scholarly journals Rational Adaptation in Using Conceptual Versus Lexical Information in Adults With Aphasia

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haley C. Dresang ◽  
Tessa Warren ◽  
William D. Hula ◽  
Michael Walsh Dickey
Keyword(s):  
Naming Task ◽  
Language Impairments ◽  
Word Retrieval ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Lexical Information ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Participant Group ◽  
Left Hemisphere Stroke ◽  
Lexical Cues

The information theoretic principle of rational adaptation predicts that individuals with aphasia adapt to their language impairments by relying more heavily on comparatively unimpaired non-linguistic knowledge to communicate. This prediction was examined by assessing the extent to which adults with chronic aphasia due to left-hemisphere stroke rely more on conceptual rather than lexical information during verb retrieval, as compared to age-matched neurotypical controls. A primed verb naming task examined the degree of facilitation each participant group received from either conceptual event-related or lexical collocate cues, compared to unrelated baseline cues. The results provide evidence that adults with aphasia received amplified facilitation from conceptual cues compared to controls, whereas healthy controls received greater facilitation from lexical cues. This indicates that adaptation to alternative and relatively unimpaired information may facilitate successful word retrieval in aphasia. Implications for models of rational adaptation and clinical neurorehabilitation are discussed.

scholarly journals Links Between Short-Term Memory and Word Retrieval in Aphasia

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1S) ◽  
pp. 379-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Minkina ◽  
Nadine Martin ◽  
Kristie A. Spencer ◽  
Diane L. Kendall
Keyword(s):  
Word Pair ◽  
Picture Naming ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Naming Task ◽  
Word Retrieval ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Retrieval Errors ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Repetition Task

Purpose This study explored the relationship between anomia and verbal short-term memory (STM) in the context of an interactive activation language processing model. Method Twenty-four individuals with aphasia and reduced STM spans (i.e., impaired immediate serial recall of words) completed a picture-naming task and a word pair repetition task (a measure of verbal STM). Correlations between verbal STM and word retrieval errors made on the picture-naming task were examined. Results A significant positive correlation between naming accuracy and verbal span length was found. More intricate verbal STM analyses examined the relationship between picture-naming error types (i.e., semantic vs. phonological) and 2 measures of verbal STM: (a) location of errors on the word pair repetition task and (b) imageability and frequency effects on the word pair repetition task. Results indicated that, as phonological word retrieval errors (relative to semantic) increase, bias toward correct repetition of high-imageability words increases. Conclusions Results suggest that word retrieval and verbal STM tasks likely rely on a partially shared temporary linguistic activation process.

scholarly journals Integrating Prosodic and Lexical Cues for Automatic Topic Segmentation

2001 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gökhan Tür ◽  
Dilek Hakkani-Tür ◽  
Andreas Stolcke ◽  
Elizabeth Shriberg
Keyword(s):  
Markov Models ◽  
Hidden Markov ◽  
Automatic Segmentation ◽  
Prosodic Features ◽  
Lexical Information ◽  
Topic Segmentation ◽  
Segmentation Methods ◽  
News Corpus ◽  
Speech Recognizer ◽  
Lexical Cues

We present a probabilistic model that uses both prosodic and lexical cues for the automatic segmentation of speech into topically coherent units. We propose two methods for combining lexical and prosodic information using hidden Markov models and decision trees. Lexical information is obtained from a speech recognizer, and prosodic features are extracted automatically from speech waveforms. We evaluate our approach on the Broadcast News corpus, using the DARPA-TDT evaluation metrics. Results show that the prosodic model alone is competitive with word-based segmentation methods. Furthermore, we achieve a significant reduction in error by combining the prosodic and word-based knowledge sources.

scholarly journals The Rediscovery Hypothesis: Language Models Need to Meet Linguistics

2021 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
pp. 1343-1384
Author(s):  
Vassilina Nikoulina ◽  
Maxat Tezekbayev ◽  
Nuradil Kozhakhmet ◽  
Madina Babazhanova ◽  
Matthias Gallé ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Modeling ◽  
Language Models ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Linguistic Information ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Linguistic Structures

There is an ongoing debate in the NLP community whether modern language models contain linguistic knowledge, recovered through so-called probes. In this paper, we study whether linguistic knowledge is a necessary condition for the good performance of modern language models, which we call the rediscovery hypothesis. In the first place, we show that language models that are significantly compressed but perform well on their pretraining objectives retain good scores when probed for linguistic structures. This result supports the rediscovery hypothesis and leads to the second contribution of our paper: an information-theoretic framework that relates language modeling objectives with linguistic information. This framework also provides a metric to measure the impact of linguistic information on the word prediction task. We reinforce our analytical results with various experiments, both on synthetic and on real NLP tasks in English.

