Social and emotion dimensional organizations in the abstract semantic space: the neuropsychological evidence

An essential aspect of human cognition is supported by a rich reservoir of abstract concepts without tangible external referents (e.g., “honor”, “relationship”, “direction”). While decades of research showed that the neural organization of conceptual knowledge referring to concrete words respects domains of evolutionary salience and sensorimotor attributes, the organization principles of abstract word meanings are poorly understood. Here, we provide neuropsychological evidence for a domain (sociality) and attribute (emotion) structure in abstract word processing. Testing 34 brain-damaged patients on a word-semantic judgment task, we observed double dissociations between social and nonsocial words and a single dissociation of sparing of emotional (relative to non-emotional) words. The lesion profiles of patients with specific dissociations suggest potential neural correlates positively or negatively associated with each dimension. These results unravel a general domain-attribute architecture of word meanings and highlight the roles of the social domain and the emotional attribute in the non-object semantic space.

Neuro-Cognitive Differences in Semantic Processing Between Native Speakers and Proficient Learners of Mandarin Chinese

The present study aimed to investigate the neural mechanism underlying semantic processing in Mandarin Chinese adult learners, focusing on the learners who were Indo-European language speakers with advanced levels of proficiency in Mandarin Chinese. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging technique and a semantic judgment task to test 24 Mandarin Chinese adult learners (L2 group) and 26 Mandarin Chinese adult native speakers (L1 group) as a control group. In the task, participants were asked to indicate whether two-character pairs were related in meaning. Compared to the L1 group, the L2 group had greater activation in the bilateral occipital regions, including the fusiform gyrus and middle occipital gyrus, as well as the right superior parietal lobule. On the other hand, less activation in the bilateral temporal regions was found in the L2 group relative to the L1 group. Correlation analysis further revealed that, within the L2 group, increased activation in the left middle temporal gyrus/superior temporal gyrus (M/STG, BA 21) was correlated with higher accuracy in the semantic judgment task as well as better scores in the two vocabulary tests, the Assessment of Chinese character list for grade 3 to grade 9 (A39) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised. In addition, functional connectivity analysis showed that connectivity strength between the left fusiform gyrus and left ventral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG, BA 47) was modulated by the accuracy in the semantic judgment task in the L1 group. By contrast, this modulation effect was weaker in the L2 group. Taken together, our study suggests that Mandarin Chinese adult learners rely on greater recruitment of the bilateral occipital regions to process orthographic information to access the meaning of Chinese characters. Also, our correlation results provide convergent evidence that the left M/STG (BA 21) plays a crucial role in the storage of semantic knowledge for readers to access to conceptual information. Moreover, the connectivity results indicate that the left ventral pathway (left fusiform gyrus-left ventral IFG) is associated with orthographic-semantic processing in Mandarin Chinese. However, this semantic-related ventral pathway might require more time and language experience to be developed, especially for the late adult learners of Mandarin Chinese.

Activating the Right Hemisphere Through Left-Hand Muscle Contraction Improves Novel Metaphor Comprehension

The neurotypical brain is characterized by left hemisphere lateralization for most language processing. However, the right hemisphere plays a crucial part when it is required to bring together seemingly unrelated concepts into meaningful expressions, such as in the case of novel metaphors (unfamiliar figurative expressions). The aim of the current study was to test whether it is possible to enhance novel metaphor comprehension through an easy, efficient, and non-invasive method – intentional contraction of the left hand’s muscles, to activate the motor and sensory areas in the contralateral hemisphere. One hundred eighteen neurotypical participants were asked to perform a semantic judgment task involving two-word expressions of four types: literal, conventional metaphors, novel metaphors, or unrelated, while squeezing a rubber ball with their right hand, left hand, or not at all. Results demonstrated that left-hand contraction improved novel metaphor comprehension, as participants were more accurate and quicker in judging them to be meaningful. The findings of the present work provide a simple and efficient method for boosting right hemisphere activation, which can be used to improve metaphoric language comprehension. This method can aid several populations in which right hemisphere function is not fully established, and who struggle with processing figurative language, such as adolescents and individuals on the autistic spectrum.

