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

STRUKTUR DAN NILAI DIDAKTIS PADA PUISI BERTEMA “BELAJAR DARING” KARYA SISWA KELAS X DI SMKS UNGGULAN HUSADA BANJARMASIN (STRUCTURE AND DIDACTIC VALUE IN THE THEMED POETRY OF “ONLINE LEARNING” BY CLASS X STUDENTS AT SMKS UNGGULAN HUSADA BANJARMASIN)

Structure and Didactic Value in the Themed Poetry of “Online Learning” by Class X Students at SMKS Unggulan Husada Banjarmasin. The purpose of this study was to describe the structure of poetry by class X-B students at SMKS Unggulan Husada Banjarmasin and to examine the didactic value of poetry by class X-B students at SMKS Unggulan Husada Banjarmasin. Data collection was carried out from May 30 to June 30, 2021 through an online form of poetry writing performance test. The data analyzed were 18 pieces of poetry. The data collection procedures in this study were reading, identifying, codifying, and classifying according to the research focus. Data analysis uses deep meaning understanding techniques. Checking the validity of the data is done through triangulation techniques. The results of the study found that the structure that builds a poem consists of a physical structure and an inner structure. The physical structure consists of typography, rhyme, images, figure of speech, concrete words, and diction. The inner structure consists of theme, tone, and atmosphere. After analyzing the poems by class X-B students of FKK Vocational High School Husada Banjarmasin, it was found that the poems contained the entire physical and mental structure. The didactic values contained in the poem are in the form of moral and religious didactic values. Keywords: structure, didactic values, poetry, online learning, student work Abstrak Struktur dan Nilai Didaktis pada Puisi Bertema “Belajar Daring” Karya Siswa Kelas X di SMKS Unggulan Husada Banjarmasin. Tujuan penelitian ini untuk mendeskripsikan struktur puisi karya siswa kelas X-B SMKS Unggulan Husada Banjarmasin dan mengkaji nilai didaktis dari puisi karya siswa kelas X-B SMKS Unggulan Husada Banjarmasin. Pengumpulan data dilaksanakan 30 Mei-30 Juni 2021 melalui daring berupa tes unjuk kerja menulis puisi. Data yang dianalisis berjumlah 18 buah puisi. Prosedur pengumpulan data dalam penelitian ini adalah membaca, mengidentifikasi, mengodifikasi, dan mengklasifikasikan sesuai dengan fokus penelitian. Analisis data menggunakan teknik pemahaman arti secara mendalam. Pengecekan keabsahan data dilakukan melalui teknik triangulasi. Hasil penelitian ditemukan struktur yang membangun sebuah puisi terdiri atas struktur fisik dan struktur batin. Struktur fisik terdiri atas tipografi, rima, imaji, majas, kata konkret, dandiksi. Struktur batin terdiri atas tema, nada, dan suasana. Setelah dilakukan analisis pada puisi karya siswa kelas X-B FKK SMKS Unggulan Husada Banjarmasin diperoleh bahwa puisi-puisi tersebut memuat keseluruhan struktur fisik dan batin. Nilai didaktis yang terdapat dalam puisi tersebut berupa nilai didaktis moral dan agama. Kata-kata kunci: struktur, nilai didaktis, puisi, belajar daring, karya siswa

An ALE meta-analytical review of the neural correlates of abstract and concrete words

Several clinical studies have reported a double dissociation between abstract and concrete concepts, suggesting that they are processed by at least partly different networks in the brain. However, neuroimaging data seem not in line with neuropsychological reports. Using the ALE method, we run a meta-analysis on 32 brain-activation imaging studies that considered only nouns and verbs. Five clusters were associated with concrete words, four clusters with abstract words. When only nouns were selected three left activation clusters were found to be associated with concrete stimuli and only one with abstract nouns (left IFG). These results confirm that concrete and abstract words processing involves at least partially segregated brain areas, the IFG being relevant for abstract nouns and verbs while more posterior temporoparietal-occipital regions seem to be crucial for processing concrete words, in contrast with the neuropsychological literature that suggests a temporal anterior involvement for concrete words. We investigated the possible reasons that produce different outcomes in neuroimaging and clinical studies.

