lexical selection
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2022 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Sara B. W. Troutman ◽  
David J. Madden ◽  
Michele T. Diaz

Abstract As people age, one of the most common complaints is difficulty with word retrieval. A wealth of behavioral research confirms such age-related language production deficits, yet the structural neural differences that relate to age-related language production deficits remains an open area of exploration. Therefore, the present study used a large sample of healthy adults across adulthood to investigate how age-related white matter differences in three key left-hemisphere language tracts may contribute to age-related differences in language ability. Specifically, we used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to measure fractional anisotropy (FA) and radial diffusivity (RD) which are indicators of white matter structure. We then used a series of path models to test whether white matter from the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF), and the frontal aslant tract (FAT) mediated age-related differences in one form of language production, picture naming. We found that FA, as well as RD from the SLF and FAT mediated the relation between age and picture naming performance, whereas a control tract (corticospinal; CST) was not a mediator. Moreover, differences between mediation of picture naming and a control naming condition suggest that left SLF has a greater role in higher-order aspects of naming, such as semantic and lexical selection whereas left FAT is more sensitive to sensorimotor aspects of fluency or speech motor planning. These results suggest that dorsal white matter contributes to age-related differences in generating speech and may be particularly important in supporting word retrieval across adulthood.


2022 ◽  
pp. 288-305
Author(s):  
Francisco Javier Vellón Lahoz

The chapter analyses the discourse of the political debate in the Spanish parliamentary confrontation on the coronavirus and its health and economic consequences. To this end, it analyses eight debates led by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the leader of the opposition, Pablo Casado. The discursive strategies of both influence the central aspects of the political framework on which the legislature is structured, as can be seen in the grammatical mechanisms, in the lexical selection, in the evidentiality around the sources of legitimacy, and in general, in the stylistic and emotional component of the respective interventions. In this way, the pandemic has become a privileged reference for the political programmes of the different parties.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Korochkina ◽  
Lyndsey Nickels ◽  
Audrey Bürki

The Complementary Learning Systems model of word learning proposes that newly learned words that have been integrated into semantic memory can interact with familiar words during lexical selection. The study reported here is the first to examine how behavioural markers of integration map onto electrophysiological markers of integration in a version of the semantic priming paradigm that is assumed to rely primarily on automatic semantic processing. 71 young healthy adults learned novel names for two sets of novel concepts, one set on each of two consecutive days. Learning was followed by a continuous primed lexical decision task with EEG measures.The behavioural data was analysed with Bayesian Linear Mixed Effects models, while, for the electrophysiological data, two types of analyses were conducted: Bayesian Distributional Regression models were used to analyse mean amplitude in two pre-defined spatiotemporal windows (N400 and LPC), whereas the Mass Univariate analysis was run to explore other time points and regions. We found evidence against priming effects in either spatiotemporal window or in the behavioural data. Nonetheless, there was evidence for differential processing of the novel names depending on the length of the consolidation period (0-day vs 1-day). We take these findings to indicate that neither the 0-day nor the 1-day consolidation period was sufficient for integration in our study and that, 24 hours after exposure to novel words, the system still relies on episodic memory to distinguish between these novel words (learned 24h ago), those learned more recently and those that haven’t been seen before.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Vogt ◽  
Barbara Kaup ◽  
Rasha Abdel Rahman

The role of meaning facets based on sensorimotor experiences is well-investigated in comprehension but has received little attention in language production research. In two experiments, we investigated whether experiential traces of space influenced lexical choices when participants completed visually-presented sentence fragments (e.g., ‘You are at the sea and you see a ...’) with spoken nouns (e.g., ‘dolphin’, ‘palm tree’). The words were presented consecutively in an ascending or descending direction, starting from the center of the screen. These physical spatial cues did not influence lexical choices. However, the produced nouns met the spatial characteristics of the broader sentence contexts such that the typical spatial locations of the produced noun referents were predicted by the location of the situations described by the sentence fragments (i. e., upper or lower sphere). By including distributional semantic similarity measures derived from computing cosine values between sentence nouns and produced nouns using a web-based text corpus, we show that the meaning dimension of ‘location in space’ guides lexical selection during speaking. We discuss the relation of this spatial meaning dimension to accounts of experientially grounded and usage-based theories of language processing and their combination in hybrid approaches. In doing so, we contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the many facets of meaning processing during language production and their impact on the words we select to express verbal messages.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Josh Faulkner

