scholarly journals The Processing of Linguistic Prominence

2019 ◽  
pp. 002383091988021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Kember ◽  
Jiyoun Choi ◽  
Jenny Yu ◽  
Anne Cutler
Keyword(s):  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Additive Effects ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Depth Of Processing ◽  
Processing Efficiency ◽  
Positional Advantage ◽  
Memory Representations ◽  
Syntactic Prominence

Prominence, the expression of informational weight within utterances, can be signaled by prosodic highlighting ( head-prominence, as in English) or by position (as in Korean edge-prominence). Prominence confers processing advantages, even if conveyed only by discourse manipulations. Here we compared processing of prominence in English and Korean, using a task that indexes processing success, namely recognition memory. In each language, participants’ memory was tested for target words heard in sentences in which they were prominent due to prosody, position, both or neither. Prominence produced recall advantage, but the relative effects differed across language. For Korean listeners the positional advantage was greater, but for English listeners prosodic and syntactic prominence had equivalent and additive effects. In a further experiment semantic and phonological foils tested depth of processing of the recall targets. Both foil types were correctly rejected, suggesting that semantic processing had not reached the level at which word form was no longer available. Together the results suggest that prominence processing is primarily driven by universal effects of information structure; but language-specific differences in frequency of experience prompt different relative advantages of prominence signal types. Processing efficiency increases in each case, however, creating more accurate and more rapidly contactable memory representations.

Intact Priming for Novel Perceptual Representations in Amnesia

1997 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 699-713 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan B. Hamann ◽  
Larry R. Squire
Keyword(s):  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Declarative Memory ◽  
Brain Structures ◽  
Perceptual Identification ◽  
Single Exposure ◽  
Memory Representations ◽  
Perceptual Representations ◽  
The Creation ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Brain

Recent studies have challenged the notion that priming for ostensibly novel stimuli such as pseudowords (REAB) reflects the creation of new representations. Priming for such stimuli could instead reflect the activation of familiar memory representations that are orthographically similar (READ) and/or the activation of subparts of stimuli (RE, EX, AR), which are familar because they occur commonly in English. We addressed this issue in three experiments that assessed perceptual identification priming and recognition memory for novel and familiar letter strings in amnesic patients and control subjects. Priming for words, pseudowords, and orthographically illegal nonwords was fully intact in the amnesic patients following a single exposure, whereas recognition memory was impaired for the same items. Thus, priming can occur for stimuli that are unlikely to have preexisting representations. Words and pseudowords exhibited twice as much priming as illegal nonwords, suggesting that activation may contribute to priming for words and wordlike stimuli. Additional results showed that priming for illegal nonwords resulted from the formation of new perceptual associations among the component letters of each nonword rather than the activation of individual letter representations. In summary, the results demonstrate that priming following a single exposure can depend on the creation of new perceptual representations and that such priming is independent of the brain structures essential for declarative memory.

scholarly journals Semantic and lexical features of words dissimilarly affected by non-fluent, logopenic, and semantic primary progressive aphasia

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (10) ◽  
pp. 1011-1022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jet M. J. Vonk ◽  
Roel Jonkers ◽  
H. Isabel Hubbard ◽  
Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini ◽  
Adam M. Brickman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Mental Lexicon ◽  
Primary Progressive Aphasia ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Lexical Frequency ◽  
Progressive Aphasia ◽  
Primary Progressive ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
Psycholinguistic Variables

AbstractObjective:To determine the effect of three psycholinguistic variables—lexical frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and neighborhood density (ND)—on lexical-semantic processing in individuals with non-fluent (nfvPPA), logopenic (lvPPA), and semantic primary progressive aphasia (svPPA). Identifying the scope and independence of these features can provide valuable information about the organization of words in our mind and brain.Method:We administered a lexical decision task—with words carefully selected to permit distinguishing lexical frequency, AoA, and orthographic ND effects—to 41 individuals with PPA (13 nfvPPA, 14 lvPPA, 14 svPPA) and 25 controls.Results:Of the psycholinguistic variables studied, lexical frequency had the largest influence on lexical-semantic processing, but AoA and ND also played an independent role. The results reflect a brain-language relationship with different proportional effects of frequency, AoA, and ND in the PPA variants, in a pattern that is consistent with the organization of the mental lexicon. Individuals with nfvPPA and lvPPA experienced an ND effect consistent with the role of inferior frontal and temporoparietal regions in lexical analysis and word form processing. By contrast, individuals with svPPA experienced an AoA effect consistent with the role of the anterior temporal lobe in semantic processing.Conclusions:The findings are in line with a hierarchical mental lexicon structure with a conceptual (semantic) and a lexeme (word-form) level, such that a selective deficit at one of these levels of the mental lexicon manifests differently in lexical-semantic processing performance, consistent with the affected language-specific brain region in each PPA variant.

scholarly journals The locus of recognition memory signals in human cortex depends on the complexity of the memory representations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Merika W. Sanders ◽  
Rosemary A. Cowell
Keyword(s):  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Medial Temporal Lobe ◽  
Declarative Memory ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Complex Stimuli ◽  
Memory Representations ◽  
Memory Signals ◽  
Feature Memory