The acquisition of rhotics by child L2 and L3 learners

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Author(s):  
Alexandra Morales Reyes ◽  
Begona Arechabaleta ◽  
Silvina A. Montrul
Keyword(s):  
Picture Naming ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Naming Task ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Linguistic Experience ◽  
L3 Acquisition ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
English Speaking

This study investigated how previous linguistic experience and universal strategies guide the acquisition of phonology in the classroom. More specifically, it focused on the possible advantages that bilingual children have over monolingual children. Thirty-four children completed a picture-naming task: 9 Spanish native speakers, 19 English native speakers acquiring Spanish as L2 and 6 Korean-English bilinguals acquiring Spanish as L3. Results indicated that in general the children rapidly acquired native-like pronunciation of the Spanish rhotics, but the Korean-English bilinguals outperformed the English-speaking children. We propose that although previous linguistic knowledge plays a role in L2 and L3 acquisition, children are able to overcome transfer errors because they are guided by universal developmental strategies from the initial stages of acquisition. We suggest that if L3 learners have an advantage over L2 learners, this may be due to their complex linguistic knowledge and higher metalinguistic competence.

Suprasegmental Features Are Not Acquired Early: Perception and Production of Monosyllabic Cantonese Lexical Tones in 4- to 6-Year-Old Preschool Children

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 1070-1085 ◽  
Author(s):  
Puisan Wong ◽  
Carrie Tsz-Tin Leung
Keyword(s):  
Age Groups ◽  
Naming Task ◽  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Phonological Development ◽  
Lexical Information ◽  
Tone Production ◽  
Tone Perception ◽  
Suprasegmental Features ◽  
Monosyllabic Words ◽  
Production Accuracy

Purpose Previous studies reported that children acquire Cantonese tones before 3 years of age, supporting the assumption in models of phonological development that suprasegmental features are acquired rapidly and early in children. Yet, recent research found a large disparity in the age of Cantonese tone acquisition. This study investigated Cantonese tone development in 4- to 6-year-old children. Method Forty-eight 4- to 6-year-old Cantonese-speaking children and 28 mothers of the children labeled 30 pictures representing familiar words in the 6 tones in a picture-naming task and identified pictures representing words in different Cantonese tones in a picture-pointing task. To control for lexical biases in tone assessment, tone productions were low-pass filtered to eliminate lexical information. Five judges categorized the tones in filtered stimuli. Tone production accuracy, tone perception accuracy, and correlation between tone production and perception accuracy were examined. Results Children did not start to produce adultlike tones until 5 and 6 years of age. Four-year-olds produced none of the tones with adultlike accuracy. Five- and 6-year-olds attained adultlike productions in 2 (T5 and T6) to 3 (T4, T5, and T6) tones, respectively. Children made better progress in tone perception and achieved higher accuracy in perception than in production. However, children in all age groups perceived none of the tones as accurately as adults, except that T1 was perceived with adultlike accuracy by 6-year-olds. Only weak association was found between children's tone perception and production accuracy. Conclusions Contradicting to the long-held assumption that children acquire lexical tone rapidly and early before the mastery of segmentals, this study found that 4- to 6-year-old children have not mastered the perception or production of the full set of Cantonese tones in familiar monosyllabic words. Larger development was found in children's tone perception than tone production. The higher tone perception accuracy but weak correlation between tone perception and production abilities in children suggested that tone perception accuracy is not sufficient for children's tone production accuracy. The findings have clinical and theoretical implications.

scholarly journals Language impairment in the moderate stage of dementia due to Alzheimer's disease

2021 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 283-289
Author(s):  
Karin Zazo ORTIZ ◽  
Juliana Onofre DE LIRA ◽  
Thais Soares Ciariancullo MINETT ◽  
Paulo Henrique Ferreira BERTOLUCCI
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Normal Population ◽  
Naming Task ◽  
Language Impairments ◽  
Semantic Cues ◽  
Written Word ◽  
Therapeutic Doses

ABSTRACT Background: During the moderate stage of dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), language disorder is more evident and it impacts on communication. An overview of language impairment could be helpful to find compensatory communication strategies for these patients. Objective: To identify all language impairments among patients with moderate-stage of AD. Methods: 20 patients diagnosed with probable AD based on the criteria of the NINCDS-ARDRA, with a MMSE score of 13-23 points and CDR=2, who were undergoing treatment for AD with therapeutic doses of acetyl cholinesterase inhibitors, were assessed using the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE), a test that provides a broad assessment of language. The results were compared with the performance of a normal population. Results: The patients assessed in this study presented normal scores for oral and written word recognition, repetition, mechanics of writing, primer-level dictation and spelling to dictation but also had impairment at most levels of linguistic processing, in oral and written comprehension and production. In general, as expected, the tasks relying on access to the mental lexicon were most significantly affected. However, they performed well in the naming task, in which semantic cues were presented. Moreover, the patients assessed in this study had better performance in written comprehension tasks than in oral ones. Conclusion: The severity of the language impairments was not homogenous, with some linguistic abilities more impaired than others. The abilities that were found to be preserved can help to guide strategies for aiding in communication at this stage of AD.

