Processing Verb Meanings and the Declarative/Procedural Model: A Developmental Study

According to the Declarative/Procedural Model, the lexicon depends on declarative memory while grammar relies on procedural memory. Furthermore, procedural memory underlies the sequential processing of language. Thus, this system is important for predicting the next item in a sentence. Verb processing represents a good candidate to test this assumption. Semantic representations of verbs include information about the protagonists in the situations they refer to. This semantic knowledge is acquired implicitly and used during verb processing, such that the processing of a verb preactivates its typical patients (e.g., the window for break). Thus, determining how the patient typicality effect appears during children’s cognitive development could provide evidence about the memory system that is dedicated to this effect. Two studies are presented in which French children aged 6–10 and adults made grammaticality judgments on 80 auditorily presented sentences. In Experiment 1, the verb was followed by a typical patient or by a less typical patient. In Experiment 2, grammatical sentences were constructed such that the verb was followed either by a typical patient or by a noun that could not be a patient of that verb. The typicality effect occurs in younger children and is interpreted in terms of developmental invariance. We suggest that this effect may depend on procedural memory, in line with studies that showed that meaning is necessary to allow procedural memory to learn the sequence of words in a sentence.

A General Framework for Domain-Specialization of Stance Detection

We present a generalized framework for domain-specialized stance detection, focusing on Covid-19 as a use case. We define a stance as a predicate-argument structure (combination of an action and its participants) in a simplified one-argument format, e.g., wear(a mask), coupled with a task-specific belief category representing the purpose (e.g., protection) of an argument (e.g., mask) in the context of its predicate (e.g., wear), as constrained by the domain (e.g., Covid-19). A belief category PROTECT captures a belief such as “masks provide protection,” whereas RESTRICT captures a belief such as “mask mandates limit freedom.” A stance combines a belief proposition, e.g., PROTECT(wear(a mask)), with a sentiment toward this proposition. From this, an overall positive attitude toward mask wearing is extracted. The notions purpose and function serve as natural constraints on the choice of belief categories during resource building which, in turn, constrains stance detection. We demonstrate that linguistic constraints (e.g., light verb processing) further refine the choice of predicate-argument pairings for belief and sentiment assignments, yielding significant increases in F1 score for stance detection over a strong baseline.

Verb processing in children with developmental language disorder

Speed, accuracy, and type of errors during word processing in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have often been in the focus of various lexical studies. Results of these studies are uniform: children with DLD show slow and less accurate processing. Less is known about the speed and accuracy of verb processing. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore whether there are differences in the speed and accuracy of verb processing between children with DLD and their typical developing chronological peers (TDC) and younger, language age-matched peers (TDC-y), with special attention to the type of errors produced. The participants in this pilot study were 30 children between the ages of 7;11 and 11 years. Average age of children with DLD was 10;2; TDC children 9;9; and TDC-y children were 8,1. Research procedure included stimulus word presented in auditory form, and children’s task was to choose which one of the three presented pictures on computer screen represent the verb they just heard. Results showed no statistically significant differences regarding speed and accuracy between groups of participants. The difference in proportion of errors in picture selection task did not reach statistical significance when it comes to phonological mistakes, nor when it comes to semantic errors. However, the proportion of phonological errors had a tendency of highest scores in group of children with DLD, while proportion of semantic errors was highest in TDC-y. According to findings from this study, it seems important to emphasize the importance of phonological exercises parallel with exercises focused on vocabulary span in work with children with DLD. Number of exposures to the new word in children with DLD can play a significant role in speed of processing but it can also lead to overlearning affecting research outcomes. Children with DLD who participated in this study had been enrolled in speech and language therapy for several years. Future studies should, among other, also control this variable.

Influence of Manner Adverbs on Action Verb Processing

Language-motor interaction is suggested by the involvement of motor areas in action-related language processing. In a double-dissociation paradigm we aimed to investigate motor cortical involvement in the processing of hand- and foot-related action verbs combined with manner adverbs. In two experiments using different tasks, subjects were instructed to respond with their hand or foot following the presentation of an adverb-verb combination. Experiment 1, which prompted reactions via color changes of the stimuli combined with a semantic decision, showed an influence of manner adverbs on response times. This was visible in faster responses following intensifying adverbs compared with attenuating adverbs. Additionally, an interaction between implied verb effector and response effector manifested in faster response times for matching verb-response conditions. Experiment 2, which prompted reactions directly by the adverb type (intensifying vs. attenuating), revealed an interaction between manner adverbs and response effector with faster hand responses following intensifying compared with attenuating adverbs. Additional electroencephalography (EEG) recordings in Experiment 2 revealed reduced beta-desynchronization for congruent verb-response conditions in the case of foot responses along with faster response times. Yet, a direct modulation of verb-motor priming by adverbs was not found. Taken together, our results indicate an influence of manner adverbs on the interplay of language processing and motor behavior. Results are discussed with respect to embodied cognition theories.

When the Action to Be Performed at the Stage of Retrieval Enacts Memory of Action Verbs

According to the embodied approach of language, concepts are grounded in sensorimotor mental states, and when we process language, the brain simulates some of the perceptions and actions that are involved when interacting with real objects. Moreover, several studies have highlighted that cognitive performances are dependent on the overlap between the motor action simulated and the motor action required by the task. On the other hand, in the field of memory, the role of action is under debate. The aim of this work was to show that performing an action at the stage of retrieval influences memory performance in a recognition task (experiment 1) and a cued recall task (experiment 2), even if the participants were never instructed to consider the implied action. The results highlighted an action-based memory effect at the retrieval stage. These findings contribute to the debate about the implication of motor system in action verb processing and its role for memory.

Exploring the Co-occurrence of Manual Verbs and Actions in Early Mother-Child Communication

The embodiment approach has shown that motor neural networks are involved in the processing of action verbs. There is developmental evidence that embodied effects on verb processing are already present in early years. Yet, the ontogenetic origin of this motor reuse in action verbs remains unknown. This longitudinal study investigates the co-occurrence of manual verbs and actions during mother-child daily routines (free play, bathing, and dining) when children were 1 to 2 (Group 1) and 2 to 3 (Group 2) years old. Eight mother-child dyads were video-recorded in 3-month intervals across 12 months (27 recording hours), and the timing of verbs and manual actions (21,876 entries) were coded by independent observers. Results showed that the probability of matched verb-action co-occurrences were much higher (0.80 and 0.77) than that of random co-occurrences (0.13 and 0.15) for Group 1 and Group 2, respectively. The distributions of the verb-action temporal intervals in both groups were quite symmetrical and skewed with the peak corresponding to both 0.00 s synchronic intervals (8% of the cases) and the shortest +5 s interval (40% of the cases). Mother-led instances occurred in both groups whereas child-led instances were restricted to Group 2. Mothers pragmatically aligned their verbal productions, since they repeatedly used (74%) those verbs they shared with their children’s repertoire (31%). In conclusion, the early multisensory communicative and manipulative scene affords grounding of verb meanings on the ongoing actions, facilitating verb-action pairing in the realm of social interactions, providing a new dimension to the prevailing solipsistic approach to embodiment.