information and the robot's own current state, and the logical words are represented by the model in accordance with their functions as logical operators. Words such as "true," "false," and "not" work as non-linear transformations to encode orthogonal phrases into the same area in a memory cell state space. The word "and," which required a robot to lift up both its hands, worked as if it was a universal quantifier. The word "or," which required action generation that looked apparently random, was represented as an unstable space of the network's dynamical system.

Contextual diversity facilitates learning new words in the classroom.

PubMed

Rosa, Eva; Tapia, José Luis; Perea, Manuel

2017-01-01

In the field of word recognition and reading, it is commonly assumed that frequently repeated words create more accessible memory traces than infrequently repeated words, thus capturing the word-frequency effect. Nevertheless, recent research has shown that a seemingly related factor, contextual diversity (defined as the number of different contexts [e.g., films] in which a word appears), is a better predictor than word-frequency in word recognition and sentence reading experiments. Recent research has shown that contextual diversity plays an important role when learning new words in a laboratory setting with adult readers. In the current experiment, we directly manipulated contextual diversity in a very ecological scenario: at school, when Grade 3 children were learning words in the classroom. The new words appeared in different contexts/topics (high-contextual diversity) or only in one of them (low-contextual diversity). Results showed that words encountered in different contexts were learned and remembered more effectively than those presented in redundant contexts. We discuss the practical (educational [e.g., curriculum design]) and theoretical (models of word recognition) implications of these findings.

Contextual diversity facilitates learning new words in the classroom

PubMed Central

Tapia, José Luis; Perea, Manuel

2017-01-01

In the field of word recognition and reading, it is commonly assumed that frequently repeated words create more accessible memory traces than infrequently repeated words, thus capturing the word-frequency effect. Nevertheless, recent research has shown that a seemingly related factor, contextual diversity (defined as the number of different contexts [e.g., films] in which a word appears), is a better predictor than word-frequency in word recognition and sentence reading experiments. Recent research has shown that contextual diversity plays an important role when learning new words in a laboratory setting with adult readers. In the current experiment, we directly manipulated contextual diversity in a very ecological scenario: at school, when Grade 3 children were learning words in the classroom. The new words appeared in different contexts/topics (high-contextual diversity) or only in one of them (low-contextual diversity). Results showed that words encountered in different contexts were learned and remembered more effectively than those presented in redundant contexts. We discuss the practical (educational [e.g., curriculum design]) and theoretical (models of word recognition) implications of these findings. PMID:28586354

Reading a standing wave: figure-ground-alternation masking of primes in evaluative priming.

PubMed

Bermeitinger, Christina; Kuhlmann, Michael; Wentura, Dirk

2012-09-01

We propose a new masking technique for masking word stimuli. Drawing on the phenomena of metacontrast and paracontrast, we alternately presented two prime displays of the same word with the background color in one display matching the font color in the other display and vice versa. The sequence of twenty alterations (spanning approx. 267 ms) was sandwich-masked by structure masks. Using this masking technique, we conducted evaluative priming experiments with positive and negative target and prime words. Significant priming effects were found - for primes and targets drawn from the same as well as from different word sets. Priming effects were independent of prime discrimination performance in direct tests and they were still significant after the sample was restricted to those participants who showed random responding in the direct test. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Individual differences in emotion word processing: A diffusion model analysis.

PubMed

Mueller, Christina J; Kuchinke, Lars

2016-06-01

The exploratory study investigated individual differences in implicit processing of emotional words in a lexical decision task. A processing advantage for positive words was observed, and differences between happy and fear-related words in response times were predicted by individual differences in specific variables of emotion processing: Whereas more pronounced goal-directed behavior was related to a specific slowdown in processing of fear-related words, the rate of spontaneous eye blinks (indexing brain dopamine levels) was associated with a processing advantage of happy words. Estimating diffusion model parameters revealed that the drift rate (rate of information accumulation) captures unique variance of processing differences between happy and fear-related words, with highest drift rates observed for happy words. Overall emotion recognition ability predicted individual differences in drift rates between happy and fear-related words. The findings emphasize that a significant amount of variance in emotion processing is explained by individual differences in behavioral data.

Influence of syllable structure on L2 auditory word learning.

PubMed

Hamada, Megumi; Goya, Hideki

2015-04-01

This study investigated the role of syllable structure in L2 auditory word learning. Based on research on cross-linguistic variation of speech perception and lexical memory, it was hypothesized that Japanese L1 learners of English would learn English words with an open-syllable structure without consonant clusters better than words with a closed-syllable structure and consonant clusters. Two groups of college students (Japanese group, N = 22; and native speakers of English, N = 21) learned paired English pseudowords and pictures. The pseudoword types differed in terms of the syllable structure and consonant clusters (congruent vs. incongruent) and the position of consonant clusters (coda vs. onset). Recall accuracy was higher for the pseudowords in the congruent type and the pseudowords with the coda-consonant clusters. The syllable structure effect was obtained from both participant groups, disconfirming the hypothesized cross-linguistic influence on L2 auditory word learning.

Food-related attentional bias. Word versus pictorial stimuli and the importance of stimuli calorific value in the dot probe task.

PubMed

Freijy, Tanya; Mullan, Barbara; Sharpe, Louise

2014-12-01

The primary aim of this study was to extend previous research on food-related attentional biases by examining biases towards pictorial versus word stimuli, and foods of high versus low calorific value. It was expected that participants would demonstrate greater biases to pictures over words, and to high-calorie over low-calorie foods. A secondary aim was to examine associations between BMI, dietary restraint, external eating and attentional biases. It was expected that high scores on these individual difference variables would be associated with a bias towards high-calorie stimuli. Undergraduates (N = 99) completed a dot probe task including matched word and pictorial food stimuli in a controlled setting. Questionnaires assessing eating behaviour were administered, and height and weight were measured. Contrary to predictions, there were no main effects for stimuli type (pictures vs words) or calorific value (high vs low). There was, however, a significant interaction effect suggesting a bias towards high-calorie pictures, but away from high-calorie words; and a bias towards low-calorie words, but away from low-calorie pictures. No associations between attentional bias and any of the individual difference variables were found. The presence of a stimulus type by calorific value interaction demonstrates the importance of stimuli type in the dot probe task, and may help to explain inconsistencies in prior research. Further research is needed to clarify associations between attentional bias and BMI, restraint, and external eating. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Creating a medical dictionary using word alignment: the influence of sources and resources.

PubMed

Nyström, Mikael; Merkel, Magnus; Petersson, Håkan; Ahlfeldt, Hans

2007-11-23

Automatic word alignment of parallel texts with the same content in different languages is among other things used to generate dictionaries for new translations. The quality of the generated word alignment depends on the quality of the input resources. In this paper we report on automatic word alignment of the English and Swedish versions of the medical terminology systems ICD-10, ICF, NCSP, KSH97-P and parts of MeSH and how the terminology systems and type of resources influence the quality. We automatically word aligned the terminology systems using static resources, like dictionaries, statistical resources, like statistically derived dictionaries, and training resources, which were generated from manual word alignment. We varied which part of the terminology systems that we used to generate the resources, which parts that we word aligned and which types of resources we used in the alignment process to explore the influence the different terminology systems and resources have on the recall and precision. After the analysis, we used the best configuration of the automatic word alignment for generation of candidate term pairs. We then manually verified the candidate term pairs and included the correct pairs in an English-Swedish dictionary. The results indicate that more resources and resource types give better results but the size of the parts used to generate the resources only partly affects the quality. The most generally useful resources were generated from ICD-10 and resources generated from MeSH were not as general as other resources. Systematic inter-language differences in the structure of the terminology system rubrics make the rubrics harder to align. Manually created training resources give nearly as good results as a union of static resources, statistical resources and training resources and noticeably better results than a union of static resources and statistical resources. The verified English-Swedish dictionary contains 24,000 term pairs in base forms. More resources give better results in the automatic word alignment, but some resources only give small improvements. The most important type of resource is training and the most general resources were generated from ICD-10.

Creating a medical dictionary using word alignment: The influence of sources and resources

PubMed Central

Nyström, Mikael; Merkel, Magnus; Petersson, Håkan; Åhlfeldt, Hans

2007-01-01

Background Automatic word alignment of parallel texts with the same content in different languages is among other things used to generate dictionaries for new translations. The quality of the generated word alignment depends on the quality of the input resources. In this paper we report on automatic word alignment of the English and Swedish versions of the medical terminology systems ICD-10, ICF, NCSP, KSH97-P and parts of MeSH and how the terminology systems and type of resources influence the quality. Methods We automatically word aligned the terminology systems using static resources, like dictionaries, statistical resources, like statistically derived dictionaries, and training resources, which were generated from manual word alignment. We varied which part of the terminology systems that we used to generate the resources, which parts that we word aligned and which types of resources we used in the alignment process to explore the influence the different terminology systems and resources have on the recall and precision. After the analysis, we used the best configuration of the automatic word alignment for generation of candidate term pairs. We then manually verified the candidate term pairs and included the correct pairs in an English-Swedish dictionary. Results The results indicate that more resources and resource types give better results but the size of the parts used to generate the resources only partly affects the quality. The most generally useful resources were generated from ICD-10 and resources generated from MeSH were not as general as other resources. Systematic inter-language differences in the structure of the terminology system rubrics make the rubrics harder to align. Manually created training resources give nearly as good results as a union of static resources, statistical resources and training resources and noticeably better results than a union of static resources and statistical resources. The verified English-Swedish dictionary contains 24,000 term pairs in base forms. Conclusion More resources give better results in the automatic word alignment, but some resources only give small improvements. The most important type of resource is training and the most general resources were generated from ICD-10. PMID:18036221

Conceptual versus Perceptual Text Processing Strategies: Differences between Good and Poor Readers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shepard, Charlene R.; Reynolds, Ralph E.

Investigating the selective attention strategy, a study examined the type of attention allocated to important information by good and poor readers. Also tested was the methodological validity of using a conceptual (word recognition) perceptual (tachistoscopic word flash) task as a means of investigating the types of information processing that may…

Vocabulary Simplifications for Children: A Special Case of "Motherese"?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hayes, Donald P.; Ahrens, Margaret G.

1988-01-01

Examines spontaneous conversations between adults and children. Findings indicate that adults' altered mean length of utterance and type-token ratio were based on their age. Contrary to the researcher's expectations, the adults did not choose their words from the 10,000 most common word types in an age-dependent manner. (Author/CB)

Examining Multiple Dimensions of Word Knowledge for Content Vocabulary Understanding

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cervetti, Gina N.; Tilson, Jennifer L.; Castek, Jill; Bravo, Marco A.; Trainin, Guy

2012-01-01

This study traces the development of a vocabulary measure designed to assess multiple types of word knowledge. The assessment, which was administered in conjunction with a science unit about weather and the water cycle for third-and-fourth graders, included items for six knowledge types--recognition, definition, classification/example, context,…

Acoustic Correlates of Focus Marking in Czech and Polish.

PubMed

Hamlaoui, Fatima; Żygis, Marzena; Engelmann, Jonas; Wagner, Michael

2018-05-01

Languages vary in the type of contexts that affect prosodic prominence. This paper reports on a production study investigating how different types of foci influence prosody in Polish and Czech noun phrases. The results show that in both languages, focus and givenness are marked prosodically, with pitch and intensity as the main acoustic correlates. Like Germanic languages, Polish and Czech patterns show prosodic focus marking in a broad range of contexts and differ in this regard from other fixed-word-stress languages such as French. This suggests that (a) Polish and Czech are similar to Germanic languages and are unlike Romance languages in marking a variety of types of focus prosodically; (b) there is no close correlation between fixed word stress and lack of prosodic focus marking because Polish, which has fixed stress on the penult, shows prosodic focus marking for all types of focus; and (c) there is no straightforward relationship between flexible word order and whether focus and givenness are prosodically marked, contrary to earlier claims, because both Czech and Polish, with their relatively flexible word order, are more similar to English than Romance languages.

The Neural Basis of Typewriting: A Functional MRI Study.

PubMed

Higashiyama, Yuichi; Takeda, Katsuhiko; Someya, Yoshiaki; Kuroiwa, Yoshiyuki; Tanaka, Fumiaki

2015-01-01

To investigate the neural substrate of typewriting Japanese words and to detect the difference between the neural substrate of typewriting and handwriting, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in 16 healthy volunteers. All subjects were skillful touch typists and performed five tasks: a typing task, a writing task, a reading task, and two control tasks. Three brain regions were activated during both the typing and the writing tasks: the left superior parietal lobule, the left supramarginal gyrus, and the left premotor cortex close to Exner's area. Although typing and writing involved common brain regions, direct comparison between the typing and the writing task revealed greater left posteromedial intraparietal cortex activation in the typing task. In addition, activity in the left premotor cortex was more rostral in the typing task than in the writing task. These findings suggest that, although the brain circuits involved in Japanese typewriting are almost the same as those involved in handwriting, there are brain regions that are specific for typewriting.

The Neural Basis of Typewriting: A Functional MRI Study

PubMed Central

Higashiyama, Yuichi; Takeda, Katsuhiko; Someya, Yoshiaki; Kuroiwa, Yoshiyuki; Tanaka, Fumiaki

2015-01-01

To investigate the neural substrate of typewriting Japanese words and to detect the difference between the neural substrate of typewriting and handwriting, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in 16 healthy volunteers. All subjects were skillful touch typists and performed five tasks: a typing task, a writing task, a reading task, and two control tasks. Three brain regions were activated during both the typing and the writing tasks: the left superior parietal lobule, the left supramarginal gyrus, and the left premotor cortex close to Exner’s area. Although typing and writing involved common brain regions, direct comparison between the typing and the writing task revealed greater left posteromedial intraparietal cortex activation in the typing task. In addition, activity in the left premotor cortex was more rostral in the typing task than in the writing task. These findings suggest that, although the brain circuits involved in Japanese typewriting are almost the same as those involved in handwriting, there are brain regions that are specific for typewriting. PMID:26218431

Unconventional Word Segmentation in Emerging Bilingual Students' Writing: A Longitudinal Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sparrow, Wendy

2014-01-01

This study explores cross-language and longitudinal patterns in unconventional word segmentation in 25 emerging bilingual students' (Spanish/English) writing from first through third grade. Spanish and English writing samples were collected annually and analyzed for two basic types of unconventional word segmentation: hyposegmentation, in…

Is Banara Really a Word?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Qiao, Xiaomei; Forster, Kenneth; Witzel, Naoko

2009-01-01

Bowers, Davis, and Hanley (Bowers, J. S., Davis, C. J., & Hanley, D. A. (2005). "Interfering neighbours: The impact of novel word learning on the identification of visually similar words." "Cognition," 97(3), B45-B54) reported that if participants were trained to type nonwords such as "banara", subsequent semantic categorization responses to…

The influence of contextual diversity on eye movements in reading.

PubMed

Plummer, Patrick; Perea, Manuel; Rayner, Keith

2014-01-01

Recent research has shown contextual diversity (i.e., the number of passages in which a given word appears) to be a reliable predictor of word processing difficulty. It has also been demonstrated that word-frequency has little or no effect on word recognition speed when accounting for contextual diversity in isolated word processing tasks. An eye-movement experiment was conducted wherein the effects of word-frequency and contextual diversity were directly contrasted in a normal sentence reading scenario. Subjects read sentences with embedded target words that varied in word-frequency and contextual diversity. All 1st-pass and later reading times were significantly longer for words with lower contextual diversity compared to words with higher contextual diversity when controlling for word-frequency and other important lexical properties. Furthermore, there was no difference in reading times for higher frequency and lower frequency words when controlling for contextual diversity. The results confirm prior findings regarding contextual diversity and word-frequency effects and demonstrate that contextual diversity is a more accurate predictor of word processing speed than word-frequency within a normal reading task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

The role of character positional frequency on Chinese word learning during natural reading.

PubMed

Liang, Feifei; Blythe, Hazel I; Bai, Xuejun; Yan, Guoli; Li, Xin; Zang, Chuanli; Liversedge, Simon P

2017-01-01

Readers' eye movements were recorded to examine the role of character positional frequency on Chinese lexical acquisition during reading and its possible modulation by word spacing. In Experiment 1, three types of pseudowords were constructed based on each character's positional frequency, providing congruent, incongruent, and no positional word segmentation information. Each pseudoword was embedded into two sets of sentences, for the learning and the test phases. In the learning phase, half the participants read sentences in word-spaced format, and half in unspaced format. In the test phase, all participants read sentences in unspaced format. The results showed an inhibitory effect of character positional frequency upon the efficiency of word learning when processing incongruent pseudowords both in the learning and test phase, and also showed facilitatory effect of word spacing in the learning phase, but not at test. Most importantly, these two characteristics exerted independent influences on word segmentation. In Experiment 2, three analogous types of pseudowords were created whilst controlling for orthographic neighborhood size. The results of the two experiments were consistent, except that the effect of character positional frequency was absent in the test phase in Experiment 2. We argue that the positional frequency of a word's constituent characters may influence the character-to-word assignment in a process that likely incorporates both lexical segmentation and identification.

Cognitive performance of young and elderly subjects on the free word recall memory test: effect of presentation order on recall order.

PubMed

Santos-Galduróz, R F; Oliveira, F G; Galduróz, J C F; Bueno, O F A

2009-10-01

The influence of aging on memory has been extensively studied, but the importance of short-term memory and recall sequence has not. The objective of the current study was to examine the recall order of words presented on lists and to determine if age affects recall sequence. Physically and psychologically healthy male subjects were divided into two groups according to age, i.e., 23 young subjects (20 to 30 years) and 50 elderly subjects (60 to 70 years) submitted to the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised and the free word recall test. The order of word presentation significantly affected the 3rd and 4th words recalled (P < 0.01; F = 14.6). In addition, there was interaction between the presentation order and the type of list presented (P < 0.05; F = 9.7). Also, both groups recalled the last words presented from each list (words 13-15) significantly more times 3rd and 4th than words presented in all remaining positions (P < 0.01). The order of word presentation also significantly affected the 5th and 6th words recalled (P = 0.05; F = 7.5) and there was a significant interaction between the order of presentation and the type of list presented (P < 0.01; F = 20.8). The more developed the cognitive functions, resulting mainly from formal education, the greater the cognitive reserve, helping to minimize the effects of aging on the long-term memory (episodic declarative).

Neural correlates of individual differences in anxiety sensitivity: an fMRI study using semantic priming.

PubMed

Yang, Yunbo; Lueken, Ulrike; Wittmann, André; Holtz, Katharina; Kleint, Nina Isabel; Herrmann, Martin J; Sass, Katharina; Jansen, Andreas; Konrad, Carsten; Ströhle, Andreas; Pfleiderer, Bettina; Lotze, Martin; Hamm, Alfons; Deckert, Jürgen; Arolt, Volker; Wittchen, Hans-Ulrich; Kircher, Tilo; Straube, Benjamin

2016-08-01

Individuals with high anxiety sensitivity (AS) have an increased risk of developing anxiety disorders and are more biased in how they process fear-related stimuli. This study investigates the neural correlates of fear-related words and word associations in high- and low-AS individuals. We used a semantic priming paradigm during functional magnetic resonance imaging in which three types of target words (fear symptoms, e.g. 'dizziness'; neutral, e.g. 'drink'; and pseudowords, e.g. 'salkom') were preceded by two types of prime words (fear-triggers, e.g. 'elevator'; and neutral, e.g. 'bottle'). Subjects with high AS rated fear-symptom words (vs neutral words) as more unpleasant than low-AS individuals; they also related these words more strongly to fear-triggers and showed prolonged reaction times. During the processing of fear-symptom words, greater activation in the left anterior insula was observed in high-AS subjects than in low-AS subjects. Lower activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus, angular gyrus, fusiform gyrus and bilateral amygdalae was found in high-AS subjects when fear-symptom words were preceded by fear-trigger words. The findings suggest that cognitive biases and the anterior insula play a crucial role in high-AS individuals. Furthermore, semantic processes may contribute to high AS and the risk of developing anxiety disorders. © The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Effectiveness of Acoustic and Conceptual Retrieval Cues in Memory for Words at Two Grade Levels. Technical Report No. 220.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ghatala, Elizabeth S.; Hurlbut, Nancy L.

The effectiveness of two types of retrieval cues was assessed with second- and sixth-grade children. After a single presentation of a list of words, the children first recalled as many of the words as they could. Following free recall, children in each grade were given either conceptual (category names for words on the input lists) or acoustic…

Fingerspelled and Printed Words Are Recoded into a Speech-based Code in Short-term Memory.

PubMed

Sehyr, Zed Sevcikova; Petrich, Jennifer; Emmorey, Karen

2017-01-01

We conducted three immediate serial recall experiments that manipulated type of stimulus presentation (printed or fingerspelled words) and word similarity (speech-based or manual). Matched deaf American Sign Language signers and hearing non-signers participated (mean reading age = 14-15 years). Speech-based similarity effects were found for both stimulus types indicating that deaf signers recoded both printed and fingerspelled words into a speech-based phonological code. A manual similarity effect was not observed for printed words indicating that print was not recoded into fingerspelling (FS). A manual similarity effect was observed for fingerspelled words when similarity was based on joint angles rather than on handshape compactness. However, a follow-up experiment suggested that the manual similarity effect was due to perceptual confusion at encoding. Overall, these findings suggest that FS is strongly linked to English phonology for deaf adult signers who are relatively skilled readers. This link between fingerspelled words and English phonology allows for the use of a more efficient speech-based code for retaining fingerspelled words in short-term memory and may strengthen the representation of English vocabulary. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Attempting to "Increase Intake from the Input": Attention and Word Learning in Children with Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tenenbaum, Elena J.; Amso, Dima; Righi, Giulia; Sheinkopf, Stephen J.

2017-01-01

Previous work has demonstrated that social attention is related to early language abilities. We explored whether we can facilitate word learning among children with autism by directing attention to areas of the scene that have been demonstrated as relevant for successful word learning. We tracked eye movements to faces and objects while children…

Can 18-Month-Old Infants Learn Words by Listening in on Conversations?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Floor, Penelope; Akhtar, Nameera

2006-01-01

Previous research has shown that children as young as 2 can learn words from 3rd-party conversations (Akhtar, Jipson, & Callanan, 2001). The focus of this study was to determine whether younger infants could learn a new word through overhearing. Novel object labels were introduced to 18-month-old infants in 1 of 2 conditions: directly by an…

Discourse Bootstrapping: Preschoolers Use Linguistic Discourse to Learn New Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sullivan, Jessica; Barner, David

2016-01-01

When children acquire language, they often learn words in the absence of direct instruction (e.g. "This is a ball!") or even social cues to reference (e.g. eye gaze, pointing). However, there are few accounts of how children do this, especially in cases where the referent of a new word is ambiguous. Across two experiments, we test…

Accelerating Receptive Language Acquisition in Kindergarten Students: An Action Research Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hewitt, Christine L.

2013-01-01

Receptive language skills allow students to understand the meaning of words spoken to them. When students are unable to comprehend the majority of the words that are spoken to them, they do not have the ability to act on those words, follow given directions, build on prior knowledge, or construct adequate meaning. The inability to understand the…

The Word Writing CAFE: Assessing Student Writing for Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leal, Dorothy J.