<p>In patients undergoing tumour resection surgery, assessment of language is vital, given its crucial role in everyday social functioning. However, despite the unique neuropathological mechanisms in tumours, current literature presents variable results regarding language capabilities in this population. In this thesis we have developed a new neuropsychological test battery, the Brief Language Assessment for Surgical Tumours (BLAST), to specifically evaluate language in brain tumour patients. The BLAST adopts a core skills approach, which identifies and examines 11 core cognitive skills that have been derived based on current cognitive and psycholinguistic theories, and are required for everyday language processing. In this study, we administered the BLAST to a cohort of 40 undifferentiated tumour surgery patients, both pre and postoperatively.  Also tested were 60 healthy controls categorised into three age groups (18-29, 30-50 and 51+years). We examined various aspects of overall test performance in order to evaluate: 1) the overall sensitivity of the test battery at detecting abnormalities in this population; 2) selectivity: the relative incidence of impairments across the various subtests; and 3) their sensitivity to change following surgery. We also explored the effects of lesion localisation and other lesion characteristics (malignancy, oedema and volume) on test performance. Following this, we then used participants' test performance to create operationalised measures of our 11 core cognitive skills, and evaluated these measures in a similar way to the basic test scores. Finally, we used Voxel-Based Lesion Symptom Mapping to determine the specific anatomical predictors for each core cognitive skill score. When investigating overall task performance, we found that 94% of preoperative patients and 90% of postoperative patients were impaired in at least one task within the BLAST. Also, 65% and 68% of patients had impaired scores on at least one core skill preoperatively and postoperatively respectively. It was also found that the core skills measures were effective at discriminating amongst different neurological profiles. Specifically, patients with a left posterior tumour had significantly lower scores than other groups on measures of accessing semantic knowledge, lexical selection and phonological encoding, either pre or postoperatively, or both. Conversely, patients with a left frontal tumour had significantly lower scores on measures of articulatory motor planning and verb retrieval. Our Voxel-Lesion-Symptom-Mapping analysis corroborated these findings. Lesions within the left superior temporal lobe significantly predicted lows scores in accessing semantic knowledge, lexical selection and phonological encoding. Conversely, lesions within the left inferior, as well as the superior posterior frontal lobe, significantly predicted low scores on goal-driven response selection, articulatory-motor planning and verb retrieval.  We conclude that a core skills approach may be a more effective means of assessing language in tumour populations than more conventional tools that emphasise overall task performance. Such derived measures are sensitive to impairments in this population, and are less likely to be confounded by nonlinguistic impairments that can impact significantly on overall task scores. They may also be useful in guiding postoperative rehabilitation. Further, the scores derived here are associated with quite specific neural substrates, making them potentially useful in guiding surgery and reducing postoperative linguistic deficits. Finally, we conclude that the investigation of tumour populations can also provide unique theoretical insights into language processing and its neural underpinnings in its own right.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Josh Faulkner

<p>In patients undergoing tumour resection surgery, assessment of language is vital, given its crucial role in everyday social functioning. However, despite the unique neuropathological mechanisms in tumours, current literature presents variable results regarding language capabilities in this population. In this thesis we have developed a new neuropsychological test battery, the Brief Language Assessment for Surgical Tumours (BLAST), to specifically evaluate language in brain tumour patients. The BLAST adopts a core skills approach, which identifies and examines 11 core cognitive skills that have been derived based on current cognitive and psycholinguistic theories, and are required for everyday language processing. In this study, we administered the BLAST to a cohort of 40 undifferentiated tumour surgery patients, both pre and postoperatively.  Also tested were 60 healthy controls categorised into three age groups (18-29, 30-50 and 51+years). We examined various aspects of overall test performance in order to evaluate: 1) the overall sensitivity of the test battery at detecting abnormalities in this population; 2) selectivity: the relative incidence of impairments across the various subtests; and 3) their sensitivity to change following surgery. We also explored the effects of lesion localisation and other lesion characteristics (malignancy, oedema and volume) on test performance. Following this, we then used participants' test performance to create operationalised measures of our 11 core cognitive skills, and evaluated these measures in a similar way to the basic test scores. Finally, we used Voxel-Based Lesion Symptom Mapping to determine the specific anatomical predictors for each core cognitive skill score. When investigating overall task performance, we found that 94% of preoperative patients and 90% of postoperative patients were impaired in at least one task within the BLAST. Also, 65% and 68% of patients had impaired scores on at least one core skill preoperatively and postoperatively respectively. It was also found that the core skills measures were effective at discriminating amongst different neurological profiles. Specifically, patients with a left posterior tumour had significantly lower scores than other groups on measures of accessing semantic knowledge, lexical selection and phonological encoding, either pre or postoperatively, or both. Conversely, patients with a left frontal tumour had significantly lower scores on measures of articulatory motor planning and verb retrieval. Our Voxel-Lesion-Symptom-Mapping analysis corroborated these findings. Lesions within the left superior temporal lobe significantly predicted lows scores in accessing semantic knowledge, lexical selection and phonological encoding. Conversely, lesions within the left inferior, as well as the superior posterior frontal lobe, significantly predicted low scores on goal-driven response selection, articulatory-motor planning and verb retrieval.  We conclude that a core skills approach may be a more effective means of assessing language in tumour populations than more conventional tools that emphasise overall task performance. Such derived measures are sensitive to impairments in this population, and are less likely to be confounded by nonlinguistic impairments that can impact significantly on overall task scores. They may also be useful in guiding postoperative rehabilitation. Further, the scores derived here are associated with quite specific neural substrates, making them potentially useful in guiding surgery and reducing postoperative linguistic deficits. Finally, we conclude that the investigation of tumour populations can also provide unique theoretical insights into language processing and its neural underpinnings in its own right.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Winston Downes

