scholarly journals The Automatic but Flexible and Content-Dependent Nature of Syntax

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Jiménez-Ortega ◽  
Esperanza Badaya ◽  
Pilar Casado ◽  
Sabela Fondevila ◽  
David Hernández-Gutiérrez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Syntactic Processing ◽  
Syntactic Parsing ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Emotional Words ◽  
Linguistic Comprehension ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
The One ◽  
Double Nature

Syntactic processing has often been considered an utmost example of unconscious automatic processing. In this line, it has been demonstrated that masked words containing syntactic anomalies are processed by our brain triggering event related potential (ERP) components similar to the ones triggered by conscious syntactic anomalies, thus supporting the automatic nature of the syntactic processing. Conversely, recent evidence also points out that regardless of the level of awareness, emotional information and other relevant extralinguistic information modulate conscious syntactic processing too. These results are also in line with suggestions that, under certain circumstances, syntactic processing could also be flexible and context-dependent. However, the study of the concomitant automatic but flexible conception of syntactic parsing is very scarce. Hence, to this aim, we examined whether and how masked emotional words (positive, negative, and neutral masked adjectives) containing morphosyntactic anomalies (half of the cases) affect linguistic comprehension of an ongoing unmasked sentence that also can contain a number agreement anomaly between the noun and the verb. ERP components were observed to emotional information (EPN), masked anomalies (LAN and a weak P600), and unmasked ones (LAN/N400 and P600). Furthermore, interactions in the processing of conscious and unconscious morphosyntactic anomalies and between unconscious emotional information and conscious anomalies were detected. The findings support, on the one hand, the automatic nature of syntax, given that syntactic components LAN and P600 were observed to unconscious anomalies. On the other hand, the flexible, permeable, and context-dependent nature of the syntactic processing is also supported, since unconscious information modulated conscious syntactic components. This double nature of syntactic processing is in line with theories of automaticity, suggesting that even unconscious/automatic, syntactic processing is flexible, adaptable, and context-dependent.

scholarly journals Advantage for Emotional Words in Immediate and Delayed Memory Tasks: Could it be Explained in Terms of Processing Capacity?

2002 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pilar Ferré
Keyword(s):  
Processing Capacity ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Emotional Words ◽  
Neutral Information ◽  
Term Retention ◽  
Long Term Retention ◽  
Retention Intervals ◽  
The One

Emotional stimuli are better remembered and recognized than neutral ones. This advantage for emotional stimuli has been repeatedly obtained when testing long-term retention. However, there are contradictory results concerning retention of emotional information when short retention intervals are used. The aim of the present study was, on the one hand, to test the effect of retention interval on memory for emotional stimuli (Experiment 1). The results showed that emotional information is better remembered than neutral information in both immediate and delayed memory tests, suggesting that the advantage for emotional information is not limited to long retention intervals. On the other hand, I tried to test the proposals made by Christianson and Nilsson (1984) and Bower (1992). These authors suggested that the advantage for emotional stimuli could be explained as emotional stimuli spending more processing capacity during acquisition, thus rendering less capacity available to encode simultaneously presented information (Experiments 2 and 3). Results showed that concurrent presentation of emotional stimuli did not inhibit the recall of neutral stimuli. These findings do not seem to support the proposals of Christianson and Nilsson (1984) and Bower (1992). According to these results, some mechanisms other than a greater spending of processing capacity have to be involved in the advantage for emotional information in memory.

scholarly journals The Effects of Emotional Content on Phonological Processing in Children Who Stutter

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 431-444
Author(s):  
Sousan Salehi ◽  
◽  
Ahmad Reza Khatoonabadi ◽  
Mahmoud Reza Ashrafi ◽  
Ghasem Mohammadkhani ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Phonological Processing ◽  
Repeated Measures ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Emotional Content ◽  
Time Range ◽  
High Time Resolution ◽  
Similar Distribution ◽  
Emotional Words

