Tutorial for Abstract Semantic Associative Network Training (AbSANT): Theoretical Rationale, Step-by-Step Protocol, and Material Resources

Purpose: The availability of evidence-based therapies for abstract words is limited. Abstract Semantic Associative Network Training (AbSANT) is theoretically motivated and has been shown to not only improve directly trained abstract words, such as the word emergency in the category hospital, but also promote generalization to related concrete words, such as the word doctor . Method: This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions, including cueing strategies, and material resources for conducting AbSANT. Importantly, this tutorial also explains the theoretical motivation behind AbSANT, as well as information regarding the population, dose, and environment characteristics of effective trials, to help clinicians make informed decisions regarding the applicability of this approach and to guide decision-making throughout the steps of therapy. Conclusions: AbSANT is an effective, theoretically based treatment for abstract words. This tutorial provides all of the resources needed to conduct AbSANT with clients with aphasia. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.17776211

Atendimento de Pacientes Neonatais Realizadas pelo Serviço Aeromédico: Uma Revisão Integrativa / Neonatal Patients Carried Out by Aerometric Service: An Integrative Review

Resumo: A remoção rápida e com medidas de segurança de recém-nascidos (RNs) críticos, como por exemplo, os prematuros extremos e os com malformações congênitas complexas, nascidos em centros que apresentam insuficiência de recursos para Unidades de Terapia Intensiva Neonatal (UTIs) por meio de transporte inter-hospitalar é considerada uma das recomendações do Ministério da Saúde devido sua capacidade de diminuição significativa da mortalidade neonatal por causas evitáveis. Objetivo: caracterizar o transporte neonatal através do Serviço Aeromédico Metódos: Trata–se de um estudo de revisão integrativa, com abordagem descritiva e exploratória, sobre o tema: Atendimento de Pacientes Neonatais realizadas pelo Serviço Aeromédico. Para a realização da busca na Biblioteca Virtual da saúde (BVS), foram utilizadas combinações entre as seguintes palavras-chave, consideradas descritores no DeCS: “Neonatologia”, “Resgate aéreo” e “Urgência”. Os termos foram cruzados como descritores e também como palavras do título e do resumo. A busca foi realizada no período de Junho de 2019.Resultados e discussão: A literatura o Serviço Aeromédico é utilizado principalmente entre RNs de alto risco, no qual existem indicações pré-estabelecidas e com isso possibilita a introdução de melhores abordagens. No qual é necessário a utilização de materiais e protocolos pré-estabelcidos, como também uma equipe preparada para realização dos atendimentos nos pacientes neonatais. Conclusão: Diante dessa perspectiva é possível compreender que o avanço tecnológico alinhado ao desenvolvimento de uma medicina de qualidade pode proporcionar melhores abordagens aos pacientes neonatais e com isso estabelecer uma melhor qualidade de vida e diminuição da morbimortalidade destes pacientes.Descritores: Neonatologia, Resgate aéreo, Urgência. Abstract:The rapid and safe removal of critical newborn infants (RNs), such as premature infants and those with complex congenital malformations, born in centers that have insufficient resources for Neonatal Intensive Care Units (ICUs) by means of interhospital transportation is considered one of the recommendations of the Ministry of Health due to its capacity to significantly reduce neonatal mortality from preventable causes. Objective: to characterize neonatal transport through the Aeromedical Service Metódos: This is an integrative review study, with a descriptive and exploratory approach, on the topic: Attendance of Neonatal Patients performed by the Aeromedical Service. In order to perform the search in the Virtual Health Library (VHL), we used combinations of the following keywords, considered descriptors in DeCS: "Neonatology", "Air Rescue" and "Urgency". The terms were cross-referenced as descriptors and also as title and abstract words. The search was performed in June 2019. Results and discussion: The literature the Aeromedical Service is mainly used among high risk NBs, in which there are pre-established indications and with this allows the introduction of better approaches. In which it is necessary to use pre-established materials and protocols, as well as a team prepared to perform care in neonatal patients. Conclusion: In view of this perspective, it is possible to understand that the technological advances aligned to the development of a quality medicine can provide better approaches to neonatal patients and thus establish a better quality of life and decrease of the morbimortality of these patients.Keywords: Neonatology, Air rescue, Urgency

Automatic generation of a large dictionary with concreteness/abstractness ratings based on a small human dictionary

Concrete/abstract words are used in a growing number of psychological and neurophysiological research. For a few languages, large dictionaries have been created manually. This is a very time-consuming and costly process. To generate large high-quality dictionaries of concrete/abstract words automatically one needs extrapolating the expert assessments obtained on smaller samples. The research question that arises is how small such samples should be to do a good enough extrapolation. In this paper, we present a method for automatic ranking concreteness of words and propose an approach to significantly decrease amount of expert assessment. The method has been evaluated on a large test set for English. The quality of the constructed dictionaries is comparable to the expert ones. The correlation between predicted and expert ratings is higher comparing to the state-of-the-art methods.

Diabetic ketoacidosis in COVID-19: what have we learned so far?