<p>Two experiments were conducted with first-year university students in an effort to discover more about what happens when a phrase is spoken. A paradigm was constructed with the intention of getting the participants to produce a simple, two-noun phrase at a cue and then 'catch' them out having them say the name of a single picture presented instead. The single picture presented to 'catch' the participants out (instead of the cue) was either the first or second name in the simple two-noun phrase, or a third, unplanned picture. The intention was to compare the relative timings of the different catch pictures in an effort to discover which of two theories of speech production best describes the cognitive processes that underlie such processes. The second experiment was an extension of this idea but also included a semantic relatedness variable, where the catch picture could be semantically related to an item shown during the planning of the simple, two-noun phrase. The results of these experiments were not in line with the hypothesis regarding the relative timings of the catch pictures, but were in line with the hypothesis that it would take longer to name catch pictures that were preceded by semantically related pictures. Implications of such findings are discussed along with possible future modifications to extend the utility of the paradigm used in this study.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Winston Downes

<p>Two experiments were conducted with first-year university students in an effort to discover more about what happens when a phrase is spoken. A paradigm was constructed with the intention of getting the participants to produce a simple, two-noun phrase at a cue and then 'catch' them out having them say the name of a single picture presented instead. The single picture presented to 'catch' the participants out (instead of the cue) was either the first or second name in the simple two-noun phrase, or a third, unplanned picture. The intention was to compare the relative timings of the different catch pictures in an effort to discover which of two theories of speech production best describes the cognitive processes that underlie such processes. The second experiment was an extension of this idea but also included a semantic relatedness variable, where the catch picture could be semantically related to an item shown during the planning of the simple, two-noun phrase. The results of these experiments were not in line with the hypothesis regarding the relative timings of the catch pictures, but were in line with the hypothesis that it would take longer to name catch pictures that were preceded by semantically related pictures. Implications of such findings are discussed along with possible future modifications to extend the utility of the paradigm used in this study.</p>


Author(s):  
Tanmai Khanna ◽  
Jonathan N. Washington ◽  
Francis M. Tyers ◽  
Sevilay Bayatlı ◽  
Daniel G. Swanson ◽  
...  

AbstractThis paper presents an overview of Apertium, a free and open-source rule-based machine translation platform. Translation in Apertium happens through a pipeline of modular tools, and the platform continues to be improved as more language pairs are added. Several advances have been implemented since the last publication, including some new optional modules: a module that allows rules to process recursive structures at the structural transfer stage, a module that deals with contiguous and discontiguous multi-word expressions, and a module that resolves anaphora to aid translation. Also highlighted is the hybridisation of Apertium through statistical modules that augment the pipeline, and statistical methods that augment existing modules. This includes morphological disambiguation, weighted structural transfer, and lexical selection modules that learn from limited data. The paper also discusses how a platform like Apertium can be a critical part of access to language technology for so-called low-resource languages, which might be ignored or deemed unapproachable by popular corpus-based translation technologies. Finally, the paper presents some of the released and unreleased language pairs, concluding with a brief look at some supplementary Apertium tools that prove valuable to users as well as language developers. All Apertium-related code, including language data, is free/open-source and available at https://github.com/apertium.


2021 ◽  
pp. 93-105
Author(s):  
Dzintra Bond ◽  
◽  
Verna Stockmal ◽  
Dace Markus ◽  
◽  
...  

Talkers in a second language can readily be identified as speaking with a foreign accent, characterized by both specific and more general deviations from the phonology of a target language. In this study, we examined the identifications of native and non-native talkers by listeners with various amounts of knowledge of the target language. Native and non-native speakers of Latvian provided materials. All the non-native talkers spoke Russian as their first language and were long-term residents of Latvia. We used Latvian as the target second language and speech samples produced either by native speakers or by ethnic Russians for whom Latvian is a second language. The text for reading was identical, talkers could not be distinguished by lexical selection or morphological and syntactic errors. A listening test, consisting of identical sentences excerpted from a short recorded passage, was presented to three groups of listeners: native speakers of Latvian, Russians for whom Latvian was a second language, and Americans with no knowledge of either language. The listeners were asked to judge whether each utterance was produced by a native or non-native talker and then evaluate the talker’s proficiency. The Latvians identified the non-native talkers accurately (88%) while the Russians were somewhat less accurate (79%). The American listeners were least accurate but still identified the non-native talkers at above chance levels, 63%. Sentence durations correlated with the judgments provided by the American listeners but not with the judgments provided by the native or L2 listeners. Interesting that there were no significant correlations between utterance duration and correct identification for Russian and Latvian listeners. Because these listeners knew the target language, they had many sources of information available to them rather than a relatively obvious characteristic such as fluency or speech rate. Research for portions of this project was provided by a grant from the International Research & Exchanges Board, with funds provided by the US Department of State (Title VII program) and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The final conclusions of the study, organisation and publication of the article were supported by the National Research Programme “Latvian language” Nr. VPP-IZM-2018/2-0002.


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