2005-01-01

The Word Writing CAFE is a new assessment tool designed for teachers to evaluate objectively students' word-writing ability for fluency, accuracy, and complexity. It is designed to be given to the whole class at one time. This article describes the development of the CAFE and provides directions for administering and scoring it. The author also…

75 FR 18403 - Rules of Procedure; Regulations Implementing the Government in the Sunshine Act; Implementation...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-04-12

... directed that a hyphen be placed between the number ``20'' and the word ``day,'' so that the relevant... 63985, in the center column, in the second paragraph of SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION, remove the word ``Second'' and add in its place the word ``First'' in the third sentence. 0 2. On page 63985, in the center...

Adults' and 8-Year-Olds' Learning in a Foreign Word Repetition Task: Similar and Different

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Service, Elisabet; Yli-Kaitala, Hely; Maury, Sini; Kim, Jeong-Young

2014-01-01

Although the significance of age in second language acquisition is one of the most hotly debated issues in the field, very few studies have directly addressed age differences in the language learning process. The present study investigated learning in a foreign-word repetition task. Young Finnish adults and 8-year-olds repeated back Korean words.…

Third-Party Social Interaction and Word Learning from Video

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Doherty, Katherine; Troseth, Georgene L.; Shimpi, Priya M.; Goldenberg, Elizabeth; Akhtar, Nameera; Saylor, Megan M.

2011-01-01

In previous studies, very young children have learned words while "overhearing" a conversation, yet they have had trouble learning words from a person on video. In Study 1, 64 toddlers (mean age = 29.8 months) viewed an object-labeling demonstration in 1 of 4 conditions. In 2, the speaker (present or on video) directly addressed the child, and in…

Direct Lexical Control of Eye Movements in Reading: Evidence from a Survival Analysis of Fixation Durations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reingold, Eyal M.; Reichle, Erik D.; Glaholt, Mackenzie G.; Sheridan, Heather

2012-01-01

Participants' eye movements were monitored in an experiment that manipulated the frequency of target words (high vs. low) as well as their availability for parafoveal processing during fixations on the pre-target word (valid vs. invalid preview). The influence of the word-frequency by preview validity manipulation on the distributions of first…

Reading Habits, Perceptual Learning, and Recognition of Printed Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nazir, Tatjana A.; Ben-Boutayab, Nadia; Decoppet, Nathalie; Deutsch, Avital; Frost, Ram

2004-01-01

The present work aims at demonstrating that visual training associated with the act of reading modifies the way we perceive printed words. As reading does not train all parts of the retina in the same way but favors regions on the side in the direction of scanning, visual word recognition should be better at retinal locations that are frequently…

Direct lexical control of eye movements in reading: Evidence from a survival analysis of fixation durations

PubMed Central

Reingold, Eyal M.; Reichle, Erik D.; Glaholt, Mackenzie G.; Sheridan, Heather

2013-01-01

Participants’ eye movements were monitored in an experiment that manipulated the frequency of target words (high vs. low) as well as their availability for parafoveal processing during fixations on the pre-target word (valid vs. invalid preview). The influence of the word-frequency by preview validity manipulation on the distributions of first fixation duration was examined by using ex-Gaussian fitting as well as a novel survival analysis technique which provided precise estimates of the timing of the first discernible influence of word frequency on first fixation duration. Using this technique, we found a significant influence of word frequency on fixation duration in normal reading (valid preview) as early as 145 ms from the start of fixation. We also demonstrated an equally rapid non-lexical influence on first fixation duration as a function of initial landing position (location) on target words. The time-course of frequency effects, but not location effects was strongly influenced by preview validity, demonstrating the crucial role of parafoveal processing in enabling direct lexical control of reading fixation times. Implications for models of eye-movement control are discussed. PMID:22542804

Linking sounds to meanings: infant statistical learning in a natural language.

PubMed

Hay, Jessica F; Pelucchi, Bruna; Graf Estes, Katharine; Saffran, Jenny R

2011-09-01

The processes of infant word segmentation and infant word learning have largely been studied separately. However, the ease with which potential word forms are segmented from fluent speech seems likely to influence subsequent mappings between words and their referents. To explore this process, we tested the link between the statistical coherence of sequences presented in fluent speech and infants' subsequent use of those sequences as labels for novel objects. Notably, the materials were drawn from a natural language unfamiliar to the infants (Italian). The results of three experiments suggest that there is a close relationship between the statistics of the speech stream and subsequent mapping of labels to referents. Mapping was facilitated when the labels contained high transitional probabilities in the forward and/or backward direction (Experiment 1). When no transitional probability information was available (Experiment 2), or when the internal transitional probabilities of the labels were low in both directions (Experiment 3), infants failed to link the labels to their referents. Word learning appears to be strongly influenced by infants' prior experience with the distribution of sounds that make up words in natural languages. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Error-Free Text Typing Performance of an Inductive Intra-Oral Tongue Computer Interface for Severely Disabled Individuals.

PubMed

Andreasen Struijk, Lotte N S; Bentsen, Bo; Gaihede, Michael; Lontis, Eugen R

2017-11-01

For severely paralyzed individuals, alternative computer interfaces are becoming increasingly essential for everyday life as social and vocational activities are facilitated by information technology and as the environment becomes more automatic and remotely controllable. Tongue computer interfaces have proven to be desirable by the users partly due to their high degree of aesthetic acceptability, but so far the mature systems have shown a relatively low error-free text typing efficiency. This paper evaluated the intra-oral inductive tongue computer interface (ITCI) in its intended use: Error-free text typing in a generally available text editing system, Word. Individuals with tetraplegia and able bodied individuals used the ITCI for typing using a MATLAB interface and for Word typing for 4 to 5 experimental days, and the results showed an average error-free text typing rate in Word of 11.6 correct characters/min across all participants and of 15.5 correct characters/min for participants familiar with tongue piercings. Improvements in typing rates between the sessions suggest that typing ratescan be improved further through long-term use of the ITCI.

Attention bias towards personally relevant stimuli: the individual emotional Stroop task.

PubMed

Wingenfeld, Katja; Bullig, Renate; Mensebach, Christoph; Hartje, Wolfgang; Driessen, Martin; Beblo, Thomas

2006-12-01

The emotional Stroop task is a widely used method for investigating attentional bias towards stimuli due to mood or affect. In general, standardized stimuli are used, which might not be appropriate when investigating individual contextual frameworks. It was investigated whether words chosen to be related to individuals' personal life events would produce more pronounced Stroop interference (as an indicator of attentional bias) than stimuli without any personal relevance. Twenty-six nonclinical subjects, 20 female and 6 male, participated in the study. Mean age was 36.1 yr. (SD = 18.1). All were recruited by means of local advertising. Stimulus material consisted of four word types: personal words related to negative life events with and without current personal relevance, and negative and neutral words without any personal relevance. Words were presented in three blocks. Analysis of variance showed main effects for word type and blocks, with slower reactions in the personally relevant conditions than in the negative, or neutral conditions, and in response to the first blocks as opposed to the last. These findings indicate that regardless of the word valence, personally relevant stimuli evoke more pronounced Stroop interference than do stimuli without personal relevance.

Visual Similarity of Words Alone Can Modulate Hemispheric Lateralization in Visual Word Recognition: Evidence From Modeling Chinese Character Recognition.

PubMed

Hsiao, Janet H; Cheung, Kit

2016-03-01

In Chinese orthography, the most common character structure consists of a semantic radical on the left and a phonetic radical on the right (SP characters); the minority, opposite arrangement also exists (PS characters). Recent studies showed that SP character processing is more left hemisphere (LH) lateralized than PS character processing. Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether this is due to phonetic radical position or character type frequency. Through computational modeling with artificial lexicons, in which we implement a theory of hemispheric asymmetry in perception but do not assume phonological processing being LH lateralized, we show that the difference in character type frequency alone is sufficient to exhibit the effect that the dominant type has a stronger LH lateralization than the minority type. This effect is due to higher visual similarity among characters in the dominant type than the minority type, demonstrating the modulation of visual similarity of words on hemispheric lateralization. Copyright © 2015 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Adults and children with high imagery show more pronounced perceptual priming effect.

PubMed

Hatakeyama, T

1997-06-01

36 children in Grade 5 and 59 university students, all native speakers of Japanese, studied three types of priming stimuli in a mixed list: words written in hiragana (Japanese syllabary used in writing), words written in kanji (Chinese characters also used in writing), and pictures. They were then given a task involving completion of hiragana-word fragments: the task involved studied and nonstudied items. For both children and university students, words in hiragana produced the largest priming effects, that is, the words that had appeared in hiragana in the preceding study phase were generated more often in the test phase of word completion than the other two types of priming stimuli. This confirms that the perceptual priming effect depends much on data-driven processing. For both age groups, words in kanji produced nearly half the priming effects seen for hiragana-words. On the other hand, pictures had no priming effect for children but they had a similar effect to kanji-words for students. The discrepancy between kanji-words and pictures for children suggests that the former force the subject to read the words, which, possibly, activates the hiragana-words, while the latter do not necessarily force labelling the pictures. Among three kinds of imagery tests, the Verbalizer-Visualizer Questionnaire predicted priming scores for children and the Questionnaire upon Mental Imagery did so for students, but the Test of Visual Imagery Control did not predict the scores for either age group. This shows that children reporting habitual use of imagery and adults reporting vivid imagery have more pronounced perceptual priming effects. We conclude that the imagery ability based on self-judgments reflects real characteristics of the perceptual representation system of Tulving and Schacter (1990).

Do preschool children learn to read words from environmental prints?

PubMed

Zhao, Jing; Zhao, Pei; Weng, Xuchu; Li, Su

2014-01-01

Parents and teachers worldwide believe that a visual environment rich with print can contribute to young children's literacy. Children seem to recognize words in familiar logos at an early age. However, most of previous studies were carried out with alphabetic scripts. Alphabetic letters regularly correspond to phonological segments in a word and provide strong cues about the identity of the whole word. Thus it was not clear whether children can learn to read words by extracting visual word form information from environmental prints. To exclude the phonological-cue confound, this study tested children's knowledge of Chinese words embedded in familiar logos. The four environmental logos were employed and transformed into four versions with the contextual cues (i.e., something apart from the presentation of the words themselves in logo format like the color, logo and font type cues) gradually minimized. Children aged from 3 to 5 were tested. We observed that children of different ages all performed better when words were presented in highly familiar logos compared to when they were presented in a plain fashion, devoid of context. This advantage for familiar logos was also present when the contextual information was only partial. However, the role of various cues in learning words changed with age. The color and logo cues had a larger effect in 3- and 4- year-olds than in 5-year-olds, while the font type cue played a greater role in 5-year-olds than in the other two groups. Our findings demonstrated that young children did not easily learn words by extracting their visual form information even from familiar environmental prints. However, children aged 5 begin to pay more attention to the visual form information of words in highly familiar logos than those aged 3 and 4.

Do Preschool Children Learn to Read Words from Environmental Prints?

PubMed Central

Zhao, Jing; Zhao, Pei; Weng, Xuchu; Li, Su

2014-01-01

Parents and teachers worldwide believe that a visual environment rich with print can contribute to young children's literacy. Children seem to recognize words in familiar logos at an early age. However, most of previous studies were carried out with alphabetic scripts. Alphabetic letters regularly correspond to phonological segments in a word and provide strong cues about the identity of the whole word. Thus it was not clear whether children can learn to read words by extracting visual word form information from environmental prints. To exclude the phonological-cue confound, this study tested children's knowledge of Chinese words embedded in familiar logos. The four environmental logos were employed and transformed into four versions with the contextual cues (i.e., something apart from the presentation of the words themselves in logo format like the color, logo and font type cues) gradually minimized. Children aged from 3 to 5 were tested. We observed that children of different ages all performed better when words were presented in highly familiar logos compared to when they were presented in a plain fashion, devoid of context. This advantage for familiar logos was also present when the contextual information was only partial. However, the role of various cues in learning words changed with age. The color and logo cues had a larger effect in 3- and 4- year-olds than in 5-year-olds, while the font type cue played a greater role in 5-year-olds than in the other two groups. Our findings demonstrated that young children did not easily learn words by extracting their visual form information even from familiar environmental prints. However, children aged 5 begin to pay more attention to the visual form information of words in highly familiar logos than those aged 3 and 4. PMID:24465677

Preventative Reading Interventions Teaching Direct Mapping of Graphemes in Texts and Set-for-Variability Aid At-Risk Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Savage, Robert; Georgiou, George; Parrila, Rauno; Maiorino, Kristina

2018-01-01

We evaluated two experimenter-delivered, small-group word reading programs among at-risk poor readers in Grade 1 classes of regular elementary schools using a two-arm, dual-site-matched control trial intervention. At-risk poor word readers (n = 201) were allocated to either (a) Direct Mapping and Set-for-Variability (DMSfV) or (b) Current or…

Neural competition as a developmental process: early hemispheric specialization for word processing delays specialization for face processing.

PubMed

Li, Su; Lee, Kang; Zhao, Jing; Yang, Zhi; He, Sheng; Weng, Xuchu

2013-04-01

Little is known about the impact of learning to read on early neural development for word processing and its collateral effects on neural development in non-word domains. Here, we examined the effect of early exposure to reading on neural responses to both word and face processing in preschool children with the use of the Event Related Potential (ERP) methodology. We specifically linked children's reading experience (indexed by their sight vocabulary) to two major neural markers: the amplitude differences between the left and right N170 on the bilateral posterior scalp sites and the hemispheric spectrum power differences in the γ band on the same scalp sites. The results showed that the left-lateralization of both the word N170 and the spectrum power in the γ band were significantly positively related to vocabulary. In contrast, vocabulary and the word left-lateralization both had a strong negative direct effect on the face right-lateralization. Also, vocabulary negatively correlated with the right-lateralized face spectrum power in the γ band even after the effects of age and the word spectrum power were partialled out. The present study provides direct evidence regarding the role of reading experience in the neural specialization of word and face processing above and beyond the effect of maturation. The present findings taken together suggest that the neural development of visual word processing competes with that of face processing before the process of neural specialization has been consolidated. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The present status and problems in document retrieval system : document input type retrieval system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Inagaki, Hirohito

The office-automation (OA) made many changes. Many documents were begun to maintained in an electronic filing system. Therefore, it is needed to establish efficient document retrieval system to extract useful information. Current document retrieval systems are using simple word-matching, syntactic-matching, semantic-matching to obtain high retrieval efficiency. On the other hand, the document retrieval systems using special hardware devices, such as ISSP, were developed for aiming high speed retrieval. Since these systems can accept a single sentence or keywords as input, it is difficult to explain searcher's request. We demonstrated document input type retrieval system, which can directly accept document as an input, and can search similar documents from document data-base.

Phrasing in the speech and reading of the hearing impaired.

PubMed

Gregory, J F

1986-08-01

The study reported here explored a partial explanation for the fourth-grade "bottleneck" in literacy advancement by hearing-impaired students. Speech samples from 21 deaf subjects were rated for degree of evident phrasal quality. Likewise, reading comprehension scores for each student were obtained under four reading conditions: reading in whole sentences, in phrases, in fragmented word groups, and in single words. Degree of rated speech phrasality was found to relate significantly and positively to correct recall answers to questions based upon silent reading of passages typed in meaningful word groups (but not when the passages were typed in whole sentences, fragmented word groups, or in single words). The results were taken to suggest that--whereas staccato-speaking deaf students may lack a sense of the phrase altogether--phrasal-speaking deaf youngsters fail to independently apply their phrase sense in the normal reading situation. Thus, both types of deaf youngsters have difficulty affecting the transition to phrase reading that is common for hearing students at or about the fourth-grade level. Finally, I argue that this phrase sense can be instilled in hearing-impaired students and that they can be trained to use it in reading.

Using Implicit Instructional Cues to Influence False Memory Induction.

PubMed

Cirelli, Laura K; Dickinson, Joël; Poirier, Marie

2015-10-01

Previous research has shown that explicit cues specific to the encoding process (endogenous) or characteristic of the stimuli themselves (exogenous) can be used to direct a reader's attentional resources towards either relational or item-specific information. By directing attention to relational information (and therefore away from item-specific information) the rate of false memory induction can be increased. The purpose of the current study was to investigate if a similar effect would be found by manipulating implicitly endogenous cues. An instructional manipulation was used to influence the perceptual action participants performed on word stimuli during the encoding of DRM list words. Results demonstrated that the instructional conditions that encouraged faster processing also led to an increased rate of false memory induction for semantically related words, supporting the hypothesis that attention was directed towards relational information. This finding supports the impoverished relational processing account of false memory induction. This supports the idea that implicitly endogenous cues, exogenous cues (like font) or explicitly endogenous cues (like training) can direct attentional resources during encoding.

The Influence of Sex Information on Gender Word Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Casado, Alba; Palma, Alfonso; Paolieri, Daniela

2018-01-01

Three different tasks (word repetition, lexical decision, and gender decision) were designed to explore the impact of the sex clues (sex of the speaker, sex of the addressee) and the type of gender (semantic, arbitrary) on the processing of isolated Spanish gendered words. The findings showed that the grammatical gender feature was accessed when…

Event-Related Potentials Reflecting the Processing of Phonological Constraint Violations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Domahs, Ulrike; Kehrein, Wolfgang; Knaus, Johannes; Wiese, Richard; Schlesewsky, Matthias

2009-01-01

How are violations of phonological constraints processed in word comprehension? The present article reports the results of an event-related potentials (ERP) study on a phonological constraint of German that disallows identical segments within a syllable or word (CC[subscript i]VC[subscript i]). We examined three types of monosyllabic CCVC words:…

Cognitive Clozing To Teach Them To Think.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Viaggio, Sergio

A cloze-type procedure can be used effectively to teach interpreters how to anticipate what the speaker will say, inferring communicative intention. The exercise uses a text from which words are deleted, not randomly as in the true cloze procedure, but in significant locations or contexts. The words or groups of words suppressed are progressively…

Emotion Word Processing: Effects of Word Type and Valence in Spanish-English Bilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kazanas, Stephanie A.; Altarriba, Jeanette

2016-01-01

Previous studies comparing emotion and emotion-laden word processing have used various cognitive tasks, including an Affective Simon Task (Altarriba and Basnight-Brown in "Int J Billing" 15(3):310-328, 2011), lexical decision task (LDT; Kazanas and Altarriba in "Am J Psychol", in press), and rapid serial visual processing…

Word Processing and Its Implications for Business Communications Courses.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kruk, Leonard B.

Word processing, a systematic approach to office work, is currently based on the use of sophisticated dictating and typing machines. The word processing market is rapidly increasing with the paper explosion brought on by such factors as increasing governmental regulation, Internal Revenue Service requirements, and the need for stockholders to be…

21 CFR 1230.14 - Directions for treatment.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... word “Poison,” directions for treatment in the case of internal personal injury; in addition, if the substance may cause external injury, directions for appropriate treatment shall be given. The directions...

Relationships between Speech Intelligibility and Word Articulation Scores in Children with Hearing Loss

PubMed Central

Ertmer, David J.

2012-01-01

Purpose This investigation sought to determine whether scores from a commonly used word-based articulation test are closely associated with speech intelligibility in children with hearing loss. If the scores are closely related, articulation testing results might be used to estimate intelligibility. If not, the importance of direct assessment of intelligibility would be reinforced. Methods Forty-four children with hearing losses produced words from the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation-2 and sets of 10 short sentences. Correlation analyses were conducted between scores for seven word-based predictor variables and percent-intelligible scores derived from listener judgments of stimulus sentences. Results Six of seven predictor variables were significantly correlated with percent-intelligible scores. However, regression analysis revealed that no single predictor variable or multi- variable model accounted for more than 25% of the variability in intelligibility scores. Implications The findings confirm the importance of assessing connected speech intelligibility directly. PMID:20220022

Item-cued directed forgetting of related words and pictures in children and adults: selective rehearsal versus cognitive inhibition.

PubMed

Lehman, E B; McKinley-Pace, M; Leonard, A M; Thompson, D; Johns, K

2001-01-01

The main purpose of this study was to compare the relative importance of selective rehearsal and cognitive inhibition in accounting for developmental changes in the directed-forgetting paradigm developed by R. A. Bjork (1972). In two experiments, children in Grades 2 and 5 and college students were asked to remember some words or pictures and to forget others when items were categorically related. Their memory for both items and the associated remember or forget cues was then tested with recall and recognition. Fifth graders recognized more of the forget-cued words than college students did. The pattern of results suggested that age differences in rehearsal and source monitoring (i.e., remembering whether a word had been cued remember or forget) were better explanatory mechanisms for children's forgetting inefficiencies than retrieval inhibition was. The results are discussed in terms of a multiple process view of inhibition.

Defining and measuring cyberbullying within the larger context of bullying victimization.

PubMed

Ybarra, Michele L; Boyd, Danah; Korchmaros, Josephine D; Oppenheim, Jay Koby

2012-07-01

To inform the scientific debate about bullying, including cyberbullying, measurement. Two split-form surveys were conducted online among 6-17-year-olds (n = 1,200 each) to inform recommendations for cyberbullying measurement. Measures that use the word "bully" result in prevalence rates similar to each other, irrespective of whether a definition is included, whereas measures not using the word "bully" are similar to each other, irrespective of whether a definition is included. A behavioral list of bullying experiences without either a definition or the word "bully" results in higher prevalence rates and likely measures experiences that are beyond the definition of "bullying." Follow-up questions querying differential power, repetition, and bullying over time were used to examine misclassification. The measure using a definition but not the word "bully" appeared to have the highest rate of false positives and, therefore, the highest rate of misclassification. Across two studies, an average of 25% reported being bullied at least monthly in person compared with an average of 10% bullied online, 7% via telephone (cell or landline), and 8% via text messaging. Measures of bullying among English-speaking individuals in the United States should include the word "bully" when possible. The definition may be a useful tool for researchers, but results suggest that it does not necessarily yield a more rigorous measure of bullying victimization. Directly measuring aspects of bullying (i.e., differential power, repetition, over time) reduces misclassification. To prevent double counting across domains, we suggest the following distinctions: mode (e.g., online, in-person), type (e.g., verbal, relational), and environment (e.g., school, home). We conceptualize cyberbullying as bullying communicated through the online mode. Copyright © 2012 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

How vertical hand movements impact brain activity elicited by literally and metaphorically related words: an ERP study of embodied metaphor

PubMed Central

Bardolph, Megan; Coulson, Seana

2014-01-01

Embodied metaphor theory suggests abstract concepts are metaphorically linked to more experientially basic ones and recruit sensorimotor cortex for their comprehension. To test whether words associated with spatial attributes reactivate traces in sensorimotor cortex, we recorded EEG from the scalp of healthy adults as they read words while performing a concurrent task involving either upward- or downward- directed arm movements. ERPs were time-locked to words associated with vertical space—either literally (ascend, descend) or metaphorically (inspire, defeat)—as participants made vertical movements that were either congruent or incongruent with the words. Congruency effects emerged 200–300 ms after word onset for literal words, but not until after 500 ms post-onset for metaphorically related words. Results argue against a strong version of embodied metaphor theory, but support a role for sensorimotor simulation in concrete language. PMID:25566041

Document image retrieval through word shape coding.