Objectives: Stuttering and phonological processing are mutually related. Emotion is an effective factor in fluency and language processing; however, its underlying neural mechanism remains unclear. Event-Related Potential (ERP) is a non-invasive highly-beneficial method with high time resolution for language processing. The present study aimed to explore phonological processing in emotional words in Children Who Stutter (CWS), compared to Typically-Developing Children (TDC). Methods: Ten Persian-speaking CWS (3 girls, 7 boys), aged 7-10 years (Mean±SD = 8.9±0.11) and 10 TDC who are matched in age (Mean±SD = 8.7±0.12) and gender were given 120 emotional words (high-valence low-valence) and neutral words to read. Phonological processing was measured by the aloud reading task, while ERP was simultaneously recorded. The collected results were analyzed as behavioral (reaction time and reading accuracy) and electrophysiological (amplitude and topography). Repeated-measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Independent Samples t-test were used for between-group comparisons. Results: The obtained behavioral data included Reaction Time (RT) and accuracy. There were no significant differences between the explored CWS and TDC in RT and accuracy (P>0.05). The mean value of amplitudes presented significant differences between CWS and TDC in language processing areas (P<0.05). The collected results indicated higher mean values of amplitude for neutral words. The distribution highly differed between the investigated CWS and TDC in neutral and negative words. However, there were similarities in positive words in distribution between the study groups. Discussion: The studied CWS and TDC were similar concerning behavioral results. High-valence words in the CWS group presented a higher similar distribution, compared to the TDC groups; however, low-valence words in the explored CWS had a more similar amplitude to the TDC group for neutral words. Then, emotional content facilitated phonological processing in the investigated CWS in the given time range.

scholarly journals Recognition Characteristics of Facial and Bodily Expressions: Evidence From ERPs

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoxiao Li
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Emotional Expressions ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Prolonged Latency ◽  
Electrophysiological Mechanism

In the natural environment, facial and bodily expressions influence each other. Previous research has shown that bodily expressions significantly influence the perception of facial expressions. However, little is known about the cognitive processing of facial and bodily emotional expressions and its temporal characteristics. Therefore, this study presented facial and bodily expressions, both separately and together, to examine the electrophysiological mechanism of emotional recognition using event-related potential (ERP). Participants assessed the emotions of facial and bodily expressions that varied by valence (positive/negative) and consistency (matching/non-matching emotions). The results showed that bodily expressions induced a more positive P1 component and a shortened latency, whereas facial expressions triggered a more negative N170 and prolonged latency. Among N2 and P3, N2 was more sensitive to inconsistent emotional information and P3 was more sensitive to consistent emotional information. The cognitive processing of facial and bodily expressions had distinctive integrating features, with the interaction occurring in the early stage (N170). The results of the study highlight the importance of facial and bodily expressions in the cognitive processing of emotion recognition.

Implicit need for affiliation and processing of emotional images: Event-related potential correlates

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-280
Author(s):  
Jianfeng Wang ◽  
Yan Wu ◽  
Lushi Jing
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Oddball Paradigm ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Need For Affiliation ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Negative Images ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Emotional Information Processing

Implicit motives play an important role in the regulation of many basic cognitive processes, particularly in the stage of attention. We conducted a study with a sample of 58 college students to examine selective attention to emotional stimuli as a function of individual differences in the implicit need for affiliation (nAff). In an affective oddball paradigm, event-related potentials were recorded while participants viewed positive, neutral, and negative images of people. Results showed that individuals high in nAff elicited larger late positive potential amplitudes to negative images than those low in nAff did. These findings replicate and extend the results of a previous study focused on these relationships and provide additional information on the neural correlates of affiliation-related emotional information processing.

scholarly journals Effects of Age and Working Memory Load on Syntactic Processing: An Event-Related Potential Study

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graciela C. Alatorre-Cruz ◽  
Juan Silva-Pereyra ◽  
Thalía Fernández ◽  
Mario A. Rodríguez-Camacho ◽  
Susana A. Castro-Chavira ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Memory Load ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Syntactic Processing ◽  
Working Memory Load ◽  
Potential Study