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 Correlation Between Performances Among Lexical-Related Tasks and The Performance in The Sentence Construction Task

This study employed a quantitative correlational design to explore the correlation between the students' performances among lexical-related tasks and how these tasks affect the performance in a sentence construction task. Using IBM SPSS Statistics Version 22’s Pearson Partial Correlation Test, this study calculated participants' performance in primary lexical attributes by recognizing the following aspects of lexical knowledge: pronunciation patterns, morphological structures, syntactic properties, semantic characteristics such as abstract and interconnectedness, and a complete sentence construction in a strict naturalistic classroom setting. The test results showed that the participants made 297.05 seconds on average for 42 correct responses in Lexical Decision Task, 5.88 seconds per picture projected on the screen in Picture-Naming Task, 8.33 seconds for each word in Semantic Judgment Task, and 30.17 seconds on average to complete a sentence. These results concluded that the participants' performance in identifying strings of letters does not correlate significantly with their performance in understanding how a particular word functions grammatically within a sentence. In terms of the level of automaticity, the participants’ performance exceeded the average performance. The findings suggested that their performance in understanding primary lexical attributes in single lexicons does not facilitate their understanding of semantic characteristics. Henceforth, the students’ lexical knowledge does not yet construct an integrated linguistic representation in the target language acquisition. The study confirmed previous evidence that stated that a better performance in lexical-related tasks significantly impacted sentence processing and construction skill.

Age-preserved semantic memory and the CRUNCH effect manifested as differential semantic control networks: An fMRI study

Semantic memory representations are overall well-maintained in aging whereas semantic control is thought to be more affected. To explain this phenomenon, this study aims to test the predictions of the Compensation Related Utilization of Neural Circuits Hypothesis (CRUNCH) focusing on task demands in aging as a possible framework. The CRUNCH effect would manifest itself in semantic tasks through a compensatory increase in neural activation in semantic control network regions but only up to a certain threshold of task demands. This study will compare 40 young (20–35 years old) with 40 older participants (60–75 years old) in a triad-based semantic judgment task performed in an fMRI scanner while manipulating levels of task demands (low vs. high) through semantic distance. In line with the CRUNCH predictions, differences in neurofunctional activation and behavioral performance (accuracy and response times) are expected in young vs. old participants in the low- vs. high-demand conditions manifested in semantic control Regions of Interest.

Corroborating behavioral evidence for the interplay of representational richness and semantic control in semantic word processing

This study aimed to replicate and validate concreteness and context effects on semantic word processing. In Experiment 1, we replicated the behavioral findings of Hoffman et al. (Cortex 63,250–266, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2014.09.001, 2015) by applying their cueing paradigm with their original stimuli translated into German. We found concreteness and contextual cues to facilitate word processing in a semantic judgment task with 55 healthy adults. The two factors interacted in their effect on reaction times: abstract word processing profited more strongly from a contextual cue, while the concrete words’ processing advantage was reduced but still present. For accuracy, the descriptive pattern of results suggested an interaction, which was, however, not significant. In Experiment 2, we reformulated the contextual cues to avoid repetition of the to-be-processed word. In 83 healthy adults, the same pattern of results emerged, further validating the findings. Our corroborating evidence supports theories integrating representational richness and semantic control mechanisms as complementary mechanisms in semantic word processing.

An ERP Study on the Role of Phonological Processing in Reading Two-Character Compound Chinese Words of High and Low Frequency

Unlike in English, the role of phonology in word recognition in Chinese is unclear. In this event-related potential experiment, we investigated the role of phonology in reading both high- and low-frequency two-character compound Chinese words. Participants executed semantic and homophone judgment tasks of the same precede-target pairs. Each pair of either high- or low-frequency words were either unrelated (control condition) or related semantically or phonologically (homophones). The induced P200 component was greater for low- than for high-frequency word-pairs both in semantic and phonological tasks. Homophones in the semantic judgment task and semantically-related words in the phonology task both elicited a smaller N400 than the control condition, word frequency-independently. However, for low-frequency words in the phonological judgment task, it was found that the semantically related pairs released a significantly larger P200 than the control condition. Thus, the semantic activation of both high- and low-frequency words may be no later than phonological activation.

Informative and uninformative pre-stimulus encoding cues benefit source memory

Research using both neuroimaging and psychophysiology show that neural activity elicited by an informative pre-stimulus cue predicts subsequent memory. However, it remains unclear whether pre-stimulus encoding cues actually benefit subsequent memory performance. We investigated this issue across three pre-registered experiments. At encoding, participants made one of two semantic judgments on words that were preceded by an informative pre-stimulus cue that identified the upcoming semantic judgment, an uninformative pre-stimulus cue that signaled an upcoming trial but no information about the semantic judgment, or no cue. There was little evidence that pre-stimulus cues improved old/new recognition discrimination or subjective estimates of recollection and familiarity derived from receiver operating characteristic curves. Importantly, both informative and uninformative pre-stimulus cues enhanced source memory accuracy for the encoding task compared to the no cue condition. These findings suggest that pre-stimulus cues can strengthen the processes that support successful memory encoding and benefit subsequent source memory.