PubMed

Lu, Shijian; Li, Linlin; Tan, Chew Lim

2008-11-01

This paper presents a document retrieval technique that is capable of searching document images without OCR (optical character recognition). The proposed technique retrieves document images by a new word shape coding scheme, which captures the document content through annotating each word image by a word shape code. In particular, we annotate word images by using a set of topological shape features including character ascenders/descenders, character holes, and character water reservoirs. With the annotated word shape codes, document images can be retrieved by either query keywords or a query document image. Experimental results show that the proposed document image retrieval technique is fast, efficient, and tolerant to various types of document degradation.

The Neurotopography of Written Word Production: An fMRI Investigation of the Distribution of Sensitivity to Length and Frequency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rapp, Brenda; Dufor, Olivier

2011-01-01

This research is directed at charting the neurotopography of the component processes of the spelling system by using fMRI to identify the neural substrates that are sensitive to the factors of lexical frequency and word length. In spelling, word frequency effects index orthographic long-term memory whereas length effects, as measured by the number…

The effects of name and religious priming on ratings of a well-known political figure, President Barack Obama.

PubMed

Williams, Gary A; Guichard, AnaMarie C; An, JungHa

2017-01-01

Priming with race-typed names and religious concepts have been shown to activate stereotypes and increase prejudice towards out-groups. We examined the effects of name and religious word priming on views of a specific and well-known person, President Barack Obama. We predicted that politically conservative participants primed with President Obama's middle name (Hussein) would rate him more negatively and be more likely to view him as a Muslim than those not shown his middle name. We also examined whether conservatives primed with concrete religious words would rate President Obama more negatively and be more likely to view him as Muslim than those primed with other word types. Furthermore, we predicted that those who mis-identify President Obama as Muslim would rate him more negatively than would those who view him as Christian. The results provided mixed support for these hypotheses. Conservatives primed with President Obama's middle name rated him significantly more negatively than did those in the control condition. This effect was not found for politically liberal or moderate participants. Name priming did not significantly affect views of President Obama's religious affiliation. Although not statistically significant, conservatives primed with abstract religious words tended to rate President Obama more negatively than did those primed with other word types. Religious word priming significantly influenced views of President Obama's religious affiliation; interestingly, participants primed with abstract religious words were more likely to think President Obama is Muslim than were those primed with religious agent or non-religious words. As predicted, participants who thought president Obama was Muslim rated him significantly more negatively than did those who thought he was Christian. Overall, our results provide some evidence that ethnic name and religious word priming can significantly influence opinions, even with a well-known and specific person.

The effects of name and religious priming on ratings of a well-known political figure, President Barack Obama

PubMed Central

Guichard, AnaMarie C.; An, JungHa

2017-01-01

Priming with race-typed names and religious concepts have been shown to activate stereotypes and increase prejudice towards out-groups. We examined the effects of name and religious word priming on views of a specific and well-known person, President Barack Obama. We predicted that politically conservative participants primed with President Obama’s middle name (Hussein) would rate him more negatively and be more likely to view him as a Muslim than those not shown his middle name. We also examined whether conservatives primed with concrete religious words would rate President Obama more negatively and be more likely to view him as Muslim than those primed with other word types. Furthermore, we predicted that those who mis-identify President Obama as Muslim would rate him more negatively than would those who view him as Christian. The results provided mixed support for these hypotheses. Conservatives primed with President Obama’s middle name rated him significantly more negatively than did those in the control condition. This effect was not found for politically liberal or moderate participants. Name priming did not significantly affect views of President Obama’s religious affiliation. Although not statistically significant, conservatives primed with abstract religious words tended to rate President Obama more negatively than did those primed with other word types. Religious word priming significantly influenced views of President Obama’s religious affiliation; interestingly, participants primed with abstract religious words were more likely to think President Obama is Muslim than were those primed with religious agent or non-religious words. As predicted, participants who thought president Obama was Muslim rated him significantly more negatively than did those who thought he was Christian. Overall, our results provide some evidence that ethnic name and religious word priming can significantly influence opinions, even with a well-known and specific person. PMID:28665980

Functions of graphemic and phonemic codes in visual word-recognition.

PubMed

Meyer, D E; Schvaneveldt, R W; Ruddy, M G

1974-03-01

Previous investigators have argued that printed words are recognized directly from visual representations and/or phonological representations obtained through phonemic recoding. The present research tested these hypotheses by manipulating graphemic and phonemic relations within various pairs of letter strings. Ss in two experiments classified the pairs as words or nonwords. Reaction times and error rates were relatively small for word pairs (e.g., BRIBE-TRIBE) that were both graphemically, and phonemically similar. Graphemic similarity alone inhibited performance on other word pairs (e.g., COUCH-TOUCH). These and other results suggest that phonological representations play a significant role in visual word recognition and that there is a dependence between successive phonemic-encoding operations. An encoding-bias model is proposed to explain the data.

Memory, priority encoding, and overcoming high-value proactive interference in younger and older adults.

PubMed

Friedman, Michael C; Castel, Alan D

2013-01-01

It is often necessary to remember important information while directing attention away from encoding less valuable information. To examine how aging influences the ability to control and update the encoding of high-value information, younger and older adults studied six lists of words that varied in terms of the point values associated with each word. The words were paired with the same high and low point values for three study-test cycles, but on the fourth and subsequent cycles the value-word pairings were switched such that the lowest value pairs became the highest values (and vice versa). For the first three study-test cycles, younger adults outperformed older adults in terms of the number of words recalled and overall point totals, but performance was similar in terms of selectively remembering high-value words. When the values were switched, both groups displayed substantial interference from the previous pairings. Although both groups improved with additional study-test cycles, only younger adults were able to fully recover from the interference effects. A similar, and more pronounced, set of results were obtained when positive and negative point values were paired with the words. The findings are interpreted in a value-directed remembering framework, emphasizing the role of benefits and costs of strategic encoding and age-related differences in the effects of interference on memory.

Working memory components that predict word problem solving: Is it merely a function of reading, calculation, and fluid intelligence?

PubMed

Fung, Wenson; Swanson, H Lee

2017-07-01

The purpose of this study was to assess whether the differential effects of working memory (WM) components (the central executive, phonological loop, and visual-spatial sketchpad) on math word problem-solving accuracy in children (N = 413, ages 6-10) are completely mediated by reading, calculation, and fluid intelligence. The results indicated that all three WM components predicted word problem solving in the nonmediated model, but only the storage component of WM yielded a significant direct path to word problem-solving accuracy in the fully mediated model. Fluid intelligence was found to moderate the relationship between WM and word problem solving, whereas reading, calculation, and related skills (naming speed, domain-specific knowledge) completely mediated the influence of the executive system on problem-solving accuracy. Our results are consistent with findings suggesting that storage eliminates the predictive contribution of executive WM to various measures Colom, Rebollo, Abad, & Shih (Memory & Cognition, 34: 158-171, 2006). The findings suggest that the storage component of WM, rather than the executive component, has a direct path to higher-order processing in children.

Usage of semantic representations in recognition memory.

PubMed

Nishiyama, Ryoji; Hirano, Tetsuji; Ukita, Jun

2017-11-01

Meanings of words facilitate false acceptance as well as correct rejection of lures in recognition memory tests, depending on the experimental context. This suggests that semantic representations are both directly and indirectly (i.e., mediated by perceptual representations) used in remembering. Studies using memory conjunction errors (MCEs) paradigms, in which the lures consist of component parts of studied words, have reported semantic facilitation of rejection of the lures. However, attending to components of the lures could potentially cause this. Therefore, we investigated whether semantic overlap of lures facilitates MCEs using Japanese Kanji words in which a whole-word image is more concerned in reading. Experiments demonstrated semantic facilitation of MCEs in a delayed recognition test (Experiment 1), and in immediate recognition tests in which participants were prevented from using phonological or orthographic representations (Experiment 2), and the salient effect on individuals with high semantic memory capacities (Experiment 3). Additionally, analysis of the receiver operating characteristic suggested that this effect is attributed to familiarity-based memory judgement and phantom recollection. These findings indicate that semantic representations can be directly used in remembering, even when perceptual representations of studied words are available.

Tracking real-time neural activation of conceptual knowledge using single-trial event-related potentials.

PubMed

Amsel, Ben D

2011-04-01

Empirically derived semantic feature norms categorized into different types of knowledge (e.g., visual, functional, auditory) can be summed to create number-of-feature counts per knowledge type. Initial evidence suggests several such knowledge types may be recruited during language comprehension. The present study provides a more detailed understanding of the timecourse and intensity of influence of several such knowledge types on real-time neural activity. A linear mixed-effects model was applied to single trial event-related potentials for 207 visually presented concrete words measured on total number of features (semantic richness), imageability, and number of visual motion, color, visual form, smell, taste, sound, and function features. Significant influences of multiple feature types occurred before 200ms, suggesting parallel neural computation of word form and conceptual knowledge during language comprehension. Function and visual motion features most prominently influenced neural activity, underscoring the importance of action-related knowledge in computing word meaning. The dynamic time courses and topographies of these effects are most consistent with a flexible conceptual system wherein temporally dynamic recruitment of representations in modal and supramodal cortex are a crucial element of the constellation of processes constituting word meaning computation in the brain. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The time course of spoken word learning and recognition: studies with artificial lexicons.

PubMed

Magnuson, James S; Tanenhaus, Michael K; Aslin, Richard N; Dahan, Delphine

2003-06-01

The time course of spoken word recognition depends largely on the frequencies of a word and its competitors, or neighbors (similar-sounding words). However, variability in natural lexicons makes systematic analysis of frequency and neighbor similarity difficult. Artificial lexicons were used to achieve precise control over word frequency and phonological similarity. Eye tracking provided time course measures of lexical activation and competition (during spoken instructions to perform visually guided tasks) both during and after word learning, as a function of word frequency, neighbor type, and neighbor frequency. Apparent shifts from holistic to incremental competitor effects were observed in adults and neural network simulations, suggesting such shifts reflect general properties of learning rather than changes in the nature of lexical representations.

Reading Function and Content Words in Subtitled Videos

PubMed Central

Szarkowska, Agnieszka; Łogińska, Maria

2016-01-01

In this study, we examined how function and content words are read in intra- and interlingual subtitles. We monitored eye movements of a group of 39 deaf, 27 hard of hearing, and 56 hearing Polish participants while they viewed English and Polish videos with Polish subtitles. We found that function words and short content words received less visual attention than longer content words, which was reflected in shorter dwell time, lower number of fixations, shorter first fixation duration, and lower subject hit count. Deaf participants dwelled significantly longer on function words than other participants, which may be an indication of their difficulty in processing this type of words. The findings are discussed in the context of classical reading research and applied research on subtitling. PMID:26681268

Implicit semantic priming in Spanish-speaking children and adults: an auditory lexical decision task.

PubMed

Girbau, Dolors; Schwartz, Richard G

2011-05-01

Although receptive priming has long been used as a way to examine lexical access in adults, few studies have applied this method to children and rarely in an auditory modality. We compared auditory associative priming in children and adults. A testing battery and a Lexical Decision (LD) task was administered to 42 adults and 27 children (8;1-10; 11 years-old) from Spain. They listened to Spanish word pairs (semantically related/unrelated word pairs and word-pseudoword pairs), and tone pairs. Then participants pressed one key for word pairs, and another for pairs with a word and a pseudoword. They also had to press the two keys alternatively for tone pairs as a basic auditory control. Both groups of participants, children and adults, exhibited semantic priming, with significantly faster Reaction Times (RTs) to semantically related word pairs than to unrelated pairs and to the two word-pseudoword sets. The priming effect was twice as large in the adults compared to children, and the children (not the adults) were significantly slower in their response to word-pseudoword pairs than to the unrelated word pairs. Moreover, accuracy was somewhat higher in adults than children for each word pair type, but especially in the word-pseudoword pairs. As expected, children were significantly slower than adults in the RTs for all stimulus types, and their RTs decreased significantly from 8 to 10 years of age and they also decreased in relation to some of their language abilities development (e.g., relative clauses comprehension). In both age groups, the Reaction Time average for tone pairs was lower than for speech pairs, but only all adults obtained 100% accuracy (which was slightly lower in children). Auditory processing and semantic networks are still developing in 8-10 year old children.

Evidence for morphological composition in compound words using MEG.

PubMed

Brooks, Teon L; Cid de Garcia, Daniela

2015-01-01

Psycholinguistic and electrophysiological studies of lexical processing show convergent evidence for morpheme-based lexical access for morphologically complex words that involves early decomposition into their constituent morphemes followed by some combinatorial operation. Considering that both semantically transparent (e.g., sailboat) and semantically opaque (e.g., bootleg) compounds undergo morphological decomposition during the earlier stages of lexical processing, subsequent combinatorial operations should account for the difference in the contribution of the constituent morphemes to the meaning of these different word types. In this study we use magnetoencephalography (MEG) to pinpoint the neural bases of this combinatorial stage in English compound word recognition. MEG data were acquired while participants performed a word naming task in which three word types, transparent compounds (e.g., roadside), opaque compounds (e.g., butterfly), and morphologically simple words (e.g., brothel) were contrasted in a partial-repetition priming paradigm where the word of interest was primed by one of its constituent morphemes. Analysis of onset latency revealed shorter latencies to name compound words than simplex words when primed, further supporting a stage of morphological decomposition in lexical access. An analysis of the associated MEG activity uncovered a region of interest implicated in morphological composition, the Left Anterior Temporal Lobe (LATL). Only transparent compounds showed increased activity in this area from 250 to 470 ms. Previous studies using sentences and phrases have highlighted the role of LATL in performing computations for basic combinatorial operations. Results are in tune with decomposition models for morpheme accessibility early in processing and suggest that semantics play a role in combining the meanings of morphemes when their composition is transparent to the overall word meaning.

Do psychosis patients with poor insight show implicit awareness on the emotional stroop task?

PubMed

Wiffen, Benjamin D R; O'Connor, Jennifer A; Russo, Manuela; Falcone, M Aurora; Joseph, Candice; Kolliakou, Anna; Di Forti, Marta; Murray, Robin M; David, Anthony S

2014-01-01

The insight into psychosis can be assessed reliably by clinicians from interviews with patients. However, patients may retain implicit awareness of illness while lacking explicit awareness. In a sample of first-episode psychosis patients, we used a test of processing of mental illness-related and other negative words as a measure of implicit awareness to see how this varied in relation to insight. An emotional-counting Stroop task tested reaction times to words of three types: psychosis-related (e.g. 'crazy'), general negative (e.g. 'cancer') and neutral (e.g. 'oyster'). Data were available from 43 patients and 23 healthy controls. Patients' insight was assessed using the Schedule for the Assessment of Insight (SAI-E). Patients reacted slower than controls to words across all conditions, and both patients and controls reacted slower to salient and negative words than neutral words. There was a near significant interaction between word type and group (Wilks' lambda = 0.53, p = 0.055); patients experienced greater interference from negative rather than psychosis-related words (p = 0.003), and controls experienced greater interference from salient rather than negative words (p = 0.01). Within the patient group, there was a correlation between insight and interference on salient words (r = 0.33, p = 0.05), such that those with less insight experienced less interference on psychosis-related words. Psychosis-related words were less threatening and less self-relevant to psychosis patients with less insight. This suggests that the lack of awareness such patients have of their illness is genuine and more likely to be mediated by lower-level information processing mechanisms than strategies such as conscious, motivated denial. Copyright © 2013 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Representation of visual symbols in the visual word processing network.

PubMed

Muayqil, Taim; Davies-Thompson, Jodie; Barton, Jason J S

2015-03-01

Previous studies have shown that word processing involves a predominantly left-sided occipitotemporal network. Words are a form of symbolic representation, in that they are arbitrary perceptual stimuli that represent other objects, actions or concepts. Lesions of parts of the visual word processing network can cause alexia, which can be associated with difficulty processing other types of symbols such as musical notation or road signs. We investigated whether components of the visual word processing network were also activated by other types of symbols. In 16 music-literate subjects, we defined the visual word network using fMRI and examined responses to four symbolic categories: visual words, musical notation, instructive symbols (e.g. traffic signs), and flags and logos. For each category we compared responses not only to scrambled stimuli, but also to similar stimuli that lacked symbolic meaning. The left visual word form area and a homologous right fusiform region responded similarly to all four categories, but equally to both symbolic and non-symbolic equivalents. Greater response to symbolic than non-symbolic stimuli occurred only in the left inferior frontal and middle temporal gyri, but only for words, and in the case of the left inferior frontal gyri, also for musical notation. A whole-brain analysis comparing symbolic versus non-symbolic stimuli revealed a distributed network of inferior temporooccipital and parietal regions that differed for different symbols. The fusiform gyri are involved in processing the form of many symbolic stimuli, but not specifically for stimuli with symbolic content. Selectivity for stimuli with symbolic content only emerges in the visual word network at the level of the middle temporal and inferior frontal gyri, but is specific for words and musical notation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Response-related fMRI of veridical and false recognition of words.

PubMed

Heun, Reinhard; Jessen, Frank; Klose, Uwe; Erb, Michael; Granath, Dirk-Oliver; Grodd, Wolfgang

2004-02-01

Studies on the relation between local cerebral activation and retrieval success usually compared high and low performance conditions, and thus showed performance-related activation of different brain areas. Only a few studies directly compared signal intensities of different response categories during retrieval. During verbal recognition, we recently observed increased parieto-occipital activation related to false alarms. The present study intends to replicate and extend this observation by investigating common and differential activation by veridical and false recognition. Fifteen healthy volunteers performed a verbal recognition paradigm using 160 learned target and 160 new distractor words. The subjects had to indicate whether they had learned the word before or not. Echo-planar MRI of blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal changes was performed during this recognition task. Words were classified post hoc according to the subjects' responses, i.e. hits, false alarms, correct rejections and misses. Response-related fMRI-analysis was used to compare activation associated with the subjects' recognition success, i.e. signal intensities related to the presentation of words were compared by the above-mentioned four response types. During recognition, all word categories showed increased bilateral activation of the inferior frontal gyrus, the inferior temporal gyrus, the occipital lobe and the brainstem in comparison with the control condition. Hits and false alarms activated several areas including the left medial and lateral parieto-occipital cortex in comparison with subjectively unknown items, i.e. correct rejections and misses. Hits showed more pronounced activation in the medial, false alarms in the lateral parts of the left parieto-occipital cortex. Veridical and false recognition show common as well as different areas of cerebral activation in the left parieto-occipital lobe: increased activation of the medial parietal cortex by hits may correspond to true recognition, increased activation of the parieto-occipital cortex by false alarms may correspond to familiarity decisions. Further studies are needed to investigate the reasons for false decisions in healthy subjects and patients with memory problems.

The Benefits of Targeted Memory Reactivation for Consolidation in Sleep are Contingent on Memory Accuracy and Direct Cue-Memory Associations.

PubMed

Cairney, Scott A; Lindsay, Shane; Sobczak, Justyna M; Paller, Ken A; Gaskell, M Gareth

2016-05-01

To investigate how the effects of targeted memory reactivation (TMR) are influenced by memory accuracy prior to sleep and the presence or absence of direct cue-memory associations. 30 participants associated each of 50 pictures with an unrelated word and then with a screen location in two separate tasks. During picture-location training, each picture was also presented with a semantically related sound. The sounds were therefore directly associated with the picture locations but indirectly associated with the words. During a subsequent nap, half of the sounds were replayed in slow wave sleep (SWS). The effect of TMR on memory for the picture locations (direct cue-memory associations) and picture-word pairs (indirect cue-memory associations) was then examined. TMR reduced overall memory decay for recall of picture locations. Further analyses revealed a benefit of TMR for picture locations recalled with a low degree of accuracy prior to sleep, but not those recalled with a high degree of accuracy. The benefit of TMR for low accuracy memories was predicted by time spent in SWS. There was no benefit of TMR for memory of the picture-word pairs, irrespective of memory accuracy prior to sleep. TMR provides the greatest benefit to memories recalled with a low degree of accuracy prior to sleep. The memory benefits of TMR may also be contingent on direct cue-memory associations. © 2016 Associated Professional Sleep Societies, LLC.

Use of the Word "Cure" in the Oncology Literature.

PubMed

Prasad, Vinay

2015-08-01

"Cure" is an important word in oncology but its use in the published literature has not been examined. I investigated all oncology articles using cure in the title field and published in 2012. The definition of cure was examined, specifically whether or not authors use the word to connote some surviving subset of patients who go on to experience outcomes similar to age-matched, normal controls-a definition favored by researchers and employed in survival function analyses. All articles published between January 1, 2012, and December 31, 2012, with the word cure in the title field were retrieved from Thompson Reuters' Web of Science. After exclusions, articles were read in full to examine what definitions of cure was used. Additionally, for each situation (type of cancer, stage/grade) where the word cure was used, a literature search was performed to ascertain whether there existed documented cases of cure. Twenty-nine oncology articles used the word cure in their title in 2012. Nearly half, 14 (48%) of 29, used the term in situations (cancer type, stage/grade) currently considered incurable. Approximately one-third (34.5%) of the articles used the word consistent with the definition that, after a set period of time, some surviving subset of patients experience survival similar to normal controls. There is heterogeneity in the use of the word cure in the literature. © The Author(s) 2014.

Reading Vocabulary in Children with and without Hearing Loss: The Roles of Task and Word Type

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coppens, Karien M.; Tellings, Agnes; Verhoeven, Ludo; Schreuder, Robert

2013-01-01

Purpose: To address the problem of low reading comprehension scores among children with hearing impairment, it is necessary to have a better understanding of their reading vocabulary. In this study, the authors investigated whether task and word type differentiate the reading vocabulary knowledge of children with and without severe hearing loss.…

Hierarchical singleton-type recurrent neural fuzzy networks for noisy speech recognition.

PubMed

Juang, Chia-Feng; Chiou, Chyi-Tian; Lai, Chun-Lung

2007-05-01

This paper proposes noisy speech recognition using hierarchical singleton-type recurrent neural fuzzy networks (HSRNFNs). The proposed HSRNFN is a hierarchical connection of two singleton-type recurrent neural fuzzy networks (SRNFNs), where one is used for noise filtering and the other for recognition. The SRNFN is constructed by recurrent fuzzy if-then rules with fuzzy singletons in the consequences, and their recurrent properties make them suitable for processing speech patterns with temporal characteristics. In n words recognition, n SRNFNs are created for modeling n words, where each SRNFN receives the current frame feature and predicts the next one of its modeling word. The prediction error of each SRNFN is used as recognition criterion. In filtering, one SRNFN is created, and each SRNFN recognizer is connected to the same SRNFN filter, which filters noisy speech patterns in the feature domain before feeding them to the SRNFN recognizer. Experiments with Mandarin word recognition under different types of noise are performed. Other recognizers, including multilayer perceptron (MLP), time-delay neural networks (TDNNs), and hidden Markov models (HMMs), are also tested and compared. These experiments and comparisons demonstrate good results with HSRNFN for noisy speech recognition tasks.