From Affordances to Abstract Words: The Flexibility of the Sensorimotor Grounding

Recent research has shown that the sensorimotor system plays a significant role in a variety of cognitive processes. In this paper, we will review recent studies performed in our lab (Body Action Language Lab, BALLAB) or in labs with which we collaborate, showing the involvement of the sensorimotor system at different levels. With the purpose of expounding on this aspect, we focus on studies that highlight two main characteristics of the involvement of the sensorimotor systems. First, we concentrate on the flexibility of sensorimotor grounding during interaction with objects. We report evidence showing how social context and current situations influence affordance activation. We then focus on the tactile and kinesthetic involvement in body-object interaction. Second, we illustrate flexible sensorimotor grounding in word use. We review studies showing that not only concrete words, like “bottle,” but also abstract words, like “freedom,” “thinking,” and “perhaps,” are grounded in the sensorimotor system. We report evidence showing that abstract words activate sensory modalities and involve the mouth effector more than concrete words due to their privileged relationship with language, both outer and inner speech. We discuss the activation of the mouth sensorimotor system in light of studies on adults (e.g., studies employing articulatory suppression), children (e.g., studies on the effects of pacifier use on word acquisition and processing), and infants (e.g. studies on emergence of new words). Finally, we pinpoint possible mechanisms at play in the acquisition and use of abstract concepts. We argue that with abstract concepts, we rely more on other people to learn or negotiate the meaning of words; we have called this mechanism social metacognition.Social metacognition is bidirectionally linked to our sensorimotor system. On the one hand, linguistic explanations constitute a primary source of grounding that may be re-enacted when retrieving a concept, for example through inner speech. On the other hand, it leads us to feel closer and be more synchronous in movement with others, who can help us understand the meaning of very complex words. Overall, we show that the sensorimotor system provides a grounding basis not only for objects and concrete words but also for more abstract and concrete ones. We conclude by arguing that future research should address and deepen two different and interrelated aspects concerning the involvement of the sensorimotor system during object and word processing. First, the sensorimotor system is flexibly modulated by the context, as studies on affordances reveal. Second, the sensorimotor system can be involved at different levels, and its role can be integrated and flanked by that of other systems, like the linguistic one, as studies on abstract concepts clearly show. We urge future research aimed at unravelling the role of the sensorimotor system in cognition to fully explore the complexity of this intricate-and sometimes slippery-relation.

Kajian Strukturalisme dalam Puisi “Surat dari Ibu” Karya Asrul Sani

This study uses the object of the literary work of poetry "Surat Dari Ibu", by Asrul Sani by using structuralism studies. The purpose of this study is to describe the physical elements and mental elements as a whole which allows to provide new knowledge to the reader. This study uses a qualitative approach to the method of content analysis in poetry. The results obtained in the physical structure of the poem there are 2 dictions related to the choice of words used by the poet. Images / images found 3 images related to the human senses. In concrete words there are 2 related to the overall meaning of the word. There are 2 styles of language, namely comparative figure of speech and affirmation figure of speech. Rima uses free rhyme in his poetry. The last physical element is typography, the poet uses typography in upper and lower case letters and full punctuation in his poetry. The inner element contained in the poem Surat Dari Ibu”, Asrul Sani's first work, is the theme of finding a stanza related to the problems in poetry. Based on the tone found 2 tones. The inner element in feeling is found to be a sense of emotion and hope from a mother in the poem Surat Dari Ibu”, by Asrul Sani. The last inner element is the mandate, there is one message that the poet wants to convey through his poetry

Contextual Acquisition of Concrete and Abstract Words: Behavioural and Electrophysiological Evidence

and concrete words differ in their cognitive and neuronal underpinnings, but the exact mechanisms underlying these distinctions are unclear. We investigated differences between these two semantic types by analysing brain responses to newly learnt words with fully controlled psycholinguistic properties. Experimental participants learned 20 novel abstract and concrete words in the context of short stories. After the learning session, event-related potentials (ERPs) to newly learned items were recorded, and acquisition outcomes were assessed behaviourally in a range of lexical and semantic tasks. Behavioural results showed better performance on newly learnt abstract words in lexical tasks, whereas semantic assessments showed a tendency for higher accuracy for concrete words. ERPs to novel abstract and concrete concepts differed early on, ~150 ms after the word onset. Moreover, differences between novel words and control untrained pseudowords were observed earlier for concrete (~150 ms) than for abstract (~200 ms) words. Distributed source analysis indicated bilateral temporo-parietal activation underpinning newly established memory traces, suggesting a crucial role of Wernicke’s area and its right-hemispheric homologue in word acquisition. In sum, we report behavioural and neurophysiological processing differences between concrete and abstract words evident immediately after their controlled acquisition, confirming distinct neurocognitive mechanisms underpinning these types of semantics.