Situational relevance: Context as a factor in serial overshadowing of taste aversion learning

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothy WS Kwok ◽  
Robert A Boakes
Keyword(s):  
Taste Aversion ◽  
Conditioning Session ◽  
Latent Inhibition Effect ◽  
Taste Aversion Learning ◽  
Inhibition Effect ◽  
The Us ◽  
Consistent Group ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
The One ◽  
Serial Overshadowing

In a serial overshadowing procedure, a target stimulus, A, is followed after an interval by a potentially interfering stimulus, B, and this is then followed by an unconditioned stimulus (US). An untested proposal from over four decades ago was that the degree to which B overshadows conditioning of A depends on whether or not the two events take place in the same context. To test this, two experiments used a 1-trial long-delay conditioned taste aversion (CTA) procedure: sucrose served as the target taste (A) and dilute hydrochloric acid (HCl) as the overshadowing taste (B), with lithium chloride injection providing the US. In Experiment 1, these tastes were novel: weaker overshadowing by HCl of an aversion to sucrose was found when the two tastes were presented in different contexts. Experiment 2 tested whether the effect of pre-exposure to HCl, thereby rendering it less effective in overshadowing a sucrose aversion, was also context dependent. In the conditioning session, rats again received either context-same or context-different presentations of sucrose and HCl. However, for some rats, HCl was pre-exposed in the same context to which it was later presented during conditioning (Consistent), while others were pre-exposed to HCl in a different context to the one in which it was presented during conditioning (Inconsistent). The Inconsistent group produced greater overshadowing than the Consistent group and thus confirmed that the latent inhibition effect was also context dependent. This study confirms the concept of situational relevance.

Gloria in Profundis: Comparing the Glory of Moses in Sirach to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-78
Author(s):  
Nijay K. Gupta
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Fourth Gospel ◽  
Passion Narrative ◽  
Ben Sira ◽  
Presence Of God ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
John's Gospel ◽  
The One ◽  
Double Nature

Abstract The glory of Jesus is a leitmotif of the Fourth Gospel and probably reflects both the Shekinah “glory” of Israel’s God revealed in Jesus as well as honor attributed to Jesus by John. The Jewish wisdom teacher Ben Sira also employs glorification language frequently and carefully in Sirach. Bringing these two texts into conversation illuminates the peculiar and unique ways in which John portrayed the identity of Jesus. In Sirach 45:1-5, in particular, Ben Sira praised the glory of Moses—a man beloved of God, made equal to the angels, great before his enemies, powerful in word, intrepid before kings, sanctified in faithfulness, party to the holy presence of God, and privy to the secret things of God. Given that John also had much interest in Moses comparison and typology, setting these texts side-by-side brings to the forefront the double-nature of the Fourth Gospel’s glory-Christology. On the one hand, the Johannine Jesus offered great demonstrations of power and authoritative teaching. On the other hand, he fared quite the opposite as Ben Sira’s vision of the exalted Moses, especially in John’s passion narrative where Jesus appears frail, weak, shamed, and defeated. Comparing the Moses of Sirach to the Jesus of John’s Gospel especially reveals the Evangelist’s paradoxical theology of gloria in profundis—the humble glory of God demonstrated in Jesus.

Case and φ-feature agreement in advanced L2 Spanish grammars

2002 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 71-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florencia Franceschina
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
The Other ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Functional Features ◽  
L2 Spanish ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One ◽  
Case Number

One account of divergence in advanced L2 grammars is that speakers fail to acquire functional features in the L2 that are not part of the L1 inventory, and that this leads to non-native representations. Since this idea was first proposed by Hawkins and Chan (1997), few studies have provided the type of data which would allow for it to be adequately tested. This paper presents experimental data from two studies of the acquisition of Case, number and gender agreement in a group of advanced learners of Spanish who are L1 speakers of English, French, German, Greek, Italian and Portuguese. Differences were found between accuracy on Case and number agreement on the one hand, and gender agreement on the other, in ways predicted by the Failed Functional Features hypothesis.

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