Impact of Personal Relevance and Contextualization on Word-Picture Matching by People with Aphasia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McKelvey, Miechelle L.; Hux, Karen; Dietz, Aimee; Beukelman, David R.

2010-01-01

Purpose: To determine the effect of personal relevance and contextualization of images on the preferences and word-picture matching accuracy of people with severe aphasia. Method: Eight adults with aphasia performed 2 experimental tasks to reveal their preferences and accuracy during word-picture matching. The researchers used 3 types of visual…

Cognitive Control Influences the Use of Meaning Relations during Spoken Sentence Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boudewyn, Megan A.; Long, Debra L.; Swaab, Tamara Y.

2012-01-01

The aim of this study was to investigate individual differences in the influence of lexical association on word recognition during auditory sentence processing. Lexical associations among individual words (e.g. salt and pepper) represent one type of semantic information that is available during the processing of words in context. We predicted that…

A Joint Probabilistic Classification Model of Relevant and Irrelevant Sentences in Mathematical Word Problems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cetintas, Suleyman; Si, Luo; Xin, Yan Ping; Zhang, Dake; Park, Joo Young; Tzur, Ron

2010-01-01

Estimating the difficulty level of math word problems is an important task for many educational applications. Identification of relevant and irrelevant sentences in math word problems is an important step for calculating the difficulty levels of such problems. This paper addresses a novel application of text categorization to identify two types of…

Cross-Language Transfer of Insight into the Structure of Compound Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Jie; Anderson, Richard C.; Li, Hong; Dong, Qiong; Wu, Xinchun; Zhang, Yan

2010-01-01

Cross-language transfer of awareness of the structure of compound words was investigated among native speakers of Chinese who were learning English as a second language. Chinese fifth graders received instruction in the morphology of four types of compound words in either Chinese or English. They then completed both the Chinese and English…

Semantic Interaction in Early and Late Bilinguals: All Words Are Not Created Equally

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gathercole, Virginia C. Mueller; Moawad, Ruba Abdelmatloub

2010-01-01

This study examines L1-L2 interaction in semantic categorization in early and late L2 learners. Word categories that overlapped but were not identical in Arabic and English were tested. Words always showed a "wider" range of application in one language, "narrower" in the other. Three types of categories--"classical", "radial", and…

Hidden word learning capacity through orthography in aphasia.

PubMed

Tuomiranta, Leena M; Càmara, Estela; Froudist Walsh, Seán; Ripollés, Pablo; Saunavaara, Jani P; Parkkola, Riitta; Martin, Nadine; Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni; Laine, Matti

2014-01-01

The ability to learn to use new words is thought to depend on the integrity of the left dorsal temporo-frontal speech processing pathway. We tested this assumption in a chronic aphasic individual (AA) with an extensive left temporal lesion using a new-word learning paradigm. She exhibited severe phonological problems and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) suggested a complete disconnection of this left-sided white-matter pathway comprising the arcuate fasciculus (AF). Diffusion imaging tractography confirmed the disconnection of the direct segment and the posterior indirect segment of her left AF, essential components of the left dorsal speech processing pathway. Despite her left-hemispheric damage and moderate aphasia, AA learned to name and maintain the novel words in her active vocabulary on par with healthy controls up to 6 months after learning. This exceeds previous demonstrations of word learning ability in aphasia. Interestingly, AA's preserved word learning ability was modality-specific as it was observed exclusively for written words. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) revealed that in contrast to normals, AA showed a significantly right-lateralized activation pattern in the temporal and parietal regions when engaged in reading. Moreover, learning of visually presented novel word-picture pairs also activated the right temporal lobe in AA. Both AA and the controls showed increased activation during learning of novel versus familiar word-picture pairs in the hippocampus, an area critical for associative learning. AA's structural and functional imaging results suggest that in a literate person, a right-hemispheric network can provide an effective alternative route for learning of novel active vocabulary. Importantly, AA's previously undetected word learning ability translated directly into therapy, as she could use written input also to successfully re-learn and maintain familiar words that she had lost due to her left hemisphere lesion. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Emergent literacy in print and electronic contexts: The influence of book type, narration source, and attention.

PubMed

O'Toole, Kathryn J; Kannass, Kathleen N

2018-09-01

Young children learn from traditional print books, but there has been no direct comparison of their learning from print books and tablet e-books while controlling for narration source. The current project used a between-subjects design and examined how 4-year-olds (N = 100) learned words and story content from a print book read aloud by a live adult, a print book narrated by an audio device, an e-book read aloud by a live adult, and an e-book narrated by an audio device. Attention to the book and prior experience with tablet e-books were also measured and included in analyses. When controlling for vocabulary, the overall pattern of results revealed that children learned more words from the e-book and from the audio narrator, but story comprehension did not differ as a function of condition. Attention predicted learning, but only in some print book contexts, and significant effects of prior experience did not emerge. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated Text Analysis Based on Skip-Gram Model for Food Evaluation in Predicting Consumer Acceptance

PubMed Central

Kim, Augustine Yongwhi; Choi, Hoduk

2018-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate food taste, smell, and characteristics from consumers' online reviews. Several studies in food sensory evaluation have been presented for consumer acceptance. However, these studies need taste descriptive word lexicon, and they are not suitable for analyzing large number of evaluators to predict consumer acceptance. In this paper, an automated text analysis method for food evaluation is presented to analyze and compare recently introduced two jjampong ramen types (mixed seafood noodles). To avoid building a sensory word lexicon, consumers' reviews are collected from SNS. Then, by training word embedding model with acquired reviews, words in the large amount of review text are converted into vectors. Based on these words represented as vectors, inference is performed to evaluate taste and smell of two jjampong ramen types. Finally, the reliability and merits of the proposed food evaluation method are confirmed by a comparison with the results from an actual consumer preference taste evaluation. PMID:29606960

Automated Text Analysis Based on Skip-Gram Model for Food Evaluation in Predicting Consumer Acceptance.

PubMed

Kim, Augustine Yongwhi; Ha, Jin Gwan; Choi, Hoduk; Moon, Hyeonjoon

2018-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate food taste, smell, and characteristics from consumers' online reviews. Several studies in food sensory evaluation have been presented for consumer acceptance. However, these studies need taste descriptive word lexicon, and they are not suitable for analyzing large number of evaluators to predict consumer acceptance. In this paper, an automated text analysis method for food evaluation is presented to analyze and compare recently introduced two jjampong ramen types (mixed seafood noodles). To avoid building a sensory word lexicon, consumers' reviews are collected from SNS. Then, by training word embedding model with acquired reviews, words in the large amount of review text are converted into vectors. Based on these words represented as vectors, inference is performed to evaluate taste and smell of two jjampong ramen types. Finally, the reliability and merits of the proposed food evaluation method are confirmed by a comparison with the results from an actual consumer preference taste evaluation.

Non-word repetition in children with specific language impairment: a deficit in phonological working memory or in long-term verbal knowledge?

PubMed

Casalini, Claudia; Brizzolara, Daniela; Chilosi, Anna; Cipriani, Paola; Marcolini, Stefania; Pecini, Chiara; Roncoli, Silvia; Burani, Cristina

2007-08-01

In this study we investigated the effects of long-term memory (LTM) verbal knowledge on short-term memory (STM) verbal recall in a sample of Italian children affected by different subtypes of specific language impairment (SLI). The aim of the study was to evaluate if phonological working memory (PWM) abilities of SLI children can be supported by LTM linguistic representations and if PWM performances can be differently affected in the various subtypes of SLI. We tested a sample of 54 children affected by Mixed Receptive-Expressive (RE), Expressive (Ex) and Phonological (Ph) SLI (DSM-IV - American Psychiatric Association, 1994) by means of a repetition task of words (W) and non-words (NW) differing in morphemic structure [morphological non-words (MNW), consisting of combinations of roots and affixes - and simple non-words - with no morphological constituency]. We evaluated the effects of lexical and morpho-lexical LTM representations on STM recall by comparing the repetition accuracy across the three types of stimuli. Results indicated that although SLI children, as a group, showed lower repetition scores than controls, their performance was affected similarly to controls by the type of stimulus and the experimental manipulation of the non-words (better repetition of W than MNW and NW, and of MNW than NW), confirming the recourse to LTM verbal representations to support STM recall. The influence of LTM verbal knowledge on STM recall in SLI improved with age and did not differ among the three types of SLI. However, the three types of SLI differed in the accuracy of their repetition performances (PMW abilities), with the Phonological group showing the best scores. The implications for SLI theory and practice are discussed.

Neuroticism as distancing: perceptual sources of evidence.

PubMed

Liu, Tianwei; Ode, Scott; Moeller, Sara K; Robinson, Michael D

2013-05-01

Several theories and self-reported sources of data link individual differences in negative affectivity to avoidance motivation. Chronic avoidance motivation, through repeated practice, may result in a relatively cognitive distance-enhancing dynamic whereby events and stimuli are perceived as further away from the self, even when they are not threatening. Such predictions are novel but follow from cybernetic theories of self-regulation. In 5 studies (total N = 463), relations of this type were investigated. Study 1 presented participants with phrases that were ambiguous and found that trait negative affect predicted phrase interpretation in a distance-enhancing temporal direction. Study 2 replicated this effect across a systematic manipulation of event valence. Study 3 asked individuals to estimate the size of words and found that individuals higher in neuroticism generally perceived words to be smaller than did individuals lower in neuroticism. In Study 4, people high (but not low) in neuroticism perceived words to be shrinking faster than they were growing. In Study 5, greater perceptual distancing, in a font size estimation task, predicted more adverse reactions to negative events in daily life. Although normative effects varied across studies, consistent support for a chronic distancing perspective of individual differences in negative affectivity was found. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved

Word Lists to Limit Vocabulary in Technical Information.

DTIC Science & Technology

1985-02-01

COMPOSITE adjective COMPACTING verb COMPOSITES noun " COMPACTS verb COMPOSITION noun COMPANIES noun COMPOSITIONS noun COMPANY noun COMPOUND adj/verb...COMPARE verb COMPOUNDED * verb COMPARED* verb COMPOUNDING verb . COMPARES verb COMPOUNDS noun/verb - COMPARING verb COMPRESS noun/verb COMPARISON noun...34 DID* verb DIRECTS verb DIE verb DIRT noun DIED* verb DIRTIED * verb BOLDFACE a Root Word ’ a Past Participle A-28 . .. Technical Report 164 COMMON WORD

The efficacy of dictionary use while reading for learning new words.

PubMed

Hamilton, Harley

2012-01-01

The researcher investigated the use of three types of dictionaries while reading by high school students with severe to profound hearing loss. The objective of the study was to determine the effectiveness of each type of dictionary for acquiring the meanings of unknown vocabulary in text. The three types of dictionaries were (a) an online bilingual multimedia English-American Sign Language (ASL) dictionary (OBMEAD), (b) a paper English-ASL dictionary (PBEAD), and (c) an online monolingual English dictionary (OMED). It was found that for immediate recall of target words, the OBMEAD was superior to both the PBEAD and the OMED. For later recall, no significant difference appeared between the OBMEAD and the PBEAD. For both of these, recall was statistically superior to recall for words learned via the OMED.

Responsiveness to Intervention in Children with Dyslexia.

PubMed

Tilanus, Elisabeth A T; Segers, Eliane; Verhoeven, Ludo

2016-08-01

We examined the responsiveness to a 12-week phonics intervention in 54 s-grade Dutch children with dyslexia, and compared their reading and spelling gains to a control group of 61 typical readers. The intervention aimed to train grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs), and word reading and spelling by using phonics instruction. We examined the accuracy and efficiency of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, decoding words and pseudowords, as well as the accuracy of spelling words before and after the intervention. Moreover, responsiveness to intervention was examined by studying to what extent scores at posttest could directly or indirectly be predicted from precursor measures. Results showed that the children with dyslexia were significantly behind in all reading and spelling measures at pretest. During the intervention, the children with dyslexia made more progress on GPC, (pseudo)word decoding accuracy and efficiency, and spelling accuracy than the typical reading group. Furthermore, we found a direct effect of the precursor measures rapid automatized naming, verbal working memory and phoneme deletion on the dyslexic children's progress in GPC speed, and indirect effects of rapid automatized naming and phoneme deletion on word and pseudoword efficiency and word decoding accuracy via the scores at pretest. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Memory and the Korsakoff syndrome: not remembering what is remembered.

PubMed

d'Ydewalle, Géry; Van Damme, Ilse

2007-03-14

Following the distinction between involuntary unconscious memory, involuntary conscious memory, and intentional retrieval, the focus of the present paper is whether there is an impairment of involuntary conscious memory among Korsakoff patients. At study, participants generated associations versus counted the number of letters with enclosed spaces or the number of vowels in the target words (semantic versus perceptual processing). In the Direct tests, stems were to be used to retrieve the targets with either guessing or no guessing allowed; in the Opposition tests, the stems were to be completed with the first word that came to mind but using another word if that first word was a target word; and in the Indirect tests, no reference was made to the target words from the study phase. In the Direct tests, the performance of Korsakoff patients was not necessarily worse than the one of healthy controls, provided guessing was allowed. More critical for the Korsakoff patients was the deficient involuntary conscious memory. The deficiency explained the suppression failures in the Opposition tests, the absence of performance differences between the Indirect and Opposition tests, the absence of a beneficial effect in providing information about the status of the stem, the performance boost when allowed to guess, and the very low rate of "Know"/"Remember" responses.

Infant Directed Speech Enhances Statistical Learning in Newborn Infants: An ERP Study

PubMed Central

Teinonen, Tuomas; Tervaniemi, Mari; Huotilainen, Minna

2016-01-01

Statistical learning and the social contexts of language addressed to infants are hypothesized to play important roles in early language development. Previous behavioral work has found that the exaggerated prosodic contours of infant-directed speech (IDS) facilitate statistical learning in 8-month-old infants. Here we examined the neural processes involved in on-line statistical learning and investigated whether the use of IDS facilitates statistical learning in sleeping newborns. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while newborns were exposed to12 pseudo-words, six spoken with exaggerated pitch contours of IDS and six spoken without exaggerated pitch contours (ADS) in ten alternating blocks. We examined whether ERP amplitudes for syllable position within a pseudo-word (word-initial vs. word-medial vs. word-final, indicating statistical word learning) and speech register (ADS vs. IDS) would interact. The ADS and IDS registers elicited similar ERP patterns for syllable position in an early 0–100 ms component but elicited different ERP effects in both the polarity and topographical distribution at 200–400 ms and 450–650 ms. These results provide the first evidence that the exaggerated pitch contours of IDS result in differences in brain activity linked to on-line statistical learning in sleeping newborns. PMID:27617967

Embedding Number-Combinations Practice Within Word-Problem Tutoring

PubMed Central

Powell, Sarah R.; Fuchs, Lynn S.; Fuchs, Douglas

2012-01-01

Two aspects of mathematics with which students with mathematics learning difficulty (MLD) often struggle are word problems and number-combination skills. This article describes a math program in which students receive instruction on using algebraic equations to represent the underlying problem structure for three word-problem types. Students also learn counting strategies for answering number combinations that they cannot retrieve from memory. Results from randomized-control trials indicated that embedding the counting strategies for number combinations produces superior word-problem and number-combination outcomes for students with MLD beyond tutoring programs that focus exclusively on number combinations or word problems. PMID:22661880

Embedding Number-Combinations Practice Within Word-Problem Tutoring.

PubMed

Powell, Sarah R; Fuchs, Lynn S; Fuchs, Douglas

2010-09-01

Two aspects of mathematics with which students with mathematics learning difficulty (MLD) often struggle are word problems and number-combination skills. This article describes a math program in which students receive instruction on using algebraic equations to represent the underlying problem structure for three word-problem types. Students also learn counting strategies for answering number combinations that they cannot retrieve from memory. Results from randomized-control trials indicated that embedding the counting strategies for number combinations produces superior word-problem and number-combination outcomes for students with MLD beyond tutoring programs that focus exclusively on number combinations or word problems.

Utterance-final position and pitch marking aid word learning in school-age children.

PubMed

Filippi, Piera; Laaha, Sabine; Fitch, W Tecumseh

2017-08-01

We investigated the effects of word order and prosody on word learning in school-age children. Third graders viewed photographs belonging to one of three semantic categories while hearing four-word nonsense utterances containing a target word. In the control condition, all words had the same pitch and, across trials, the position of the target word was varied systematically within each utterance. The only cue to word-meaning mapping was the co-occurrence of target words and referents. This cue was present in all conditions. In the Utterance-final condition, the target word always occurred in utterance-final position, and at the same fundamental frequency as all the other words of the utterance. In the Pitch peak condition, the position of the target word was varied systematically within each utterance across trials, and produced with pitch contrasts typical of infant-directed speech (IDS). In the Pitch peak + Utterance-final condition, the target word always occurred in utterance-final position, and was marked with a pitch contrast typical of IDS. Word learning occurred in all conditions except the control condition. Moreover, learning performance was significantly higher than that observed with simple co-occurrence ( control condition) only for the Pitch peak + Utterance-final condition. We conclude that, for school-age children, the combination of words' utterance-final alignment and pitch enhancement boosts word learning.

Cross-language parafoveal semantic processing: Evidence from Korean-Chinese bilinguals.

PubMed

Wang, Aiping; Yeon, Junmo; Zhou, Wei; Shu, Hua; Yan, Ming

2016-02-01

In the present study, we aimed at testing cross-language cognate and semantic preview effects. We tested how native Korean readers who learned Chinese as a second language make use of the parafoveal information during the reading of Chinese sentences. There were 3 types of Korean preview words: cognate translations of the Chinese target words, semantically related noncognate words, and unrelated words. Together with a highly significant cognate preview effect, more critically, we also observed reliable facilitation in processing of the target word from the semantically related previews in all fixation measures. Results from the present study provide first evidence for semantic processing from parafoveally presented Korean words and for cross-language parafoveal semantic processing.

Consolidation of novel word learning in native English-speaking adults.

PubMed

Kurdziel, Laura B F; Spencer, Rebecca M C

2016-01-01

Sleep has been shown to improve the retention of newly learned words. However, most methodologies have used artificial or foreign language stimuli, with learning limited to word/novel word or word/image pairs. Such stimuli differ from many word-learning scenarios in which definition strings are learned with novel words. Thus, we examined sleep's benefit on learning new words within a native language by using very low-frequency words. Participants learned 45 low-frequency English words and, at subsequent recall, attempted to recall the words when given the corresponding definitions. Participants either learned in the morning with recall in the evening (wake group), or learned in the evening with recall the following morning (sleep group). Performance change across the delay was significantly better in the sleep than the wake group. Additionally, the Levenshtein distance, a measure of correctness of the typed word compared with the target word, became significantly worse following wake, whereas sleep protected correctness of recall. Polysomnographic data from a subsample of participants suggested that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep may be particularly important for this benefit. These results lend further support for sleep's function on semantic learning even for word/definition pairs within a native language.

Comprehension of concrete and abstract words in semantic variant primary progressive aphasia and Alzheimer's disease: A behavioral and neuroimaging study.

PubMed

Joubert, Sven; Vallet, Guillaume T; Montembeault, Maxime; Boukadi, Mariem; Wilson, Maximiliano A; Laforce, Robert Jr; Rouleau, Isabelle; Brambati, Simona M

2017-07-01

The aim of this study was to investigate the comprehension of concrete, abstract and abstract emotional words in semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), Alzheimer's disease (AD), and healthy elderly adults (HE) Three groups of participants (9 svPPA, 12 AD, 11 HE) underwent a general neuropsychological assessment, a similarity judgment task, and structural brain MRI. The three types of words were processed similarly in the group of AD participants. In contrast, patients in the svPPA group were significantly more impaired at processing concrete words than abstract words, while comprehension of abstract emotional words was in between. VBM analyses showed that comprehension of concrete words relative to abstract words was significantly correlated with atrophy in the left anterior temporal lobe. These results support the view that concrete words are disproportionately impaired in svPPA, and that concrete and abstract words may rely upon partly dissociable brain regions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Preparing novice teachers to develop basic reading and spelling skills in children.

PubMed

Spear-Swerling, Louise; Brucker, Pamela Owen

2004-12-01

This study examined the word-structure knowledge of novice teachers and the progress of children tutored by a subgroup of the teachers. Teachers' word-structure knowledge was assessed using three tasks: graphophonemic segmentation, classification of pseudowords by syllable type, and classification of real words as phonetically regular or irregular. Tutored children were assessed on several measures of basic reading and spelling skills. Novice teachers who received word-structure instruction outperformed a comparison group of teachers in word-structure knowledge at post-test. Tutored children improved significantly from pre-test to post-test on all assessments. Teachers' post-test knowledge on the graphophonemic segmentation and irregular words tasks correlated significantly with tutored children's progress in decoding phonetically regular words; error analyses indicated links between teachers' patterns of word-structure knowledge and children's patterns of decoding progress. The study suggests that word-structure knowledge is important to effective teaching of word decoding and underscores the need to include this information in teacher preparation.

Accommodation of end-state comfort reveals subphonemic planning in speech

PubMed Central

Gick, Bryan

2015-01-01

Applying Rosenbaum’s “end-state comfort” hypothesis (Rosenbaum et al., 1992, 1996) to tongue motion provides evidence of long-distance subphonemic planning in speech. Speakers’ tongue postures may anticipate upcoming speech up to three segments, two syllables, and a morpheme or word boundary later. We used m-mode ultrasound imaging to measure the direction of tongue tip/blade movements for known variants of flap/tap allophones of North American English /t/ and /d/. Results show that speakers produce different flap variants early in words or word sequences so as to facilitate the kinematic needs of flap/tap or other /r/ variants that appear later in the word or word sequence. Similar results were also observed across word boundaries, indicating that this is not a lexical effect. PMID:25790787

Single- versus dual-process models of lexical decision performance: insights from response time distributional analysis.

PubMed

Yap, Melvin J; Balota, David A; Cortese, Michael J; Watson, Jason M

2006-12-01

This article evaluates 2 competing models that address the decision-making processes mediating word recognition and lexical decision performance: a hybrid 2-stage model of lexical decision performance and a random-walk model. In 2 experiments, nonword type and word frequency were manipulated across 2 contrasts (pseudohomophone-legal nonword and legal-illegal nonword). When nonwords became more wordlike (i.e., BRNTA vs. BRANT vs. BRANE), response latencies to nonwords were slowed and the word frequency effect increased. More important, distributional analyses revealed that the Nonword Type = Word Frequency interaction was modulated by different components of the response time distribution, depending on the specific nonword contrast. A single-process random-walk model was able to account for this particular set of findings more successfully than the hybrid 2-stage model. (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved.

Memory for pictures and words as a function of level of processing: Depth or dual coding?