Emotion and concreteness effects when learning novel concepts in the native language

The aim of the present study was to test the proposal of Kousta et al. (2011), according to which abstract words are more affectively loaded than concrete words. To this end, we focused on the acquisition of novel concepts by means of an intentional learning experiment in which participants had to learn a set of 40 novel concepts in Spanish (definitions) associated with novel word forms (pseudowords). Concreteness (concrete vs. abstract concepts) and emotionality (neutral vs. negative concepts) were orthogonally manipulated. Acquisition was assessed through a recognition task in which participants were asked to match the novel word forms with their definitions. Results showed that concrete concepts were acquired better than abstract concepts. Importantly, the concreteness advantage disappeared when the content of the concept was negative. Hence, emotional (negative) content facilitated the acquisition of abstract concepts, but not of concrete concepts, giving support to the proposal of Kousta et al. (2011).

Closing the door to false memory: the effects of levels-of-processing and stimulus type on the rejection of perceptually vs. semantically dissimilar distractors

False recognition memory for nonstudied items that share features with targets can be reduced by retrieval monitoring mechanisms. The recall-to-reject process, for example, involves the recollection of information about studied items that disqualifies inconsistent test probes. Monitoring for specific features during retrieval may be enhanced by an encoding orientation that is recapitulated during retrieval. In two experiments, we used concrete words or door scenes as materials and manipulated the level of processing at study and the type of distractors presented at test. We showed that for the verbal material, semantic level of processing at study results in an effective rejection of semantically inconsistent distractors. However, for the pictorial material, the perceptual level of processing leads to an effective rejection of perceptually inconsistent distractors. For targets, the effect of levels of processing was observed for words but not for pictures. The results suggest that retrieval monitoring mechanisms depend on interactions between encoding orientation, study materials, and differentiating features of distractors.

Calculating semantic relatedness of lists of nouns using WordNet path length

Lists of semantically related words are better recalled on immediate memory tests than otherwise equivalent lists of unrelated words. However, measuring the degree of relatedness is not straightforward. We report three experiments that assess the ability of various measures of semantic relatedness—including latent semantic analysis (LSA), GloVe, fastText, and a number of measures based on WordNet—to predict whether two lists of words will be differentially recalled. In Experiment 1, all measures except LSA correctly predicted the observed better recall of the related than the unrelated list. In Experiment 2, all measures except JCN predicted that abstract words would be recalled equally as well as concrete words because of their enhanced semantic relatedness. In Experiment 3, LSA, GLoVe, and fastText predicted an enhanced concreteness effect because the concrete words were more related; three WordNet measures predicted a small concreteness effect because the abstract and concrete words did not differ in semantic relatedness; and three other WordNet measures predicted no concreteness effect because the abstract words were more related than the concrete words. A small concreteness effect was observed. Over the three experiments, only two measures, both based on simple WordNet path length, predicted all three results. We suggest that the results are not unexpected because semantic processing in episodic memory experiments differs from that in reading, similarity judgment, and analogy tasks which are the most common way of assessing such measures.

The Anatomical Correlates of Abstract and Concrete Words: A meta-analytical review of whole-brain imaging studies

Several studies have investigated how abstract and concrete concepts are processed in the brain, but data are controversial, in particular neuroimaging data contrast with clinical neuropsychological observations. A possible explanation could be that previous meta-analyses considered different types of stimuli (nouns, verbs, literal and figurative sentences). Using the ALE method, we meta-analyzed 32 brain-activation imaging studies that considered only words (nouns and verbs). Five clusters were associated with concrete words (the left superior occipital, middle temporal, parahippocampal and bilateral posterior cingulate, angular, and precuneus gyri); four clusters were associated with abstract words (left IFG, superior, and middle temporal gyri). When only nouns were considered three left activation clusters were associated with concrete stimuli and only one with abstract nouns (left IFG). These results confirm that concrete and abstract word processing involves at least partially segregated brain areas, the IFG being relevant for abstract nouns and verbs while more posterior temporo-parieto-occipital regions seem to be crucial for concrete words.