Background and aims: In December 2019, a pandemic emerged due to a new coronavirus which imposed various uncertainties and discoveries. It has been reported that diabetes is a risk factor for worst outcomes of COVID-19, and also that SARS-CoV-2 infection was correlated with the occurrence of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) in patients. The aim of this work is to discuss this correlation emphasizing the main case reports from 2020 while exploring the management of DKA during the course of COVID-19. Method: Web of Science, PubMed and Scopus databases were searched using two sets of Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) search terms or Title/Abstract words: Coronavirus Infections (Coronavirus Infections, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, COVID-19) and Diabetic Ketoacidosis (Diabetic Ketoacidosis, Diabetic Acidosis, Diabetic Ketosis). Results: There is a clear correlation between COVID-19 and DKA. The SARS-Cov-2 infection may precipitate both a hyperglycemic state and ketoacidosis occurrence in diabetic and non-diabetic patients, which may lead to fatal outcomes. Conclusion: DKA in patients with COVID-19 may increase risk and worse outcomes. Hence, the SARS-Cov-2 infection presents a new perspective towards the management of glycemia and acidosis in diabetic and non-diabetic patients, highlighting the need for rapid interventions to minimize the complications from COVID-19 while reducing its spreading.

Modelling concrete and abstract concepts using brain-constrained deep neural networks

A neurobiologically constrained deep neural network mimicking cortical areas relevant for sensorimotor, linguistic and conceptual processing was used to investigate the putative biological mechanisms underlying conceptual category formation and semantic feature extraction. Networks were trained to learn neural patterns representing specific objects and actions relevant to semantically ‘ground’ concrete and abstract concepts. Grounding sets consisted of three grounding patterns with neurons representing specific perceptual or action-related features; neurons were either unique to one pattern or shared between patterns of the same set. Concrete categories were modelled as pattern triplets overlapping in their ‘shared neurons’, thus implementing semantic feature sharing of all instances of a category. In contrast, abstract concepts had partially shared feature neurons common to only pairs of category instances, thus, exhibiting family resemblance, but lacking full feature overlap. Stimulation with concrete and abstract conceptual patterns and biologically realistic unsupervised learning caused formation of strongly connected cell assemblies (CAs) specific to individual grounding patterns, whose neurons were spread out across all areas of the deep network. After learning, the shared neurons of the instances of concrete concepts were more prominent in central areas when compared with peripheral sensorimotor ones, whereas for abstract concepts the converse pattern of results was observed, with central areas exhibiting relatively fewer neurons shared between pairs of category members. We interpret these results in light of the current knowledge about the relative difficulty children show when learning abstract words. Implications for future neurocomputational modelling experiments as well as neurobiological theories of semantic representation are discussed.

EXPRESS: Articulatory suppression delays processing of abstract words: the role of inner speech

Compared to concrete concepts, like “book”, abstract concepts expressed by words like “justice” are more detached from sensorial experiences, even though they are also grounded in sensorial modalities. Abstract concepts lack a single object as referent and are characterized by higher variability both within and across participants. According to the Word as Social Tool (WAT) proposal, owing to their complexity, abstract concepts need to be processed with the help of inner language. Inner language can namely help participants to re-explain to themselves the meaning of the word, to keep information active in working memory, and to prepare themselves to ask information from more competent people. While previous studies have demonstrated that the mouth is involved during abstract concepts’ processing, both the functional role and the mechanisms underlying this involvement still need to be clarified. We report an experiment in which participants were required to evaluate whether 78 words were abstract or concrete by pressing two different pedals. During the judgment task, they were submitted, in different blocks, to a baseline, an articulatory suppression, and a manipulation condition. In the last two conditions, they had to repeat a syllable continually and to manipulate a softball with their dominant hand. Results showed that articulatory suppression slowed down the processing of abstract more than that of concrete words. Overall results confirm the WAT proposal’s hypothesis that abstract concepts processing involves the mouth motor system and specifically inner speech. We discuss the implications for current theories of conceptual representation.

That means something to me: the effect of linguistic and emotional experience on the acquisition and processing of novel abstract concepts

This study aimed to investigate the acquisition and representation of novel abstract concepts grounded in linguistic and emotional experience. In five linguistic training sessions, participants learned emotional and neutral abstract concepts and either engaged in explicit mental imagery (n = 32) or lexico-semantic processing (n = 34) with the linguistic material. After training, a high lexical decision and semantic judgment accuracy showed that participants successfully acquired the novel concepts. A feature production task showed that emotional concepts were generally enriched by a surplus of (emotion) features, and neutral concepts by relatively more cognition features. More features led to a higher LDT accuracy but not to faster reactions, which cannot be fully explained by noise due to the online assessment as, descriptively, more features slowed down reactions in participants, who did the imagery task and accelerated them for those, who did the rephrasing task. Our findings support the notion that linguistic and emotional information are crucial for grounding abstract concepts, and that this grounding does not rely on explicit imagery. Future research might combine the linguistic training paradigm with controlled reaction time and electrophysiological measurements to further corroborate the experiential grounding of abstract words.

The Application of Total Physical Response Method (TPR) in Preschool Children’s English Teaching

This article through a four months’ TPR teaching experiment among six preschool children, namely, Pre-interview, Pre-test, TPR Teaching Experiment (such as “Display and Imitation”, “Instructions and Action”, “Situational Communication”), Post-test, and Post-interview, attempts to investigate the application and effectiveness of the TPR method in preschool children’s English teaching. The experimental results show that this approach can not only help children understand the new language quickly and gain long-term memory, but also allow children to learn English happily in a “zero stress” environment. However, abstract words and sentences are difficult to express in the TPR methods. At the same time, this “teaching through lively activities” method is easily leads to classroom discipline chaos. The TPR method also requires teachers to have high professional quality and comprehensive skills, including language expression ability, sports ability, performance skills, etc. Therefore, promoting this approach in preschool English teaching also faces technical and teaching staff difficulties. This study validates some conclusions of earlier studies which can provide experience and lessons to preschool English teachers in applying TPR as well as theoretical and practical contributions to future research.