PubMed

D'Agostino, P R; O'Neill, B J; Paivio, A

1977-03-01

The experiment was designed to test differential predictions derived from dual-coding and depth-of-processing hypotheses. Subjects under incidental memory instructions free recalled a list of 36 test events, each presented twice. Within the list, an equal number of events were assigned to structural, phonemic, and semantic processing conditions. Separate groups of subjects were tested with a list of pictures, concrete words, or abstract words. Results indicated that retention of concrete words increased as a direct function of the processing-task variable (structural < phonemic

Spatial representations elicit dual-coding effects in mental imagery.

PubMed

Verges, Michelle; Duffy, Sean

2009-08-01

Spatial aspects of words are associated with their canonical locations in the real world. Yet little research has tested whether spatial associations denoted in language comprehension generalize to their corresponding images. We directly tested the spatial aspects of mental imagery in picture and word processing (Experiment 1). We also tested whether spatial representations of motion words produce similar perceptual-interference effects as demonstrated by object words (Experiment 2). Findings revealed that words denoting an upward spatial location produced slower responses to targets appearing at the top of the display, whereas words denoting a downward spatial location produced slower responses to targets appearing at the bottom of the display. Perceptual-interference effects did not obtain for pictures or for words lacking a spatial relation. These findings provide greater empirical support for the perceptual-symbols system theory (Barsalou, 1999, 2008). Copyright © 2009 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Test-based age-of-acquisition norms for 44 thousand English word meanings.

PubMed

Brysbaert, Marc; Biemiller, Andrew

2017-08-01

Age of acquisition (AoA) is an important variable in word recognition research. Up to now, nearly all psychology researchers examining the AoA effect have used ratings obtained from adult participants. An alternative basis for determining AoA is directly testing children's knowledge of word meanings at various ages. In educational research, scholars and teachers have tried to establish the grade at which particular words should be taught by examining the ages at which children know various word meanings. Such a list is available from Dale and O'Rourke's (1981) Living Word Vocabulary for nearly 44 thousand meanings coming from over 31 thousand unique word forms and multiword expressions. The present article relates these test-based AoA estimates to lexical decision times as well as to AoA adult ratings, and reports strong correlations between all of the measures. Therefore, test-based estimates of AoA can be used as an alternative measure.

The effects of attention on perceptual implicit memory.

PubMed

Rajaram, S; Srinivas, K; Travers, S

2001-10-01

Reports on the effects of dividing attention at study on subsequent perceptual priming suggest that perceptual priming is generally unaffected by attentional manipulations as long as word identity is processed. We tested this hypothesis in three experiments by using the implicit word fragment completion and word stem completion tasks. Division of attention was instantiated with the Stroop task in order to ensure the processing of word identity even when the participant's attention was directed to a stimulus attribute other than the word itself. Under these conditions, we found that even though perceptual priming was significant, it was significantly reduced in magnitude. A stem cued recall test in Experiment 2 confirmed a more deleterious effect of divided attention on explicit memory. Taken together, our findings delineate the relative contributions of perceptual analysis and attentional processes in mediating perceptual priming on two ubiquitously used tasks of word fragment completion and word stem completion.

An electrophysiological investigation of the role of orthography in accessing meaning of Chinese single-character words.

PubMed

Wang, Kui

2011-01-10

This study reported the role of orthography in semantic activation processes of Chinese single-character words. Eighteen native Chinese speaking adults were recruited to take part in a Stroop experiment consisting of one-character color words and pseudowords which were orthographically similar to these color words. Classic behavioral Stroop effects, namely longer reaction times for incongruent conditions than for congruent conditions, were demonstrated for color words and pseudowords. A clear N450 was also observed in the two incongruent conditions. The participants were also asked to perform a visual judgment task immediately following the Stroop experiment. Results from the visual judgment task showed that participants could distinguish color words and pseudowords well (with a mean accuracy rate over 90 percent). Taken together, these findings support the direct orthography-semantic route in Chinese one-character words. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Trait anxiety and impaired control of reflective attention in working memory.

PubMed

Hoshino, Takatoshi; Tanno, Yoshihiko

2016-01-01

The present study investigated whether the control of reflective attention in working memory (WM) is impaired in high trait anxiety individuals. We focused on the consequences of refreshing-a simple reflective process of thinking briefly about a just-activated representation in mind-on the subsequent processing of verbal stimuli. Participants performed a selective refreshing task, in which they initially refreshed or read one word from a three-word set, and then refreshed a non-selected item from the initial phrase or read aloud a new word. High trait anxiety individuals exhibited greater latencies when refreshing a word after experiencing the refreshing of a word from the same list of semantic associates. The same pattern was observed for reading a new word after prior refreshing. These findings suggest that high trait anxiety individuals have difficulty resolving interference from active distractors when directing reflective attention towards contents in WM or processing a visually presented word.

The acquisition of simple associations as observed in color-word contingency learning.

PubMed

Lin, Olivia Y-H; MacLeod, Colin M

2018-01-01

Three experiments investigated the learning of simple associations in a color-word contingency task. Participants responded manually to the print colors of 3 words, with each word associated strongly to 1 of the 3 colors and weakly to the other 2 colors. Despite the words being irrelevant, response times to high-contingency stimuli and to low-contingency stimuli quickly diverged. This high-low difference remained quite constant over successive blocks of trials, evidence of stable contingency learning. Inclusion of a baseline condition-an item having no color-word contingency-permitted separation of the contingency learning effect into 2 components: a cost due to low contingency and a benefit due to high contingency. Both cost and benefit were quick to acquire, quick to extinguish, and quick to reacquire. The color-word contingency task provides a simple way to directly study the learning of associations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The word class effect in the picture–word interference paradigm

PubMed Central

Janssen, Niels; Melinger, Alissa; Mahon, Bradford Z.; Finkbeiner, Matthew; Caramazza, Alfonso

2010-01-01

The word class effect in the picture–word interference paradigm is a highly influential finding that has provided some of the most compelling support for word class constraints on lexical selection. However, methodological concerns called for a replication of the most convincing of those effects. Experiment 1 was a direct replication of Pechmann and Zerbst (2002; Experiment 4). Participants named pictures of objects in the context of noun and adverb distractors. Naming took place in bare noun and sentence frame contexts. A word class effect emerged in both bare noun and sentence frame naming conditions, suggesting a semantic origin of the effect. In Experiment 2, participants named objects in the context of noun and verb distractors whose word class relationship to the target and imageability were orthogonally manipulated. As before, naming took place in bare noun and sentence frame naming contexts. In both naming contexts, distractor imageability but not word class affected picture naming latencies. These findings confirm the sensitivity of the picture–word interference paradigm to distractor imageability and suggest the paradigm is not sensitive to distractor word class. The results undermine the use of the word class effect in the picture–word interference paradigm as supportive of word class constraints during lexical selection. PMID:19998070

Word length, set size, and lexical factors: Re-examining what causes the word length effect.

PubMed

Guitard, Dominic; Gabel, Andrew J; Saint-Aubin, Jean; Surprenant, Aimée M; Neath, Ian

2018-04-19

The word length effect, better recall of lists of short (fewer syllables) than long (more syllables) words has been termed a benchmark effect of working memory. Despite this, experiments on the word length effect can yield quite different results depending on set size and stimulus properties. Seven experiments are reported that address these 2 issues. Experiment 1 replicated the finding of a preserved word length effect under concurrent articulation for large stimulus sets, which contrasts with the abolition of the word length effect by concurrent articulation for small stimulus sets. Experiment 2, however, demonstrated that when the short and long words are equated on more dimensions, concurrent articulation abolishes the word length effect for large stimulus sets. Experiment 3 shows a standard word length effect when output time is equated, but Experiments 4-6 show no word length effect when short and long words are equated on increasingly more dimensions that previous demonstrations have overlooked. Finally, Experiment 7 compared recall of a small and large neighborhood words that were equated on all the dimensions used in Experiment 6 (except for those directly related to neighborhood size) and a neighborhood size effect was still observed. We conclude that lexical factors, rather than word length per se, are better predictors of when the word length effect will occur. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Utterance-final position and pitch marking aid word learning in school-age children

PubMed Central

Laaha, Sabine; Fitch, W. Tecumseh

2017-01-01

We investigated the effects of word order and prosody on word learning in school-age children. Third graders viewed photographs belonging to one of three semantic categories while hearing four-word nonsense utterances containing a target word. In the control condition, all words had the same pitch and, across trials, the position of the target word was varied systematically within each utterance. The only cue to word–meaning mapping was the co-occurrence of target words and referents. This cue was present in all conditions. In the Utterance-final condition, the target word always occurred in utterance-final position, and at the same fundamental frequency as all the other words of the utterance. In the Pitch peak condition, the position of the target word was varied systematically within each utterance across trials, and produced with pitch contrasts typical of infant-directed speech (IDS). In the Pitch peak + Utterance-final condition, the target word always occurred in utterance-final position, and was marked with a pitch contrast typical of IDS. Word learning occurred in all conditions except the control condition. Moreover, learning performance was significantly higher than that observed with simple co-occurrence (control condition) only for the Pitch peak + Utterance-final condition. We conclude that, for school-age children, the combination of words' utterance-final alignment and pitch enhancement boosts word learning. PMID:28878961

Facilitatory Effects of Multi-Word Units in Lexical Processing and Word Learning: A Computational Investigation.

PubMed

Grimm, Robert; Cassani, Giovanni; Gillis, Steven; Daelemans, Walter

2017-01-01

Previous studies have suggested that children and adults form cognitive representations of co-occurring word sequences. We propose (1) that the formation of such multi-word unit (MWU) representations precedes and facilitates the formation of single-word representations in children and thus benefits word learning, and (2) that MWU representations facilitate adult word recognition and thus benefit lexical processing. Using a modified version of an existing computational model (McCauley and Christiansen, 2014), we extract MWUs from a corpus of child-directed speech (CDS) and a corpus of conversations among adults. We then correlate the number of MWUs within which each word appears with (1) age of first production and (2) adult reaction times on a word recognition task. In doing so, we take care to control for the effect of word frequency, as frequent words will naturally tend to occur in many MWUs. We also compare results to a baseline model which randomly groups words into sequences-and find that MWUs have a unique facilitatory effect on both response variables, suggesting that they benefit word learning in children and word recognition in adults. The effect is strongest on age of first production, implying that MWUs are comparatively more important for word learning than for adult lexical processing. We discuss possible underlying mechanisms and formulate testable predictions.

Facilitatory Effects of Multi-Word Units in Lexical Processing and Word Learning: A Computational Investigation

PubMed Central

Grimm, Robert; Cassani, Giovanni; Gillis, Steven; Daelemans, Walter

2017-01-01

Previous studies have suggested that children and adults form cognitive representations of co-occurring word sequences. We propose (1) that the formation of such multi-word unit (MWU) representations precedes and facilitates the formation of single-word representations in children and thus benefits word learning, and (2) that MWU representations facilitate adult word recognition and thus benefit lexical processing. Using a modified version of an existing computational model (McCauley and Christiansen, 2014), we extract MWUs from a corpus of child-directed speech (CDS) and a corpus of conversations among adults. We then correlate the number of MWUs within which each word appears with (1) age of first production and (2) adult reaction times on a word recognition task. In doing so, we take care to control for the effect of word frequency, as frequent words will naturally tend to occur in many MWUs. We also compare results to a baseline model which randomly groups words into sequences—and find that MWUs have a unique facilitatory effect on both response variables, suggesting that they benefit word learning in children and word recognition in adults. The effect is strongest on age of first production, implying that MWUs are comparatively more important for word learning than for adult lexical processing. We discuss possible underlying mechanisms and formulate testable predictions. PMID:28450842

Intelligibility and Individual Learner Differences in the EIL Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Matsuura, Hiroko

2007-01-01

According to Smith and Nelson [Smith, L.E., Nelson, C.E., 1985. "International intelligibility of English: directions and resources." "World Englishes" 3, 333-342.], "intelligibility" refers to word/utterance recognition, whereas "comprehensibility" is the understanding of word/utterance meaning. This study…

Word frequencies: A comparison of Pareto type distributions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wiegand, Martin; Nadarajah, Saralees; Si, Yuancheng

2018-03-01

Mehri and Jamaati (2017) [18] used Zipf's law to model word frequencies in Holy Bible translations for one hundred live languages. We compare the fit of Zipf's law to a number of Pareto type distributions. The latter distributions are shown to provide the best fit, as judged by a number of comparative plots and error measures. The fit of Zipf's law appears generally poor.

Maternal Expansions of Child Language Relate to Growth in Children's Vocabulary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taumoepeau, Mele

2016-01-01

Using multi-level growth modeling, we examined the effect of several measures of maternal input on growth in children's word types from 15-54 months. Mothers and children engaged in a picture description task (N = 77) at 15, 24, 33, and 54 months; the frequency of children's observed word types at each wave was coded and additional independent…

Event-Related Potential Evidence in Chinese Children: Type of Literacy Training Modulates Neural Orthographic Sensitivity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhao, Pei; Zhao, Jing; Weng, Xuchu; Li, Su

2018-01-01

Visual word N170 is an index of perceptual expertise for visual words across different writing systems. Recent developmental studies have shown the early emergence of visual word N170 and its close association with individual's reading ability. In the current study, we investigated whether fine-tuning N170 for Chinese characters could emerge after…

Effects of Multimedia Annotations on Thai EFL Readers' Words and Text Recall

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gasigijtamrong, Jenjit

2013-01-01

This study aimed to investigate the effects of using multimedia annotations on EFL readers' word recall and text recall and to explore which type of multimedia annotations--L1 meaning, L2 meaning, sound, and image--would have a better effect on their recall of new words and text comprehension. The participants were 78 students who enrolled in an…

Saying the Right Word at the Right Time: Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic Interference in Sentence Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dell, Gary S.; Oppenheim, Gary M.; Kittredge, Audrey K.

2008-01-01

Retrieving a word in a sentence requires speakers to overcome syntagmatic, as well as paradigmatic interference. When accessing "cat" in "The cat chased the string", not only are similar competitors such as "dog" and "cap" activated, but also other words in the planned sentence, such as "chase" and "string". We hypothesise that both types of…

The Influence of Orthographic Consistency on Reading Development: Word Recognition in English and German Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wimmer, Heinz; Goswami, Usha

1994-01-01

Groups of seven- to nine-year olds learning to read in English and German were given three types of reading tasks. Whereas reading time and error rates in numeral and number word reading were very similar across the two orthographies, the German children showed a big advantage in reading the nonsense words, suggesting adoption of different…

Word and Number Reading in the Brain: Evidence from a Voxel-Based Lesion-Symptom Mapping Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Piras, Fabrizio; Marangolo, Paola

2009-01-01

The high incidence of number transcoding deficits in aphasic subjects suggests there is a strong similarity between language and number domains. However, recent single case studies of subjects who showed a dissociation between word and number word transcoding led us to hypothesize that the two types of stimuli are represented independently in the…

An fMRI Investigation of the Neural Correlates Underlying the Processing of Novel Metaphoric Expressions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mashal, N.; Faust, M.; Hendler, T.; Jung-Beeman, M.

2007-01-01

The neural networks associated with processing related pairs of words forming literal, novel, and conventional metaphorical expressions and unrelated pairs of words were studied in a group of 15 normal adults using fMRI. Subjects read the four types of linguistic expressions and decided which relation exists between the two words (metaphoric,…

On the Functional Neuroanatomy of Visual Word Processing: Effects of Case and Letter Deviance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kronbichler, Martin; Klackl, Johannes; Richlan, Fabio; Schurz, Matthias; Staffen, Wolfgang; Ladurner, Gunther; Wimmer, Heinz

2009-01-01

This functional magnetic resonance imaging study contrasted case-deviant and letter-deviant forms with familiar forms of the same phonological words (e.g., "TaXi" and "Taksi" vs. "Taxi") and found that both types of deviance led to increased activation in a left occipito-temporal region, corresponding to the visual word form area (VWFA). The…

Words and Pictures: An Electrophysiological Investigation of Domain Specific Processing in Native Chinese and English Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yum, Yen Na; Holcomb, Phillip J.; Grainger, Jonathan

2011-01-01

Comparisons of word and picture processing using event-related potentials (ERPs) are contaminated by gross physical differences between the two types of stimuli. In the present study, we tackle this problem by comparing picture processing with word processing in an alphabetic and a logographic script, that are also characterized by gross physical…

The Large-Scale Structure of Semantic Networks: Statistical Analyses and a Model of Semantic Growth

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Steyvers, Mark; Tenenbaum, Joshua B.

2005-01-01

We present statistical analyses of the large-scale structure of 3 types of semantic networks: word associations, WordNet, and Roget's Thesaurus. We show that they have a small-world structure, characterized by sparse connectivity, short average path lengths between words, and strong local clustering. In addition, the distributions of the number of…

NASA Taxonomies for Searching Problem Reports and FMEAs

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Malin, Jane T.; Throop, David R.

2006-01-01

Many types of hazard and risk analyses are used during the life cycle of complex systems, including Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), Hazard Analysis, Fault Tree and Event Tree Analysis, Probabilistic Risk Assessment, Reliability Analysis and analysis of Problem Reporting and Corrective Action (PRACA) databases. The success of these methods depends on the availability of input data and the analysts knowledge. Standard nomenclature can increase the reusability of hazard, risk and problem data. When nomenclature in the source texts is not standard, taxonomies with mapping words (sets of rough synonyms) can be combined with semantic search to identify items and tag them with metadata based on a rich standard nomenclature. Semantic search uses word meanings in the context of parsed phrases to find matches. The NASA taxonomies provide the word meanings. Spacecraft taxonomies and ontologies (generalization hierarchies with attributes and relationships, based on terms meanings) are being developed for types of subsystems, functions, entities, hazards and failures. The ontologies are broad and general, covering hardware, software and human systems. Semantic search of Space Station texts was used to validate and extend the taxonomies. The taxonomies have also been used to extract system connectivity (interaction) models and functions from requirements text. Now the Reconciler semantic search tool and the taxonomies are being applied to improve search in the Space Shuttle PRACA database, to discover recurring patterns of failure. Usual methods of string search and keyword search fall short because the entries are terse and have numerous shortcuts (irregular abbreviations, nonstandard acronyms, cryptic codes) and modifier words cannot be used in sentence context to refine the search. The limited and fixed FMEA categories associated with the entries do not make the fine distinctions needed in the search. The approach assigns PRACA report titles to problem classes in the taxonomy. Each ontology class includes mapping words - near-synonyms naming different manifestations of that problem class. The mapping words for Problems, Entities and Functions are converted to a canonical form plus any of a small set of modifier words (e.g. non-uniformity NOT + UNIFORM.) The report titles are parsed as sentences if possible, or treated as a flat sequence of word tokens if parsing fails. When canonical forms in the title match mapping words, the PRACA entry is associated with the corresponding Problem, Entity or Function in the ontology. The user can search for types of failures associated with types of equipment, clustering by type of problem (e.g., all bearings found with problems of being uneven: rough, irregular, gritty ). The results could also be used for tagging PRACA report entries with rich metadata. This approach could also be applied to searching and tagging failure modes, failure effects and mitigations in FMEAs. In the pilot work, parsing 52K+ truncated titles (the test cases that were available), has resulted in identification of both a type of equipment and type of problem in about 75% of the cases. The results are displayed in a manner analogous to Google search results. The effort has also led to the enrichment of the taxonomy, adding some new categories and many new mapping words. Further work would make enhancements that have been identified for improving the clustering and further reducing the false alarm rate. (In searching for recurring problems, good clustering is more important than reducing false alarms). Searching complete PRACA reports should lead to immediate improvement.

Utterance complexity and stuttering on function words in preschool-age children who stutter.

PubMed

Richels, Corrin; Buhr, Anthony; Conture, Edward; Ntourou, Katerina

2010-09-01

The purpose of the present investigation was to examine the relation between utterance complexity and utterance position and the tendency to stutter on function words in preschool-age children who stutter (CWS). Two separate studies involving two different groups of participants (Study 1, n=30; Study 2, n=30) were conducted. Participants were preschool-age CWS between the age of 3, 0 and 5, 11 who engaged in 15-20min parent-child conversational interactions. From audio-video recordings of each interaction, every child utterance of each parent-child sample was transcribed. From these transcripts, for each participant, measures of language (e.g., length and complexity) and measures of stuttering (e.g., word type and utterance position) were obtained. Results of Study 1 indicated that children stuttered more frequently on function words, but that this tendency was not greater for complex than simple utterances. Results of Study 2, involving the assessment of utterance position and MLU quartile, indicated that that stuttering was more likely to occur with increasing sentence length, and that stuttering tended to occur at the utterance-initial position, the position where function words were also more likely to occur. Findings were taken to suggest that, although word-level influences cannot be discounted, utterance-level influences contribute to the loci of stuttering in preschool-age children, and may help account for developmental changes in the loci of stuttering. The reader will learn about and be able to: (a) describe the influence of word type (function versus content words), and grammatical complexity, on disfluent speech; (b) compare the effect of stuttering frequency based on the position of the word in the utterance; (c) discuss the contribution of utterance position on the frequency of stuttering on function words; and (d) explain possible reasons why preschoolers stutter more frequently on function words than content words.

Neural processing of negative word stimuli concerning body image in patients with eating disorders: an fMRI study.

PubMed

Miyake, Yoshie; Okamoto, Yasumasa; Onoda, Keiichi; Shirao, Naoko; Okamoto, Yuri; Otagaki, Yoko; Yamawaki, Shigeto

2010-04-15

Eating disorders (EDs) are associated with abnormalities of body image perception. The aim of the present study was to investigate the functional abnormalities in brain systems during processing of negative words concerning body images in patients with EDs. Brain responses to negative words concerning body images (task condition) and neutral words (control condition) were measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging in 36 patients with EDs (12 with the restricting type anorexia nervosa; AN-R, 12 with the binging-purging type anorexia nervosa; AN-BP, and 12 with bulimia nervosa; BN) and 12 healthy young women. Participants were instructed to select the most negative word from each negative body-image word set and to select the most neutral word from each neutral word set. In the task relative to the control condition, the right amygdala was activated both in patients with AN-R and in patients with AN-BP. The left medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) was activated both in patients with BN and in patients with AN-BP. It is suggested that these brain activations may be associated with abnormalities of body image perception. Amygdala activation may be involved in fearful emotional processing of negative words concerning body image and strong fears of gaining weight. One possible interpretation of the finding of mPFC activation is that it may reflect an attempt to regulate the emotion invoked by the stimuli. These abnormal brain functions may help provide better accounts of the psychopathological mechanisms underlying EDs. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Procura-PALavras (P-PAL): A Web-based interface for a new European Portuguese lexical database.