Representational theories predict that brain regions contribute to cognition according to the information they represent (e.g., simple versus complex), contradicting the traditional notion that brain regions are specialized for cognitive functions (e.g., perception versus memory). In support of representational accounts, substantial evidence now attests that the Medial Temporal Lobe (MTL) is not specialized solely for long-term declarative memory, but underpins other functions including perception and future-imagining for complex stimuli and events. However, a complementary prediction has been less well explored, namely that the cortical locus of declarative memory may fall outside the MTL if the to-be-remembered content is sufficiently simple. Specifically, the locus should coincide with the optimal neural code for the representations being retrieved. To test this prediction, we manipulated the complexity of the to-be-remembered representations in a recognition memory task. First, participants in the scanner viewed novel 3D objects and scenes, and we used multivariate analyses to identify regions in the ventral visual-MTL pathway that preferentially coded for either simple features of the stimuli, or complex conjunctions of those features. Next, in a separate scan, we tested recognition memory for these stimuli and performed neuroimaging contrasts that revealed two memory signals ‒ feature memory and conjunction memory. Feature memory signals were found in visual cortex, while conjunction memory signals emerged in MTL. Further, the regions optimally representing features via preferential feature-coding coincided with those exhibiting feature memory signals. These findings suggest that representational content, rather than cognitive function, is the primary organizing principle in the ventral visual-MTL pathway.

scholarly journals Neurocognitive Mechanisms Supporting the Generalization of Concepts Across Languages

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Usman Ayub Sheikh ◽  
Manuel Carreiras ◽  
David Soto
Keyword(s):  
Word Processing ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Semantic Network ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Semantic Category ◽  
Semantic Representations ◽  
Depth Of Processing ◽  
Shallow Processing ◽  
Cross Language

The neurocognitive mechanisms that support the generalization of semantic representations across different languages remain to be determined. Current psycholinguistic models propose that semantic representations are likely to overlap across languages, although there is evidence also to the contrary. Neuroimaging studies observed that brain activity patterns associated with the meaning of words may be similar across languages. However, the factors that mediate cross-language generalization of semantic representations are not known. We here identify a key factor: the depth of processing. Human participants were asked to process visual words as they underwent functional MRI. We found that, during shallow processing, multivariate pattern classifiers could decode the word semantic category within each language in putative substrates of the semantic network, but there was no evidence of cross-language generalization in the shallow processing context. By contrast, when the depth of processing was higher, significant cross-language generalization was observed in several regions, including inferior parietal, ventromedial, lateral temporal, and inferior frontal cortex. These results support the distributed-only view of semantic processing and favour models based on multiple semantic hubs. The results also have ramifications for psycholinguistic models of word processing such as the BIA+, which by default assumes non-selective access to both native and second languages.

How semantic processing affects recognition memory

2020 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 104109
Author(s):  
Michael S. Humphreys ◽  
Yanqi Ryan Li ◽  
Jennifer S. Burt ◽  
Shayne Loft
Keyword(s):  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Semantic Processing

On the Processing of Semantic Aspects of Experience in the Anterior Medial Temporal Lobe: An Event-related fMRI Study

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 590-601 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patric Meyer ◽  
Axel Mecklinger ◽  
Angela D. Friederici
Keyword(s):  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Medial Temporal Lobe ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Declarative Memory ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
New Words ◽  
Subsequent Test ◽  
Fmri Study

Recognition memory based on familiarity judgments is a form of declarative memory that has been repeatedly associated with the anterior medial temporal lobe. It has been argued that this region sustains familiarity-based recognition not only by retrieving item-specific information but also by coding for those semantic aspects of an event that support later familiarity-based recognition. Here, we used event-related fMRI to directly examine whether the contribution of anterior medial temporal lobe to declarative memory indeed results from its role in processing semantic aspects of an event. For this purpose, a sentence comprehension task was employed which varied the demands of semantic and syntactic processing of the sentence-final word. By presenting those sentence-final words together with new words in a subsequent incidental recognition memory test, we were able to determine the mnemonic consequences of presenting words in different sentential contexts. Results showed that enhanced semantic processing during comprehension activates regions in medial temporal lobe cortex and leads to response suppression in partly overlapping regions when the word is successfully retrieved. Data from a behavioral follow-up study support the view that enhanced semantic processing at study enhances familiarity-based remembering in a subsequent test phase.

Depth of processing pictures of faces and recognition memory.

1974 ◽  
Vol 103 (4) ◽  
pp. 751-757 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon H. Bower ◽  
Martin B. Karlin
Keyword(s):  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Depth Of Processing

Levels of Processing Affect Perceptual Features in Visual Associative Memory

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-279
Author(s):  
Rebecca Ovalle-Fresa ◽  
Arif Sinan Uslu ◽  
Nicolas Rothen
Keyword(s):  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Associative Memory ◽  
Current Literature ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Verbal Material ◽  
Cued Recall ◽  
Visual Features ◽  
Levels Of Processing ◽  
Perceptual Features ◽  
Different Levels

The levels of processing (LOP) account has inspired thousands of studies with verbal material. The few studies investigating levels of processing with nonverbal stimuli used images with nameable objects that, like meaningful words, lend themselves to semantic processing. Thus, nothing is known about the effects of different levels of processing on basic visual perceptual features, such as color. Across four experiments, we tested 187 participants to investigate whether the LOP framework also applies to basic perceptual features in visual associative memory. For Experiments 1 and 2, we developed a paradigm to investigate recognition memory for associations of basic visual features. Participants had to memorize object–color associations (Experiment 1) and fractal–color associations (Experiment 2, to suppress verbalization). In Experiments 3 and 4, we extended our account to cued recall. All experiments revealed reliable LOP effects for basic perceptual features in visual associative memory. Our findings demonstrate that the LOP account is more universal than the current literature suggests.

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