scholarly journals Individual Differences in the Use of Acoustic-Phonetic Versus Lexical Cues for Speech Perception

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikole Giovannone ◽  
Rachel M. Theodore
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
Receptive Language ◽  
Language Ability ◽  
Natural Speech ◽  
Stimulus Input ◽  
Lexical Information ◽  
Speech Input ◽  
High Conflict ◽  
Lexical Cues

Previous research suggests that individuals with weaker receptive language show increased reliance on lexical information for speech perception relative to individuals with stronger receptive language, which may reflect a difference in how acoustic-phonetic and lexical cues are weighted for speech processing. Here we examined whether this relationship is the consequence of conflict between acoustic-phonetic and lexical cues in speech input, which has been found to mediate lexical reliance in sentential contexts. Two groups of participants completed standardized measures of language ability and a phonetic identification task to assess lexical recruitment (i.e., a Ganong task). In the high conflict group, the stimulus input distribution removed natural correlations between acoustic-phonetic and lexical cues, thus placing the two cues in high competition with each other; in the low conflict group, these correlations were present and thus competition was reduced as in natural speech. The results showed that 1) the Ganong effect was larger in the low compared to the high conflict condition in single-word contexts, suggesting that cue conflict dynamically influences online speech perception, 2) the Ganong effect was larger for those with weaker compared to stronger receptive language, and 3) the relationship between the Ganong effect and receptive language was not mediated by the degree to which acoustic-phonetic and lexical cues conflicted in the input. These results suggest that listeners with weaker language ability down-weight acoustic-phonetic cues and rely more heavily on lexical knowledge, even when stimulus input distributions reflect characteristics of natural speech input.

scholarly journals Color naming across languages reflects color use

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (40) ◽  
pp. 10785-10790 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Gibson ◽  
Richard Futrell ◽  
Julian Jara-Ettinger ◽  
Kyle Mahowald ◽  
Leon Bergen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Naming Task ◽  
Color Naming ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Natural Images ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Color Categories ◽  
Color Categorization

What determines how languages categorize colors? We analyzed results of the World Color Survey (WCS) of 110 languages to show that despite gross differences across languages, communication of chromatic chips is always better for warm colors (yellows/reds) than cool colors (blues/greens). We present an analysis of color statistics in a large databank of natural images curated by human observers for salient objects and show that objects tend to have warm rather than cool colors. These results suggest that the cross-linguistic similarity in color-naming efficiency reflects colors of universal usefulness and provide an account of a principle (color use) that governs how color categories come about. We show that potential methodological issues with the WCS do not corrupt information-theoretic analyses, by collecting original data using two extreme versions of the color-naming task, in three groups: the Tsimane', a remote Amazonian hunter-gatherer isolate; Bolivian-Spanish speakers; and English speakers. These data also enabled us to test another prediction of the color-usefulness hypothesis: that differences in color categorization between languages are caused by differences in overall usefulness of color to a culture. In support, we found that color naming among Tsimane' had relatively low communicative efficiency, and the Tsimane' were less likely to use color terms when describing familiar objects. Color-naming among Tsimane' was boosted when naming artificially colored objects compared with natural objects, suggesting that industrialization promotes color usefulness.

scholarly journals Verbal Description of Concrete Objects: A Method for Assessing Semantic Circumlocution in Persons With Aphasia

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon M. Antonucci ◽  
Colleen MacWilliam
Keyword(s):  
Repeated Measures ◽  
Small Body ◽  
Semantic Feature ◽  
Word Retrieval ◽  
Verbal Description ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Critical Gap ◽  
Feature Processing ◽  
Left Hemisphere Stroke ◽  
Main Effects

Purpose We investigated from a theoretically motivated perspective what information differentiated sufficient from insufficient descriptions of objects provided by persons with aphasia. Method Twenty-one adults with aphasia consequent to single left-hemisphere stroke verbally described 9 living and 9 nonliving objects. Responses were scored for accuracy (i.e., sufficiency) and tallied for type and quantity of semantic feature information provided. Main effects and interactions were identified using repeated measures analyses of variance, with significant findings followed up with planned comparisons. Results Differences between correct and incorrect descriptions were identified with respect to both feature type and feature distinctiveness for living and nonliving items, in particular highlighting the importance of distinctive features in descriptions of both domains. Conclusions These findings add to the relatively small body of literature investigating semantic feature processing in adults with aphasia. This is a critical gap to close when considered in light of the preponderance of semantically based treatments for word-retrieval impairment in stroke-aphasia. Our findings provide preliminary support for the notion that semantically guided treatments for word-retrieval impairment in stroke-aphasia may be geared toward increasing specificity of semantic circumlocution to increase semantic self-cueing and to improve communication of information to conversation partners.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document