PubMed

Soares, Ana Paula; Iriarte, Álvaro; de Almeida, José João; Simões, Alberto; Costa, Ana; Machado, João; França, Patrícia; Comesaña, Montserrat; Rauber, Andreia; Rato, Anabela; Perea, Manuel

2018-05-31

In this article, we present Procura-PALavras (P-PAL), a Web-based interface for a new European Portuguese (EP) lexical database. Based on a contemporary printed corpus of over 227 million words, P-PAL provides a broad range of word attributes and statistics, including several measures of word frequency (e.g., raw counts, per-million word frequency, logarithmic Zipf scale), morpho-syntactic information (e.g., parts of speech [PoSs], grammatical gender and number, dominant PoS, and frequency and relative frequency of the dominant PoS), as well as several lexical and sublexical orthographic (e.g., number of letters; consonant-vowel orthographic structure; density and frequency of orthographic neighbors; orthographic Levenshtein distance; orthographic uniqueness point; orthographic syllabification; and trigram, bigram, and letter type and token frequencies), and phonological measures (e.g., pronunciation, number of phonemes, stress, density and frequency of phonological neighbors, transposed and phonographic neighbors, syllabification, and biphone and phone type and token frequencies) for ~53,000 lemmatized and ~208,000 nonlemmatized EP word forms. To obtain these metrics, researchers can choose between two word queries in the application: (i) analyze words previously selected for specific attributes and/or lexical and sublexical characteristics, or (ii) generate word lists that meet word requirements defined by the user in the menu of analyses. For the measures it provides and the flexibility it allows, P-PAL will be a key resource to support research in all cognitive areas that use EP verbal stimuli. P-PAL is freely available at http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/tools .

Attention bias modification and its impact on experimental pain outcomes: Comparison of training with words versus faces in pain.

PubMed

Sharpe, L; Johnson, A; Dear, B F

2015-10-01

The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of training participants' attention towards or away from painful faces versus pain-related words on pain outcomes on an acute experimental pain paradigm. Participants were randomized to receive either training towards or away from painful faces or words. Following training, participants completed the cold pressor task. The results confirm that attention bias modification produced the predicted changes in attentional biases. Clear training effects were observed for words and faces, such that attentional biases changed in the predicted direction on the stimuli presented during the training. However, for those trained on words, training effects also generalized to face stimuli. As predicted, those who received training away from painful stimuli took longer to report pain (higher pain threshold) during the cold pressor task, and this effect was more pronounced for those trained on words. Contrary to expectations, those trained on faces (regardless of training direction) reported less pain than those trained on words. There were no differences between the groups for pain tolerance (length of time participants were able to keep their arms in the cold pressor). These findings confirm that attentional biases are modifiable, and impact (in the expected manner) how quickly participants perceive pain. Further, exposure to painful faces resulted in additional benefits to the level of pain reported. However, we were unable to confirm that change in attentional biases was the mechanism of change. © 2014 European Pain Federation - EFIC®

Item-method directed forgetting: Effects at retrieval?

PubMed

Taylor, Tracy L; Cutmore, Laura; Pries, Lotta

2018-02-01

In an item-method directed forgetting paradigm, words are presented one at a time, each followed by an instruction to Remember or Forget; a directed forgetting effect is measured as better subsequent memory for Remember words than Forget words. The dominant view is that the directed forgetting effect arises during encoding due to selective rehearsal of Remember over Forget items. In three experiments we attempted to falsify a strong view that directed forgetting effects in recognition are due only to encoding mechanisms when an item method is used. Across 3 experiments we tested for retrieval-based processes by colour-coding the recognition test items. Black colour provided no information; green colour cued a potential Remember item; and, red colour cued a potential Forget item. Recognition cues were mixed within-blocks in Experiment 1 and between-blocks in Experiments 2 and 3; Experiment 3 added explicit feedback on the accuracy of the recognition decision. Although overall recognition improved with cuing when explicit test performance feedback was added in Experiment 3, in no case was the magnitude of the directed forgetting effect influenced by recognition cueing. Our results argue against a role for retrieval-based strategies that limit recognition of Forget items at test and posit a role for encoding intentions only. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Exploring Differential Effects Across Two Decoding Treatments on Item-Level Transfer in Children with Significant Word Reading Difficulties: A New Approach for Testing Intervention Elements.

PubMed

Steacy, Laura M; Elleman, Amy M; Lovett, Maureen W; Compton, Donald L

2016-01-01

In English, gains in decoding skill do not map directly onto increases in word reading. However, beyond the Self-Teaching Hypothesis (Share, 1995), little is known about the transfer of decoding skills to word reading. In this study, we offer a new approach to testing specific decoding elements on transfer to word reading. To illustrate, we modeled word-reading gains among children with reading disability (RD) enrolled in Phonological and Strategy Training (PHAST) or Phonics for Reading (PFR). Conditions differed in sublexical training with PHAST stressing multi-level connections and PFR emphasizing simple grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Thirty-seven children with RD, 3 rd - 6 th grade, were randomly assigned 60 lessons of PHAST or PFR. Crossed random-effects models allowed us to identify specific intervention elements that differentially impacted word-reading performance at posttest, with children in PHAST better able to read words with variant vowel pronunciations. Results suggest that sublexical emphasis influences transfer gains to word reading.

Associations of hallucination proneness with free-recall intrusions and response bias in a nonclinical sample.

PubMed

Brébion, Gildas; Larøi, Frank; Van der Linden, Martial

2010-10-01

Hallucinations in patients with schizophrenia have been associated with a liberal response bias in signal detection and recognition tasks and with various types of source-memory error. We investigated the associations of hallucination proneness with free-recall intrusions and false recognitions of words in a nonclinical sample. A total of 81 healthy individuals were administered a verbal memory task involving free recall and recognition of one nonorganizable and one semantically organizable list of words. Hallucination proneness was assessed by means of a self-rating scale. Global hallucination proneness was associated with free-recall intrusions in the nonorganizable list and with a response bias reflecting tendency to make false recognitions of nontarget words in both types of list. The verbal hallucination score was associated with more intrusions and with a reduced tendency to make false recognitions of words. The associations between global hallucination proneness and two types of verbal memory error in a nonclinical sample corroborate those observed in patients with schizophrenia and suggest that common cognitive mechanisms underlie hallucinations in psychiatric and nonclinical individuals.

The Benefits of Targeted Memory Reactivation for Consolidation in Sleep are Contingent on Memory Accuracy and Direct Cue-Memory Associations

PubMed Central

Cairney, Scott A.; Lindsay, Shane; Sobczak, Justyna M.; Paller, Ken A.; Gaskell, M. Gareth

2016-01-01

Study Objectives: To investigate how the effects of targeted memory reactivation (TMR) are influenced by memory accuracy prior to sleep and the presence or absence of direct cue-memory associations. Methods: 30 participants associated each of 50 pictures with an unrelated word and then with a screen location in two separate tasks. During picture-location training, each picture was also presented with a semantically related sound. The sounds were therefore directly associated with the picture locations but indirectly associated with the words. During a subsequent nap, half of the sounds were replayed in slow wave sleep (SWS). The effect of TMR on memory for the picture locations (direct cue-memory associations) and picture-word pairs (indirect cue-memory associations) was then examined. Results: TMR reduced overall memory decay for recall of picture locations. Further analyses revealed a benefit of TMR for picture locations recalled with a low degree of accuracy prior to sleep, but not those recalled with a high degree of accuracy. The benefit of TMR for low accuracy memories was predicted by time spent in SWS. There was no benefit of TMR for memory of the picture-word pairs, irrespective of memory accuracy prior to sleep. Conclusions: TMR provides the greatest benefit to memories recalled with a low degree of accuracy prior to sleep. The memory benefits of TMR may also be contingent on direct cue-memory associations. Citation: Cairney SA, Lindsay S, Sobczak JM, Paller KA, Gaskell MG. The benefits of targeted memory reactivation for consolidation in sleep are contingent on memory accuracy and direct cue-memory associations. SLEEP 2016;39(5):1139–1150. PMID:26856905

Functional Anatomy of Recognition of Chinese Multi-Character Words: Convergent Evidence from Effects of Transposable Nonwords, Lexicality, and Word Frequency.

PubMed

Lin, Nan; Yu, Xi; Zhao, Ying; Zhang, Mingxia

2016-01-01

This fMRI study aimed to identify the neural mechanisms underlying the recognition of Chinese multi-character words by partialling out the confounding effect of reaction time (RT). For this purpose, a special type of nonword-transposable nonword-was created by reversing the character orders of real words. These nonwords were included in a lexical decision task along with regular (non-transposable) nonwords and real words. Through conjunction analysis on the contrasts of transposable nonwords versus regular nonwords and words versus regular nonwords, the confounding effect of RT was eliminated, and the regions involved in word recognition were reliably identified. The word-frequency effect was also examined in emerged regions to further assess their functional roles in word processing. Results showed significant conjunctional effect and positive word-frequency effect in the bilateral inferior parietal lobules and posterior cingulate cortex, whereas only conjunctional effect was found in the anterior cingulate cortex. The roles of these brain regions in recognition of Chinese multi-character words were discussed.

Functional Anatomy of Recognition of Chinese Multi-Character Words: Convergent Evidence from Effects of Transposable Nonwords, Lexicality, and Word Frequency

PubMed Central

Lin, Nan; Yu, Xi; Zhao, Ying; Zhang, Mingxia

2016-01-01

This fMRI study aimed to identify the neural mechanisms underlying the recognition of Chinese multi-character words by partialling out the confounding effect of reaction time (RT). For this purpose, a special type of nonword—transposable nonword—was created by reversing the character orders of real words. These nonwords were included in a lexical decision task along with regular (non-transposable) nonwords and real words. Through conjunction analysis on the contrasts of transposable nonwords versus regular nonwords and words versus regular nonwords, the confounding effect of RT was eliminated, and the regions involved in word recognition were reliably identified. The word-frequency effect was also examined in emerged regions to further assess their functional roles in word processing. Results showed significant conjunctional effect and positive word-frequency effect in the bilateral inferior parietal lobules and posterior cingulate cortex, whereas only conjunctional effect was found in the anterior cingulate cortex. The roles of these brain regions in recognition of Chinese multi-character words were discussed. PMID:26901644

Aging, Emotion, Attention, and Binding in the Taboo Stroop Task: Data and Theories.

PubMed

MacKay, Donald G; Johnson, Laura W; Graham, Elizabeth R; Burke, Deborah M

2015-10-14

How does aging impact relations between emotion, memory, and attention? To address this question, young and older adults named the font colors of taboo and neutral words, some of which recurred in the same font color or screen location throughout two color-naming experiments. The results indicated longer color-naming response times (RTs) for taboo than neutral base-words (taboo Stroop interference); better incidental recognition of colors and locations consistently associated with taboo versus neutral words (taboo context-memory enhancement); and greater speed-up in color-naming RTs with repetition of color-consistent than color-inconsistent taboo words, but no analogous speed-up with repetition of location-consistent or location-inconsistent taboo words (the consistency type by repetition interaction for taboo words). All three phenomena remained constant with aging, consistent with the transmission deficit hypothesis and binding theory, where familiar emotional words trigger age-invariant reactions for prioritizing the binding of contextual features to the source of emotion. Binding theory also accurately predicted the interaction between consistency type and repetition for taboo words. However, one or more aspects of these phenomena failed to support the inhibition deficit hypothesis, resource capacity theory, or socio-emotional selectivity theory. We conclude that binding theory warrants further test in a range of paradigms, and that relations between aging and emotion, memory, and attention may depend on whether the task and stimuli trigger fast-reaction, involuntary binding processes, as in the taboo Stroop paradigm.

Aging, Emotion, Attention, and Binding in the Taboo Stroop Task: Data and Theories

PubMed Central

MacKay, Donald G.; Johnson, Laura W.; Graham, Elizabeth R.; Burke, Deborah M.

2015-01-01

How does aging impact relations between emotion, memory, and attention? To address this question, young and older adults named the font colors of taboo and neutral words, some of which recurred in the same font color or screen location throughout two color-naming experiments. The results indicated longer color-naming response times (RTs) for taboo than neutral base-words (taboo Stroop interference); better incidental recognition of colors and locations consistently associated with taboo versus neutral words (taboo context-memory enhancement); and greater speed-up in color-naming RTs with repetition of color-consistent than color-inconsistent taboo words, but no analogous speed-up with repetition of location-consistent or location-inconsistent taboo words (the consistency type by repetition interaction for taboo words). All three phenomena remained constant with aging, consistent with the transmission deficit hypothesis and binding theory, where familiar emotional words trigger age-invariant reactions for prioritizing the binding of contextual features to the source of emotion. Binding theory also accurately predicted the interaction between consistency type and repetition for taboo words. However, one or more aspects of these phenomena failed to support the inhibition deficit hypothesis, resource capacity theory, or socio-emotional selectivity theory. We conclude that binding theory warrants further test in a range of paradigms, and that relations between aging and emotion, memory, and attention may depend on whether the task and stimuli trigger fast-reaction, involuntary binding processes, as in the taboo Stroop paradigm. PMID:26473909

Associative Asymmetry of Compound Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Caplan, Jeremy B.; Boulton, Kathy L.; Gagné, Christina L.

2014-01-01

Early verbal-memory researchers assumed participants represent memory of a pair of unrelated items with 2 independent, separately modifiable, directional associations. However, memory for pairs of unrelated words (A-B) exhibits associative symmetry: a near-perfect correlation between accuracy on forward (A??) and backward (??B) cued recall. This…

Emotions in word and face processing: early and late cortical responses.

PubMed

Schacht, Annekathrin; Sommer, Werner

2009-04-01

Recent research suggests that emotion effects in word processing resemble those in other stimulus domains such as pictures or faces. The present study aims to provide more direct evidence for this notion by comparing emotion effects in word and face processing in a within-subject design. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded as participants made decisions on the lexicality of emotionally positive, negative, and neutral German verbs or pseudowords, and on the integrity of intact happy, angry, and neutral faces or slightly distorted faces. Relative to neutral and negative stimuli both positive verbs and happy faces elicited posterior ERP negativities that were indistinguishable in scalp distribution and resembled the early posterior negativities reported by others. Importantly, these ERP modulations appeared at very different latencies. Therefore, it appears that similar brain systems reflect the decoding of both biological and symbolic emotional signals of positive valence, differing mainly in the speed of meaning access, which is more direct and faster for facial expressions than for words.

A grand memory for forgetting: Directed forgetting across contextual changes.

PubMed

Taylor, Tracy L; Hamm, Jeff P

2018-05-29

Using an item-method directed forgetting task, we presented homographic homophonic nouns embedded in sentences. At study, each sentence was followed by an instruction to remember or forget the embedded word. On a subsequent yes-no recognition test, each word was again embedded within a sentence. In Experiments 1, 2, and 4 we varied the embedding sentence at test so that it was identical to that at study, changed but retained the meaning of the studied word, or changed to alter the meaning of the studied word. Repeated context - whether the sentence and/or the word meaning - proved to be as useful a retrieval cue for TBF items as for TBR items. In Experiment 3, we demonstrated that physical repetition was insufficient to produce context effects for either TBR or TBF items. And, in Experiment 4, we determined that participants were equally accurate in reporting context repetition/change following the correct recognition of TBR and TBF items. When considered in light of the existing literature, our results suggest that when context can be dissociated from the study item, it is encoded in "one shot" and not vulnerable to subsequent efforts to limit unwanted encoding. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

When canary primes yellow: effects of semantic memory on overt attention.

PubMed

Léger, Laure; Chauvet, Elodie

2015-02-01

This study explored how overt attention is influenced by the colour that is primed when a target word is read during a lexical visual search task. Prior studies have shown that attention can be influenced by conceptual or perceptual overlap between a target word and distractor pictures: attention is attracted to pictures that have the same form (rope--snake) or colour (green--frog) as the spoken target word or is drawn to an object from the same category as the spoken target word (trumpet--piano). The hypothesis for this study was that attention should be attracted to words displayed in the colour that is primed by reading a target word (for example, yellow for canary). An experiment was conducted in which participants' eye movements were recorded whilst they completed a lexical visual search task. The primary finding was that participants' eye movements were mainly directed towards words displayed in the colour primed by reading the target word, even though this colour was not relevant to completing the visual search task. This result is discussed in terms of top-down guidance of overt attention in visual search for words.

The semantics of prosody: acoustic and perceptual evidence of prosodic correlates to word meaning.

PubMed

Nygaard, Lynne C; Herold, Debora S; Namy, Laura L

2009-01-01

This investigation examined whether speakers produce reliable prosodic correlates to meaning across semantic domains and whether listeners use these cues to derive word meaning from novel words. Speakers were asked to produce phrases in infant-directed speech in which novel words were used to convey one of two meanings from a set of antonym pairs (e.g., big/small). Acoustic analyses revealed that some acoustic features were correlated with overall valence of the meaning. However, each word meaning also displayed a unique acoustic signature, and semantically related meanings elicited similar acoustic profiles. In two perceptual tests, listeners either attempted to identify the novel words with a matching meaning dimension (picture pair) or with mismatched meaning dimensions. Listeners inferred the meaning of the novel words significantly more often when prosody matched the word meaning choices than when prosody mismatched. These findings suggest that speech contains reliable prosodic markers to word meaning and that listeners use these prosodic cues to differentiate meanings. That prosody is semantic suggests a reconceptualization of traditional distinctions between linguistic and nonlinguistic properties of spoken language. Copyright © 2009 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Retrieval of concrete words involves more contextual information than abstract words: multiple components for the concreteness effect.

PubMed

Xiao, Xin; Zhao, Di; Zhang, Qin; Guo, Chun-yan

2012-03-01

The current study used the directed forgetting paradigm in implicit and explicit memory to investigate the concreteness effect. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to explore the neural basis of this phenomenon. The behavioral results showed a clear concreteness effect in both implicit and explicit memory tests; participants responded significantly faster to concrete words than to abstract words. The ERP results revealed a concreteness effect (N400) in both the encoding and retrieval phases. In addition, behavioral and ERP results showed an interaction between word concreteness and memory instruction (to-be-forgotten vs. to-be-remembered) in the late epoch of the explicit retrieval phase, revealing a significant concreteness effect only under the to-be-remembered instruction condition. This concreteness effect was realized as an increased P600-like component in response to concrete words relative to abstract words, likely reflecting retrieval of contextual details. The time course of the concreteness effect suggests advantages of concrete words over abstract words due to greater contextual information. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Intentional Forgetting of Emotional Words after Trauma: A Study with Victims of Sexual Assault

PubMed Central

Blix, Ines; Brennen, Tim

2011-01-01

Following exposure to a trauma, people tend to experience intrusive thoughts and memories about the event. In order to investigate whether intrusive memories in the aftermath of trauma might be accounted for by an impaired ability to intentionally forget disturbing material, the present study used a modified Directed Forgetting task to examine intentional forgetting and intrusive recall of words in sexual assault victims and controls. By including words related to the trauma in addition to neutral, positive, and threat-related stimuli it was possible to test for trauma-specific effects. No difference between the Trauma and the Control group was found for correct recall of to-be-forgotten (F) words or to-be-remembered (R) words. However, when recalling words from R-list, the Trauma group mistakenly recalled significantly more trauma-specific words from F-list. “Intrusive“ recall of F-trauma words when asked to recall R-words was related to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder reported on the Impact of Event Scale and the Post-traumatic Diagnostic Scale. The results are discussed in term of a source-monitoring account. PMID:21994497

Benefits of off-campus education for students in the health sciences: a text-mining analysis.

PubMed

Nakagawa, Kazumasa; Asakawa, Yasuyoshi; Yamada, Keiko; Ushikubo, Mitsuko; Yoshida, Tohru; Yamaguchi, Haruyasu

2012-08-28

In Japan, few community-based approaches have been adopted in health-care professional education, and the appropriate content for such approaches has not been clarified. In establishing community-based education for health-care professionals, clarification of its learning effects is required. A community-based educational program was started in 2009 in the health sciences course at Gunma University, and one of the main elements in this program is conducting classes outside school. The purpose of this study was to investigate using text-analysis methods how the off-campus program affects students. In all, 116 self-assessment worksheets submitted by students after participating in the off-campus classes were decomposed into words. The extracted words were carefully selected from the perspective of contained meaning or content. With the selected terms, the relations to each word were analyzed by means of cluster analysis. Cluster analysis was used to select and divide 32 extracted words into four clusters: cluster 1-"actually/direct," "learn/watch/hear," "how," "experience/participation," "local residents," "atmosphere in community-based clinical care settings," "favorable," "communication/conversation," and "study"; cluster 2-"work of staff member" and "role"; cluster 3-"interaction/communication," "understanding," "feel," "significant/important/necessity," and "think"; and cluster 4-"community," "confusing," "enjoyable," "proactive," "knowledge," "academic knowledge," and "class." The students who participated in the program achieved different types of learning through the off-campus classes. They also had a positive impression of the community-based experience and interaction with the local residents, which is considered a favorable outcome. Off-campus programs could be a useful educational approach for students in health sciences.

Is there contextuality in behavioural and social systems?

PubMed

Dzhafarov, E N; Zhang, Ru; Kujala, Janne

2016-01-13

Most behavioural and social experiments aimed at revealing contextuality are confined to cyclic systems with binary outcomes. In quantum physics, this broad class of systems includes as special cases Klyachko-Can-Binicioglu-Shumovsky-type, Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bell-type and Suppes-Zanotti-Leggett-Garg-type systems. The theory of contextuality known as contextuality-by-default allows one to define and measure contextuality in all such systems, even if there are context-dependent errors in measurements, or if something in the contexts directly interacts with the measurements. This makes the theory especially suitable for behavioural and social systems, where direct interactions of 'everything with everything' are ubiquitous. For cyclic systems with binary outcomes, the theory provides necessary and sufficient conditions for non-contextuality, and these conditions are known to be breached in certain quantum systems. We review several behavioural and social datasets (from polls of public opinion to visual illusions to conjoint choices to word combinations to psychophysical matching), and none of these data provides any evidence for contextuality. Our working hypothesis is that this may be a broadly applicable rule: behavioural and social systems are non-contextual, i.e. all 'contextual effects' in them result from the ubiquitous dependence of response distributions on the elements of contexts other than the ones to which the response is presumably or normatively directed. © 2015 The Author(s).

Mojibake - The rehearsal of word fragments in verbal recall.

PubMed

Lange-Küttner, Christiane; Sykorova, Eva

2015-01-01

Theories of verbal rehearsal usually assume that whole words are being rehearsed. However, words consist of letter sequences, or syllables, or word onset-vowel-coda, amongst many other conceptualizations of word structure. A more general term is the 'grain size' of word units (Ziegler and Goswami, 2005). In the current study, a new method measured the quantitative percentage of correctly remembered word structure. The amount of letters in the correct letter sequence as per cent of word length was calculated, disregarding missing or added letters. A forced rehearsal was tested by repeating each memory list four times. We tested low frequency (LF) English words versus geographical (UK) town names to control for content. We also tested unfamiliar international (INT) non-words and names of international (INT) European towns to control for familiarity. An immediate versus distributed repetition was tested with a between-subject design. Participants responded with word fragments in their written recall especially when they had to remember unfamiliar words. While memory of whole words was sensitive to content, presentation distribution and individual sex and language differences, recall of word fragments was not. There was no trade-off between memory of word fragments with whole word recall during the repetition, instead also word fragments significantly increased. Moreover, while whole word responses correlated with each other during repetition, and word fragment responses correlated with each other during repetition, these two types of word recall responses were not correlated with each other. Thus there may be a lower layer consisting of free, sparse word fragments and an upper layer that consists of language-specific, orthographically and semantically constrained words.

Encoding context and false recognition memories.

PubMed

Bruce, Darryl; Phillips-Grant, Kimberly; Conrad, Nicole; Bona, Susan

2004-09-01

False recognition of an extralist word that is thematically related to all words of a study list may reflect internal activation of the theme word during encoding followed by impaired source monitoring at retrieval, that is, difficulty in determining whether the word had actually been experienced or merely thought of. To assist source monitoring, distinctive visual or verbal contexts were added to study words at input. Both types of context produced similar effects: False alarms to theme-word (critical) lures were reduced; remember judgements of critical lures called old were lower; and if contextual information had been added to lists, subjects indicated as much for list items and associated critical foils identified as old. The visual and verbal contexts used in the present studies were held to disrupt semantic categorisation of list words at input and to facilitate source monitoring at output.

Type of Maternal Object Motion during Synchronous Naming Predicts Preverbal Infants' Learning of Word-Object Relations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Matatyaho, Dalit J.; Gogate, Lakshmi J.

2008-01-01

Mothers' use of specific types of object motion in synchrony with object naming was examined, along with infants' joint attention to the mother and object, as a predictor of word learning. During a semistructured 3-min play episode, mothers (N = 24) taught the names of 2 toy objects to their preverbal 6- to 8-month-old infants. The episodes were…

Inhibitory Control during Sentence Comprehension in Individuals with Dementia of the Alzheimer Type

PubMed Central

Faust, Mark E.; Balota, David A.; Duchek, Janet M.; Gernsbacher, Morton Ann; Smith, Stan

2015-01-01

In two experiments we investigated the extent to which individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer type (OAT) manage the activation of contextually appropriate and inappropriate meanings of ambiguous words during sentence comprehension. OAT individuals and healthy older individuals read sentences that ended in ambiguous words and then determined if a test word fit the overall meaning of the sentence. Analysis of response latencies indicated that OAT individuals were less efficient than healthy older individuals at suppressing inappropriate meanings of ambiguous words not implied by sentence context, but enhanced appropriate meanings to the same extent, if not more, than healthy older adults. DAT individuals were also more likely to allow inappropriate information to actually drive responses (i.e., increased intrusion errors). Overall, the results are consistent with a growing number of studies demonstrating impairments in inhibitory control, with relative preservation offacilitatory processes, in DAT. PMID:9126415

Self-Paced Segmentation of Written Words on a Touchscreen Tablet Promotes the Oral Production of Nonverbal and Minimally Verbal Children with Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vernay, Frédérique; Kahina, Harma; Thierry, Marrone; Jean-Yves, Roussey

2017-01-01

We investigated in a pilot study the effects of various types of visual mediation (photos, written words and self-paced syllabic segmentation of written words displayed on a touchscreen tablet) that are thought to facilitate the oral production of nonverbal and minimally verbal children with autism, according to the participants' level of oral…

SSC 254 Screen-Based Word Processors: Production Tests. The Lanier Word Processor.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moyer, Ruth A.

Designed for use in Trident Technical College's Secretarial Lab, this series of 12 production tests focuses on the use of the Lanier Word Processor for a variety of tasks. In tests 1 and 2, students are required to type and print out letters. Tests 3 through 8 require students to reformat a text; make corrections on a letter; divide and combine…

Making Things Difficult in Lexical Decision: The Impact of Pseudohomophones and Transposed-Letter Nonwords on Frequency and Semantic Priming Effects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lupker, Stephen J.; Pexman, Penny M.

2010-01-01

Performance in a lexical decision task is crucially dependent on the difficulty of the word-nonword discrimination. More wordlike nonwords cause not only a latency increase for words but also, as reported by Stone and Van Orden (1993), larger word frequency effects. Several current models of lexical decision making can explain these types of…

Children and adolescents' performance on a medium-length/nonsemantic word-list test.

PubMed

Flores-Lázaro, Julio César; Salgado Soruco, María Alejandra; Stepanov, Igor I

2017-01-01

Word-list learning tasks are among the most important and frequently used tests for declarative memory evaluation. For example, the California Verbal Learning Test-Children's Version (CVLT-C) and Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test provide important information about different cognitive-neuropsychological processes. However, the impact of test length (i.e., number of words) and semantic organization (i.e., type of words) on children's and adolescents' memory performance remains to be clarified, especially during this developmental stage. To explore whether a medium-length non-semantically organized test can produce the typical curvilinear performance that semantically organized tests produce, reflecting executive control, we studied and compared the cognitive performance of normal children and adolescents by utilizing mathematical modeling. The model is based on the first-order system transfer function and has been successfully applied to learning curves for the CVLT-C (15 words, semantically organized paradigm). Results indicate that learning nine semantically unrelated words produces typical curvilinear (executive function) performance in children and younger adolescents and that performance could be effectively analyzed with the mathematical model. This indicates that the exponential increase (curvilinear performance) of correctly learned words does not solely depend on semantic and/or length features. This type of test controls semantic and length effects and may represent complementary tools for executive function evaluation in clinical populations in which semantic and/or length processing are affected.

Spotting words in handwritten Arabic documents

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Srihari, Sargur; Srinivasan, Harish; Babu, Pavithra; Bhole, Chetan

2006-01-01

The design and performance of a system for spotting handwritten Arabic words in scanned document images is presented. Three main components of the system are a word segmenter, a shape based matcher for words and a search interface. The user types in a query in English within a search window, the system finds the equivalent Arabic word, e.g., by dictionary look-up, locates word images in an indexed (segmented) set of documents. A two-step approach is employed in performing the search: (1) prototype selection: the query is used to obtain a set of handwritten samples of that word from a known set of writers (these are the prototypes), and (2) word matching: the prototypes are used to spot each occurrence of those words in the indexed document database. A ranking is performed on the entire set of test word images-- where the ranking criterion is a similarity score between each prototype word and the candidate words based on global word shape features. A database of 20,000 word images contained in 100 scanned handwritten Arabic documents written by 10 different writers was used to study retrieval performance. Using five writers for providing prototypes and the other five for testing, using manually segmented documents, 55% precision is obtained at 50% recall. Performance increases as more writers are used for training.

The unbearable lightness of priming.

PubMed

Speelman, Craig P; Simpson, Terry A; Kirsner, Kim

2002-09-01

Repetition priming from text to isolated words has been difficult to observe. One explanation for this difficulty is that previous attempts to observe this type of priming have utilised conditions that normally reduce priming. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate this hypothesis. Experiment 1 involved participants being presented with words in isolation and in text passages. The words were then presented again in a lexical decision test. Results indicated that priming occurred as a result of exposure to both isolated words and words in text, although priming was greater in the word-word condition. Experiment 2 investigated whether priming occurred in a lexical decision test on words that had been read prior to the test in Milan Kundera's novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." There was some evidence that participants who had read the book recently were faster at lexical decision to words from the book than participants who had not read the book. The two experiments therefore indicate that priming can occur from text to isolated words, although it is smaller in magnitude to that observed from word to word. Reasons for this difference, as suggested by Kirsner and Speelman (J. Exp. Psychol.: Learn. Mem. Cogn. 22 (1996) 563) model of repetition priming, are discussed.

21 CFR 1230.14 - Directions for treatment.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... FEDERAL CAUSTIC POISON ACT Labeling § 1230.14 Directions for treatment. Except as provided in § 1230.16... word “Poison,” directions for treatment in the case of internal personal injury; in addition, if the...

21 CFR 1230.14 - Directions for treatment.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... FEDERAL CAUSTIC POISON ACT Labeling § 1230.14 Directions for treatment. Except as provided in § 1230.16... word “Poison,” directions for treatment in the case of internal personal injury; in addition, if the...

21 CFR 1230.14 - Directions for treatment.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... FEDERAL CAUSTIC POISON ACT Labeling § 1230.14 Directions for treatment. Except as provided in § 1230.16... word “Poison,” directions for treatment in the case of internal personal injury; in addition, if the...

21 CFR 1230.14 - Directions for treatment.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-04-01

... FEDERAL CAUSTIC POISON ACT Labeling § 1230.14 Directions for treatment. Except as provided in § 1230.16... word “Poison,” directions for treatment in the case of internal personal injury; in addition, if the...

Importance Sampling of Word Patterns in DNA and Protein Sequences

PubMed Central

Chan, Hock Peng; Chen, Louis H.Y.

2010-01-01

Abstract Monte Carlo methods can provide accurate p-value estimates of word counting test statistics and are easy to implement. They are especially attractive when an asymptotic theory is absent or when either the search sequence or the word pattern is too short for the application of asymptotic formulae. Naive direct Monte Carlo is undesirable for the estimation of small probabilities because the associated rare events of interest are seldom generated. We propose instead efficient importance sampling algorithms that use controlled insertion of the desired word patterns on randomly generated sequences. The implementation is illustrated on word patterns of biological interest: palindromes and inverted repeats, patterns arising from position-specific weight matrices (PSWMs), and co-occurrences of pairs of motifs. PMID:21128856

Verbal Complementizers in Arabic

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ahmed, Hossam Eldin Ibrahim

2015-01-01

A class of Modern Standard Arabic complementizers known as "'?inna' and its sisters" demonstrate unique case and word order restrictions. While CPs in Arabic allow both Subject-Verb (SV) and Verb-Subject (VS) word order and their subjects show nominative morphology, CPs introduced by "?inna" ban a verb from directly following…

Semi-Direct Speech: Manambu and beyond

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.

2008-01-01

Every language has some way of reporting what someone else has said. To express what Jakobson [Jakobson, R., 1990. "Shifters, categories, and the Russian verb. Selected writings". "Word and Language". Mouton, The Hague, Paris, pp. 130-153] called "speech within speech", the speaker can use their own words, recasting…

Visual attention shift to printed words during spoken word recognition in Chinese: The role of phonological information.

PubMed

Shen, Wei; Qu, Qingqing; Tong, Xiuhong

2018-05-01

The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which phonological information mediates the visual attention shift to printed Chinese words in spoken word recognition by using an eye-movement technique with a printed-word paradigm. In this paradigm, participants are visually presented with four printed words on a computer screen, which include a target word, a phonological competitor, and two distractors. Participants are then required to select the target word using a computer mouse, and the eye movements are recorded. In Experiment 1, phonological information was manipulated at the full-phonological overlap; in Experiment 2, phonological information at the partial-phonological overlap was manipulated; and in Experiment 3, the phonological competitors were manipulated to share either fulloverlap or partial-overlap with targets directly. Results of the three experiments showed that the phonological competitor effects were observed at both the full-phonological overlap and partial-phonological overlap conditions. That is, phonological competitors attracted more fixations than distractors, which suggested that phonological information mediates the visual attention shift during spoken word recognition. More importantly, we found that the mediating role of phonological information varies as a function of the phonological similarity between target words and phonological competitors.

Positive emotion word use and longevity in famous deceased psychologists.

PubMed

Pressman, Sarah D; Cohen, Sheldon

2012-05-01

This study examined whether specific types of positive and negative emotional words used in the autobiographies of well-known deceased psychologists were associated with longevity. For each of the 88 psychologists, the percent of emotional words used in writing was calculated and categorized by valence (positive or negative) and arousal (activated [e.g., lively, anxious] or not activated [e.g., calm, drowsy]) based on existing emotion scales and models of emotion categorization. After controlling for sex, year of publication, health (based on disclosed illness in autobiography), native language, and year of birth, the use of more activated positive emotional words (e.g., lively, vigorous, attentive, humorous) was associated with increased longevity. Negative terms (e.g., angry, afraid, drowsy, sluggish) and unactivated positive terms (e.g., peaceful, calm) were not related to longevity. The association of activated positive emotions with longevity was also independent of words indicative of social integration, optimism, and the other affect/activation categories. Results indicate that in writing, not every type of emotion correlates with longevity and that there may be value to considering different categories beyond emotional valence in health relevant outcomes.

Word Criticality Analysis. MOS: 91B. Skill Levels 1 & 2.

DTIC Science & Technology

1981-09-01

I 7 AD-A116 535 ARMY TRAINING DEVELOPMENTS INST FORT MONROE VA F/G 5/9 I WORD CRITICALITY ANALYSIS. MOSS 9111. SKILL LEVELS I a 2.(U) I SEP 81 A A...FORT MONROE, VIRGINIA 23651 ELC -~. JUL a Word Criticality Analysis NOS: 913 Skill Levels 1 & 2 PREPARED BY: OPERATIONS DIV, DPFO Cory if CSPIUS ATO...flI. upO"? NUMbER- 0VACCESSION INO a. RCISPIENT’S CATALOG NUMBER 14. TITLE tand 8.begel) S. TYPE OP REPORT & PERIOD COVERED Word Criticality Analysis Vl

Changing word usage predicts changing word durations in New Zealand English.

PubMed

Sóskuthy, Márton; Hay, Jennifer

2017-09-01

This paper investigates the emergence of lexicalized effects of word usage on word duration by looking at parallel changes in usage and duration over 130years in New Zealand English. Previous research has found that frequent words are shorter, informative words are longer, and words in utterance-final position are also longer. It has also been argued that some of these patterns are not simply online adjustments, but are incorporated into lexical representations. While these studies tend to focus on the synchronic aspects of such patterns, our corpus shows that word-usage patterns and word durations are not static over time. Many words change in duration and also change with respect to frequency, informativity and likelihood of occurring utterance-finally. Analysis of changing word durations over this time period shows substantial patterns of co-adaptation between word usage and word durations. Words that are increasing in frequency are becoming shorter. Words that are increasing/decreasing in informativity show a change in the same direction in duration (e.g. increasing informativity is associated with increasing duration). And words that are increasingly appearing utterance-finally are lengthening. These effects exist independently of the local effects of the predictors. For example, words that are increasing utterance-finally lengthen in all positions, including utterance-medially. We show that these results are compatible with a number of different views about lexical representations, but they cannot be explained without reference to a production-perception loop that allows speakers to update their representations dynamically on the basis of their experience. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The paca that roared: Immediate cumulative semantic interference among newly acquired words.

PubMed

Oppenheim, Gary M

2018-08-01

With 40,000 words in the average vocabulary, how can speakers find the specific words that they want so quickly and easily? Cumulative semantic interference in language production provides a clue: when naming a large series of pictures, with a few mammals sprinkled about, naming each subsequent mammal becomes slower and more error-prone. Such interference mirrors predictions from an incremental learning algorithm applied to meaning-driven retrieval from an established vocabulary, suggesting retrieval benefits from a constant, implicit, re-optimization process (Oppenheim et al., 2010). But how quickly would a new mammal (e.g. paca) engage in this re-optimization? In this experiment, 18 participants studied 3 novel and 3 familiar exemplars from each of six semantic categories, and immediately performed a timed picture-naming task. Consistent with the learning model's predictions, naming latencies revealed immediate cumulative semantic interference in all directions: from new words to new words, from new words to old words, from old words to new words, and from old words to old words. Repeating the procedure several days later produced similar-magnitude effects, demonstrating that newly acquired words can be immediately semantically integrated, at least to the extent necessary to produce typical cumulative semantic interference. These findings extend the Dark Side model's scope to include novel word production, and are considered in terms of mechanisms for lexical selection. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Fluency disorders in genetic syndromes.

PubMed

Van Borsel, John; Tetnowski, John A

2007-01-01

The characteristics of various genetic syndromes have included "stuttering" as a primary symptom associated with that syndrome. Specifically, Down syndrome, fragile X syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome, Tourette syndrome, Neurofibromatosis type I, and Turner syndrome all list "stuttering" as a characteristic of that syndrome. An extensive review of these syndromes indicated clients diagnosed with these syndromes do show evidence of nonfluency patterns, but not all would be considered stuttering. Many of the syndromes are marked by degrees of mental retardation that probably contribute to a higher than average prevalence of stuttering, as well as a higher than average prevalence of other fluency disorders (when compared to the population at large). An in-depth analysis of the available data indicates that some of these genetic syndromes show patterns of stuttering that may be indicative of only that syndrome (or similar syndromes) that can be differentially diagnosed from developmental stuttering. Among these patterns are the word-final nonfluencies noted in Prader-Willi syndrome; the presence of stuttering in the absence of secondary behaviors noted in Prader-Willi syndrome and; the presence of palilalia, word-final and word-medial nonfluencies, and word-medial and word-final nonfluencies in Tourette syndrome. Implications for future research are discussed in light of these findings. The reader will be able to: (1) describe the various different genetic syndromes that are associated with fluency disorders; (2) describe the types of nonfluencies that are associated with the major types of genetic syndromes that have fluency disorders; (3) describe the behaviors that may assist in differentially diagnosing different types of speech characteristics associated with various genetic syndromes.

An Investigation into the Processing of Lexicalized English Blend Words: Evidence from Lexical Decisions and Eye Movements During Reading.

PubMed

Juhasz, Barbara J; Johnson, Rebecca L; Brewer, Jennifer

2017-04-01

New words enter the language through several word formation processes [see Simonini (Engl J 55:752-757, 1966)]. One such process, blending, occurs when two source words are combined to represent a new concept (e.g., SMOG, BRUNCH, BLOG, and INFOMERCIAL). While there have been examinations of the structure of blends [see Gries (Linguistics 42:639-667, 2004) and Lehrer (Am Speech 73:3-28, 1998)], relatively little attention has been given to how lexicalized blends are recognized and if this process differs from other types of words. In the present study, blend words were matched to non-blend control words on length, familiarity, and frequency. Two tasks were used to examine blend processing: lexical decision and sentence reading. The results demonstrated that blend words were processed differently than non-blend control words. However, the nature of the effect varied as a function of task demands. Blends were recognized slower than control words in the lexical decision task but received shorter fixation durations when embedded in sentences.

Reading Acquisition and Beyond: Decoding Includes Cognition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Perfetti, Charles A.

1984-01-01

Focuses on (1) the acquisition and use of word representations and (2) the acquisition of the alphabetic code. Urges that instruction provide conditions to promote the learning of three types of representation--word forms, letter patterns, and mapping. (RDN)

Frustration in the pattern formation of polysyllabic words

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hayata, Kazuya

2016-12-01

A novel frustrated system is given for the analysis of (m + 1)-syllabled vocal sounds for languages with the m-vowel system, where the varieties of vowels are assumed to be m (m > 2). The necessary and sufficient condition for observing the sound frustration is that the configuration of m vowels in an m-syllabled word has a preference for the ‘repulsive’ type, in which there is no duplication of an identical vowel. For languages that meet this requirement, no (m + 1)-syllabled word can in principle select the present type because at most m different vowels are available and consequently the duplicated use of an identical vowel is inevitable. For languages showing a preference for the ‘attractive’ type, where an identical vowel aggregates in a word, there arises no such conflict. In this paper, we first elucidate for Arabic with m = 3 how to deal with the conflicting situation, where a statistical approach based on the chi-square testing is employed. In addition to the conventional three-vowel system, analyses are made also for Russian, where a polysyllabic word contains both a stressed and an indeterminate vowel. Through the statistical analyses the selection scheme for quadrisyllabic configurations is found to be strongly dependent on the parts of speech as well as the gender of nouns. In order to emphasize the relevance to the sound model of binary oppositions, analyzed results of Greek verbs are also given.

Abnormal brain activation during directed forgetting of negative memory in depressed patients.

PubMed

Yang, Wenjing; Chen, Qunlin; Liu, Peiduo; Cheng, Hongsheng; Cui, Qian; Wei, Dongtao; Zhang, Qinglin; Qiu, Jiang

2016-01-15

The frequent occurrence of uncontrollable negative thoughts and memories is a troubling aspect of depression. Thus, knowledge on the mechanism underlying intentional forgetting of these thoughts and memories is crucial to develop an effective emotion regulation strategy for depressed individuals. Behavioral studies have demonstrated that depressed participants cannot intentionally forget negative memories. However, the neural mechanism underlying this process remains unclear. In this study, participants completed the directed forgetting task in which they were instructed to remember or forget neutral or negative words. Standard univariate analysis based on the General Linear Model showed that the depressed participants have higher activation in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), superior frontal gyrus (SFG), superior parietal gyrus (SPG), and inferior temporal gyrus (ITG) than the healthy individuals. The results indicated that depressed participants recruited more frontal and parietal inhibitory control resources to inhibit the TBF items, but the attempt still failed because of negative bias. We also used the Support Vector Machine to perform multivariate pattern classification based on the brain activation during directed forgetting. The pattern of brain activity in directed forgetting of negative words allowed correct group classification with an overall accuracy of 75% (P=0.012). The brain regions which are critical for this discrimination showed abnormal activation when depressed participants were attempting to forget negative words. These results indicated that the abnormal neural circuitry when depressed individuals tried to forget the negative words might provide neurobiological markers for depression. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon: An Instrument for Psycholinguistic Research

PubMed Central

Estivalet, Gustavo L.; Meunier, Fanny

2015-01-01

In this article, we present the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon, a new word-based corpus for psycholinguistic and computational linguistic research in Brazilian Portuguese. We describe the corpus development, the specific characteristics on the internet site and database for user access. We also perform distributional analyses of the corpus and comparisons to other current databases. Our main objective was to provide a large, reliable, and useful word-based corpus with a dynamic, easy-to-use, and intuitive interface with free internet access for word and word-criteria searches. We used the Núcleo Interinstitucional de Linguística Computacional’s corpus as the basic data source and developed the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon by deriving and adding metalinguistic and psycholinguistic information about Brazilian Portuguese words. We obtained a final corpus with more than 30 million word tokens, 215 thousand word types and 25 categories of information about each word. This corpus was made available on the internet via a free-access site with two search engines: a simple search and a complex search. The simple engine basically searches for a list of words, while the complex engine accepts all types of criteria in the corpus categories. The output result presents all entries found in the corpus with the criteria specified in the input search and can be downloaded as a.csv file. We created a module in the results that delivers basic statistics about each search. The Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon also provides a pseudoword engine and specific tools for linguistic and statistical analysis. Therefore, the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon is a convenient instrument for stimulus search, selection, control, and manipulation in psycholinguistic experiments, as also it is a powerful database for computational linguistics research and language modeling related to lexicon distribution, functioning, and behavior. PMID:26630138

The Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon: An Instrument for Psycholinguistic Research.

PubMed

Estivalet, Gustavo L; Meunier, Fanny

2015-01-01

In this article, we present the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon, a new word-based corpus for psycholinguistic and computational linguistic research in Brazilian Portuguese. We describe the corpus development, the specific characteristics on the internet site and database for user access. We also perform distributional analyses of the corpus and comparisons to other current databases. Our main objective was to provide a large, reliable, and useful word-based corpus with a dynamic, easy-to-use, and intuitive interface with free internet access for word and word-criteria searches. We used the Núcleo Interinstitucional de Linguística Computacional's corpus as the basic data source and developed the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon by deriving and adding metalinguistic and psycholinguistic information about Brazilian Portuguese words. We obtained a final corpus with more than 30 million word tokens, 215 thousand word types and 25 categories of information about each word. This corpus was made available on the internet via a free-access site with two search engines: a simple search and a complex search. The simple engine basically searches for a list of words, while the complex engine accepts all types of criteria in the corpus categories. The output result presents all entries found in the corpus with the criteria specified in the input search and can be downloaded as a.csv file. We created a module in the results that delivers basic statistics about each search. The Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon also provides a pseudoword engine and specific tools for linguistic and statistical analysis. Therefore, the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon is a convenient instrument for stimulus search, selection, control, and manipulation in psycholinguistic experiments, as also it is a powerful database for computational linguistics research and language modeling related to lexicon distribution, functioning, and behavior.

Reading sentences of uniform word length: Evidence for the adaptation of the preferred saccade length during reading.

PubMed

Cutter, Michael G; Drieghe, Denis; Liversedge, Simon P

2017-11-01

In the current study, the effect of removing word length variability within sentences on spatial aspects of eye movements during reading was investigated. Participants read sentences that were uniform in terms of word length, with each sentence consisting entirely of three-, four-, or five-letter words, or a combination of these word lengths. Several interesting findings emerged. Adaptation of the preferred saccade length occurred for sentences with different uniform word length; participants would be more accurate at making short saccades while reading uniform sentences of three-letter words, while they would be more accurate at making long saccades while reading uniform sentences of five-letter words. Furthermore, word skipping was affected such that three- and four-letter words were more likely, and five-letter words less likely, to be directly fixated in uniform compared to non-uniform sentences. It is argued that saccadic targeting during reading is highly adaptable and flexible toward the characteristics of the text currently being read, as opposed to the idea implemented in most current models of eye movement control during reading that readers develop a preference for making saccades of a certain length across a lifetime of experience with a given language. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Two thumbs and one index: A comparison of manual coordination in touch-typing and mobile-typing.

PubMed

Cerni, Tania; Longcamp, Marieke; Job, Remo

2016-06-01

It has been extensively demonstrated that in touch-typing, manual alternation is performed faster than manual repetition (see i.e. Rumelhart & Norman, 1982), due to parallel activation of successive keystrokes. In this experiment, we tested whether the manual coordination patterns typical of touch-typing can be observed in mobile-typing. We recruited skilled touch-typists and divided them into two groups depending on their typing habits on the mobile device. The "one-hand" group typed with one index finger on the mobile, and therefore produced words exclusively through manual repetition. The "two-hands" group used two thumbs, and therefore produced words through a combination of mobile-typing repetitions and alternations. The two groups were tested in a typing to dictation task with both a standard keyboard and a mobile keyboard. Results showed that manual alternation and manual repetition patterns are similar in touch-typing and in mobile-typing. For the "two-hands" group, the mean interkeystroke intervals (IKIs) for touch-typing decreased as manual alterations in words increased in both touch- and mobile-typing. The "one-hand" group showed an opposite pattern in mobile-typing. Bigram frequency was correlated with IKIs per bigrams in both tasks and groups, but the correlation for the "one-hand" group in mobile-typing was different. Our results suggest that manual coordination processes are the same in touch-typing and in mobile-typing despite different effectors, provided that both hands are used to type. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Directed network modules

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Palla, Gergely; Farkas, Illés J.; Pollner, Péter; Derényi, Imre; Vicsek, Tamás

2007-06-01

A search technique locating network modules, i.e. internally densely connected groups of nodes in directed networks is introduced by extending the clique percolation method originally proposed for undirected networks. After giving a suitable definition for directed modules we investigate their percolation transition in the Erdos-Rényi graph both analytically and numerically. We also analyse four real-world directed networks, including Google's own web-pages, an email network, a word association graph and the transcriptional regulatory network of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The obtained directed modules are validated by additional information available for the nodes. We find that directed modules of real-world graphs inherently overlap and the investigated networks can be classified into two major groups in terms of the overlaps between the modules. Accordingly, in the word-association network and Google's web-pages, overlaps are likely to contain in-hubs, whereas the modules in the email and transcriptional regulatory network tend to overlap via out-hubs.

The Role of Episodic Context in Retrieval Practice Effects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Whiffen, Joshua W.; Karpicke, Jeffrey D.

2017-01-01

The episodic context account of retrieval-based learning proposes that retrieval enhances subsequent retention because people must think back to and reinstate a prior learning context. Three experiments directly tested this central assumption of the context account. Subjects studied word lists and then either restudied the words under intentional…

Automobile Maintenance. Reading and Language Activities.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kessman, William A.

Designed primarily for special needs students in a vocational program in automobile maintenance, this book was written to refine the basic skills of following directions, reading comprehension, vocabulary building, spelling, word usage, and word recognition, while relating these skills to some of the tasks a beginning student in the program must…

Context and Spoken Word Recognition in a Novel Lexicon

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Revill, Kathleen Pirog; Tanenhaus, Michael K.; Aslin, Richard N.

2008-01-01

Three eye movement studies with novel lexicons investigated the role of semantic context in spoken word recognition, contrasting 3 models: restrictive access, access-selection, and continuous integration. Actions directed at novel shapes caused changes in motion (e.g., looming, spinning) or state (e.g., color, texture). Across the experiments,…

Pictorial English/Haitian-Creole Dictionary. Revised Edition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vilsaint, Fequiere; Heurtelou, Maude

The English-to-Haitian Creole (HC) dictionary contains simple, direct translations of English words to HC using line drawings. Words are organized by theme: plants; food and drinks; animals; people; ethnicity; clothes; body parts; first aid; buildings; inside the house; hygiene; sport, hobbies, and games; musical instruments; tools; measuring…

A Multiple-Representation Paradigm for Document Development

DTIC Science & Technology

1988-07-05

Write [10], MicroSoft ·word [99], PageMaker [4], Vent ura Pub- lisher [135], Interleaf Publishing System [78], FrameMaker [52] and more have alre ady...processing in FrameMaker , MicroSoft Word, and Ventura Publisher are all handled by a noninteractive off-line program. Direct manipulation, from the

Attention to Orthographic and Phonological Word Forms in Vocabulary Instruction for Kindergarten English Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vadasy, Patricia F.; Sanders, Elizabeth A.

2016-01-01

This study examined benefits of connecting meaning, speech, and print in vocabulary learning for kindergarten English learners. Students screened eligible with limited English proficiency were randomly assigned to two instruction conditions. Both groups received direct instruction in high frequency root words. One condition featured added…

Middle School Children's Problem-Solving Behavior: A Cognitive Analysis from a Reading Comprehension Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pape, Stephen J.

2004-01-01

Many children read mathematics word problems and directly translate them to arithmetic operations. More sophisticated problem solvers transform word problems into object-based or mental models. Subsequent solutions are often qualitatively different because these models differentially support cognitive processing. Based on a conception of problem…

The Activation of Embedded Words in Spoken Word Recognition

PubMed Central

Zhang, Xujin; Samuel, Arthur G.

2015-01-01

The current study investigated how listeners understand English words that have shorter words embedded in them. A series of auditory-auditory priming experiments assessed the activation of six types of embedded words (2 embedded positions × 3 embedded proportions) under different listening conditions. Facilitation of lexical decision responses to targets (e.g., pig) associated with words embedded in primes (e.g., hamster) indexed activation of the embedded words (e.g., ham). When the listening conditions were optimal, isolated embedded words (e.g., ham) primed their targets in all six conditions (Experiment 1a). Within carrier words (e.g., hamster), the same set of embedded words produced priming only when they were at the beginning or comprised a large proportion of the carrier word (Experiment 1b). When the listening conditions were made suboptimal by expanding or compressing the primes, significant priming was found for isolated embedded words (Experiment 2a), but no priming was produced when the carrier words were compressed/expanded (Experiment 2b). Similarly, priming was eliminated when the carrier words were presented with one segment replaced by noise (Experiment 3). When cognitive load was imposed, priming for embedded words was again found when they were presented in isolation (Experiment 4a), but not when they were embedded in the carrier words (Experiment 4b). The results suggest that both embedded position and proportion play important roles in the activation of embedded words, but that such activation only occurs under unusually good listening conditions. PMID:25593407

The Activation of Embedded Words in Spoken Word Recognition.

PubMed

Zhang, Xujin; Samuel, Arthur G

2015-01-01

The current study investigated how listeners understand English words that have shorter words embedded in them. A series of auditory-auditory priming experiments assessed the activation of six types of embedded words (2 embedded positions × 3 embedded proportions) under different listening conditions. Facilitation of lexical decision responses to targets (e.g., pig) associated with words embedded in primes (e.g., hamster ) indexed activation of the embedded words (e.g., ham ). When the listening conditions were optimal, isolated embedded words (e.g., ham ) primed their targets in all six conditions (Experiment 1a). Within carrier words (e.g., hamster ), the same set of embedded words produced priming only when they were at the beginning or comprised a large proportion of the carrier word (Experiment 1b). When the listening conditions were made suboptimal by expanding or compressing the primes, significant priming was found for isolated embedded words (Experiment 2a), but no priming was produced when the carrier words were compressed/expanded (Experiment 2b). Similarly, priming was eliminated when the carrier words were presented with one segment replaced by noise (Experiment 3). When cognitive load was imposed, priming for embedded words was again found when they were presented in isolation (Experiment 4a), but not when they were embedded in the carrier words (Experiment 4b). The results suggest that both embedded position and proportion play important roles in the activation of embedded words, but that such activation only occurs under unusually good listening conditions.

On the Additive Effects of Stimulus Quality and Word Frequency in Lexical Decision: Evidence for Opposing Interactive Influences Revealed by RT Distributional Analyses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yap, Melvin J.; Balota, David A.; Tse, Chi-Shing; Besner, Derek

2008-01-01

The joint effects of stimulus quality and word frequency in lexical decision were examined in 4 experiments as a function of nonword type (legal nonwords, e.g., BRONE, vs. pseudohomophones, e.g., BRANE). When familiarity was a viable dimension for word-nonword discrimination, as when legal nonwords were used, additive effects of stimulus quality…

Office Automation: A Look Beyond Word Processing.

DTIC Science & Technology

1983-06-01

implying the type and nature of work performed by white-collar employees , and "products" will denote the techniques and type of equipment necessary...REPORT & PERIOD COVERED Office Automation: A Look Beyond Master’s Thesis Word Processing June 1983 6. PERFORMING ORG. REPORT NUMUER 7. AUTYOH) S...look at the problems of implementing an automated office and the possible impact it can have on human office workers. The purpose of this thesis is thus

The optimal viewing position effect in printed versus cursive words: Evidence of a reading cost for the cursive font.

PubMed

Danna, Jérémy; Massendari, Delphine; Furnari, Benjamin; Ducrot, Stéphanie

2018-06-13

Two eye-movement experiments were conducted to examine the effects of font type on the recognition of words presented in central vision, using a variable-viewing-position technique. Two main questions were addressed: (1) Is the optimal viewing position (OVP) for word recognition modulated by font type? (2) Is the cursive font more appropriate than the printed font in word recognition in children who exclusively write using a cursive script? In order to disentangle the role of perceptual difficulty associated with the cursive font and the impact of writing habits, we tested French adults (Experiment 1) and second-grade French children, the latter having exclusively learned to write in cursive (Experiment 2). Results revealed that the printed font is more appropriate than the cursive for recognizing words in both adults and children: adults were slightly less accurate in cursive than in printed stimuli recognition and children were slower to identify cursive stimuli than printed stimuli. Eye-movement measures also revealed that the OVP curves were flattened in cursive font in both adults and children. We concluded that the perceptual difficulty of the cursive font degrades word recognition by impacting the OVP stability. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Subliminal words durably affect neuronal activity.

PubMed

Gaillard, Raphaël; Cohen, Laurent; Adam, Claude; Clemenceau, Stéphane; Hasboun, Dominique; Baulac, Michel; Willer, Jean-Claude; Dehaene, Stanislas; Naccache, Lionel

2007-10-08

Unconscious mental representations elicited by subliminal stimuli are marked by their fleeting lifetimes, usually below 1 s. Can such evanescent subliminal stimuli, nevertheless, lead to long-lasting learning? To date, evidence suggesting a long-term influence of briefly perceived stimuli on behaviour or brain activity is scarce and questionable. In this study, we used intracranial recordings to provide the first direct demonstration that unconsciously perceived subliminal words could exert long-lasting effects on neuronal signals. When repeating subliminal words over long interstimulus intervals, we observed electrophysiological repetition effects. These unconscious repetition effects suggest that the single presentation of a masked word can durably affect neural architecture.

Mojibake – The rehearsal of word fragments in verbal recall

PubMed Central

Lange-Küttner, Christiane; Sykorova, Eva

2015-01-01

Theories of verbal rehearsal usually assume that whole words are being rehearsed. However, words consist of letter sequences, or syllables, or word onset-vowel-coda, amongst many other conceptualizations of word structure. A more general term is the ‘grain size’ of word units (Ziegler and Goswami, 2005). In the current study, a new method measured the quantitative percentage of correctly remembered word structure. The amount of letters in the correct letter sequence as per cent of word length was calculated, disregarding missing or added letters. A forced rehearsal was tested by repeating each memory list four times. We tested low frequency (LF) English words versus geographical (UK) town names to control for content. We also tested unfamiliar international (INT) non-words and names of international (INT) European towns to control for familiarity. An immediate versus distributed repetition was tested with a between-subject design. Participants responded with word fragments in their written recall especially when they had to remember unfamiliar words. While memory of whole words was sensitive to content, presentation distribution and individual sex and language differences, recall of word fragments was not. There was no trade-off between memory of word fragments with whole word recall during the repetition, instead also word fragments significantly increased. Moreover, while whole word responses correlated with each other during repetition, and word fragment responses correlated with each other during repetition, these two types of word recall responses were not correlated with each other. Thus there may be a lower layer consisting of free, sparse word fragments and an upper layer that consists of language-specific, orthographically and semantically constrained words. PMID:25941500

Reading Function and Content Words in Subtitled Videos.

PubMed

Krejtz, Izabela; Szarkowska, Agnieszka; Łogińska, Maria

2016-04-01

In this study, we examined how function and content words are read in intra- and interlingual subtitles. We monitored eye movements of a group of 39 deaf, 27 hard of hearing, and 56 hearing Polish participants while they viewed English and Polish videos with Polish subtitles. We found that function words and short content words received less visual attention than longer content words, which was reflected in shorter dwell time, lower number of fixations, shorter first fixation duration, and lower subject hit count. Deaf participants dwelled significantly longer on function words than other participants, which may be an indication of their difficulty in processing this type of words. The findings are discussed in the context of classical reading research and applied research on subtitling. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Interactions between statistical and semantic information in infant language development

PubMed Central

Lany, Jill; Saffran, Jenny R.

2013-01-01

Infants can use statistical regularities to form rudimentary word categories (e.g. noun, verb), and to learn the meanings common to words from those categories. Using an artificial language methodology, we probed the mechanisms by which two types of statistical cues (distributional and phonological regularities) affect word learning. Because linking distributional cues vs. phonological information to semantics make different computational demands on learners, we also tested whether their use is related to language proficiency. We found that 22-month-old infants with smaller vocabularies generalized using phonological cues; however, infants with larger vocabularies showed the opposite pattern of results, generalizing based on distributional cues. These findings suggest that both phonological and distributional cues marking word categories promote early word learning. Moreover, while correlations between these cues are important to forming word categories, we found infants’ weighting of these cues in subsequent word-learning tasks changes over the course of early language development. PMID:21884336

Rudimentary Reading Repertoires via Stimulus Equivalence and Recombination of Minimal Verbal Units

PubMed Central

Matos, Maria Amelia; Avanzi, Alessandra Lopes; McIlvane, William J

2006-01-01

We report a study with sixteen low-SES Brazilian children that sought to establish a repertoire of relations involving dictated words, printed words, and corresponding pictures. Children were taught: (1) in response to dictated words, to select corresponding pictures; (2) in response to syllables presented in both visual and auditory formats, to select words which contained a corresponding syllable in either the first or the last position; (3) in response to dictated-word samples, to “construct” corresponding printed words via arranging their constituent syllabic components; and (4) in response to printed word samples, to construct identical printed words by arranging their syllabic constituents. After training on the first two types of tasks, children were given tests for potentially emergent relations involving printed words and pictures. Almost all exhibited relations consistent with stimulus equivalence. They also displayed emergent naming performances––not only with training words but also with new words that were recombinations of their constituent syllables. The present work was inspired by Sidman's stimulus equivalence paradigm and by Skinner's functional analysis of verbal relations, particularly as applied to conceptions of minimal behavioral units and creativity (i.e., behavioral flexibility) in the analytical units applied to verbal relations. PMID:22477340

Conceptual Representation Changes in Indonesian-English Bilinguals.

PubMed

Hartanto, Andree; Suárez, Lidia

2016-10-01

This study investigated conceptual representations changes in bilinguals. Participants were Indonesian-English bilinguals (dominant in Indonesian, with different levels of English proficiency) and a control group composed of English-dominant bilinguals. All completed a gender decision task, in which participants decided whether English words referred to a male or female person or animal. In order to explore conceptual representations, we divided the words into gender-specific and gender-ambiguous words. Gender-specific words were words in which conceptual representations contained gender as a defining feature, in both English and Indonesian (e.g., uncle). In contrast, gender-ambiguous words were words in which gender was a defining feature in English but not a necessary feature in Indonesian (e.g., nephew and niece are both subsumed under the same word, keponakan, in Indonesian). The experiment was conducted exclusively in English. Indonesian-English bilinguals responded faster to gender-specific words than gender-ambiguous words, but the difference was smaller for the most proficient bilinguals. As expected, English-dominant speakers' response latencies were similar across these two types of words. The results suggest that English concepts are dynamic and that proficiency leads to native-like conceptual representations.

The emotional carryover effect in memory for words.

PubMed

Schmidt, Stephen R; Schmidt, Constance R

2016-08-01

Emotional material rarely occurs in isolation; rather it is experienced in the spatial and temporal proximity of less emotional items. Some previous researchers have found that emotional stimuli impair memory for surrounding information, whereas others have reported evidence for memory facilitation. Researchers have not determined which types of emotional items or memory tests produce effects that carry over to surrounding items. Six experiments are reported that measured carryover from emotional words varying in arousal to temporally adjacent neutral words. Taboo, non-taboo emotional, and neutral words were compared using different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), recognition and recall tests, and intentional and incidental memory instructions. Strong emotional memory effects were obtained in all six experiments. However, emotional items influenced memory for temporally adjacent words under limited conditions. Words following taboo words were more poorly remembered than words following neutral words when relatively short SOAs were employed. Words preceding taboo words were affected only when recall tests and relatively short retention intervals were used. These results suggest that increased attention to the emotional items sometimes produces emotional carryover effects; however, retrieval processes also contribute to retrograde amnesia and may extend the conditions under which anterograde amnesia is observed.

Fracture Mechanics Method for Word Embedding Generation of Neural Probabilistic Linguistic Model.

PubMed

Bi, Size; Liang, Xiao; Huang, Ting-Lei

2016-01-01

Word embedding, a lexical vector representation generated via the neural linguistic model (NLM), is empirically demonstrated to be appropriate for improvement of the performance of traditional language model. However, the supreme dimensionality that is inherent in NLM contributes to the problems of hyperparameters and long-time training in modeling. Here, we propose a force-directed method to improve such problems for simplifying the generation of word embedding. In this framework, each word is assumed as a point in the real world; thus it can approximately simulate the physical movement following certain mechanics. To simulate the variation of meaning in phrases, we use the fracture mechanics to do the formation and breakdown of meaning combined by a 2-gram word group. With the experiments on the natural linguistic tasks of part-of-speech tagging, named entity recognition and semantic role labeling, the result demonstrated that the 2-dimensional word embedding can rival the word embeddings generated by classic NLMs, in terms of accuracy, recall, and text visualization.

The influence of lexical statistics on temporal lobe cortical dynamics during spoken word listening

PubMed Central

Cibelli, Emily S.; Leonard, Matthew K.; Johnson, Keith; Chang, Edward F.

2015-01-01

Neural representations of words are thought to have a complex spatio-temporal cortical basis. It has been suggested that spoken word recognition is not a process of feed-forward computations from phonetic to lexical forms, but rather involves the online integration of bottom-up input with stored lexical knowledge. Using direct neural recordings from the temporal lobe, we examined cortical responses to words and pseudowords. We found that neural populations were not only sensitive to lexical status (real vs. pseudo), but also to cohort size (number of words matching the phonetic input at each time point) and cohort frequency (lexical frequency of those words). These lexical variables modulated neural activity from the posterior to anterior temporal lobe, and also dynamically as the stimuli unfolded on a millisecond time scale. Our findings indicate that word recognition is not purely modular, but relies on rapid and online integration of multiple sources of lexical knowledge. PMID:26072003

Anatomic, clinical, and neuropsychological correlates of spelling errors in primary progressive aphasia.

PubMed

Shim, Hyungsub; Hurley, Robert S; Rogalski, Emily; Mesulam, M-Marsel

2012-07-01

This study evaluates spelling errors in the three subtypes of primary progressive aphasia (PPA): agrammatic (PPA-G), logopenic (PPA-L), and semantic (PPA-S). Forty-one PPA patients and 36 age-matched healthy controls were administered a test of spelling. The total number of errors and types of errors in spelling to dictation of regular words, exception words and nonwords, were recorded. Error types were classified based on phonetic plausibility. In the first analysis, scores were evaluated by clinical diagnosis. Errors in spelling exception words and phonetically plausible errors were seen in PPA-S. Conversely, PPA-G was associated with errors in nonword spelling and phonetically implausible errors. In the next analysis, spelling scores were correlated to other neuropsychological language test scores. Significant correlations were found between exception word spelling and measures of naming and single word comprehension. Nonword spelling correlated with tests of grammar and repetition. Global language measures did not correlate significantly with spelling scores, however. Cortical thickness analysis based on MRI showed that atrophy in several language regions of interest were correlated with spelling errors. Atrophy in the left supramarginal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) pars orbitalis correlated with errors in nonword spelling, while thinning in the left temporal pole and fusiform gyrus correlated with errors in exception word spelling. Additionally, phonetically implausible errors in regular word spelling correlated with thinning in the left IFG pars triangularis and pars opercularis. Together, these findings suggest two independent systems for spelling to dictation, one phonetic (phoneme to grapheme conversion), and one lexical (whole word retrieval). Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Age of acquisition predicts rate of lexical evolution.

PubMed

Monaghan, Padraic

2014-12-01

The processes taking place during language acquisition are proposed to influence language evolution. However, evidence demonstrating the link between language learning and language evolution is, at best, indirect, constituting studies of laboratory-based artificial language learning studies or computational simulations of diachronic change. In the current study, a direct link between acquisition and evolution is established, showing that for two hundred fundamental vocabulary items, the age at which words are acquired is a predictor of the rate at which they have changed in studies of language evolution. Early-acquired words are more salient and easier to process than late-acquired words, and these early-acquired words are also more stably represented within the community's language. Analysing the properties of these early-acquired words potentially provides insight into the origins of communication, highlighting features of words that have been ultra-conserved in language. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.