The embodied cognition theory and the motor component of “yes” and “no” verbal responses

Most of the experiments which give theories of embodied cognition their empirical anchorage only take into consideration the motor responses induced by the task or the motor component of the visual stimulus. And yet, these motor responses are often associated with a linguistic answer. Our hypothesis is that “YES” and “NO” verbal responses have a motor component. In a first experiment we showed that producing a verbal response (YES vs. NO) involves motor planning (pushing vs. pulling): participants push a lever more quickly when they have to answer “yes” than “no”, and conversely, they pull a lever more quickly when they have to answer “no” than “yes”. Moreover, in a second experiment, we showed that perceiving the words “YES” and “NO”, on its own, leads to the same motor planning than when “yes” and “no” answers actually have to be produced. Participants detect the word “YES” faster when they have to push a lever than when they have to pull it and conversely they detect the word “NO” faster when they have to pull the lever than when they have to push it down. These results are discussed in reference to “online” and “offline embodiment” concepts and to the cognitive linguistic theories.     

Reduced short-term memory capacity in Alzheimer's disease: The role of phonological,lexical, and semantic processing

Individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are often reported to have reduced verbal short-term memory capacity, typically attributed to their attention/executive deficits. However, these individuals also tend to show progressive impairment of semantic, lexical, and phonological processing which may underlie their low short-term memory capacity. The goals of this study were to assess the contribution of each level of representation (phonological, lexical, and semantic) to immediate serial recall performance in 18 individuals with AD, and to examine how these linguistic effects on short-term memory were modulated by their reduced capacity to manipulate information in short-term memory associated with executive dysfunction. Results showed that individuals with AD had difficulty recalling items that relied on phonological representations, which led to increased lexicality effects relative to the control group. This finding suggests that patients have a greater reliance on lexical/semantic information than controls, possibly to make up for deficits in retention and processing of phonological material. This lexical/semantic effect was not found to be significantly correlated with patients’ capacity to manipulate verbal material in short-term memory, indicating that language processing and executive deficits may independently contribute to reducing verbal short-term memory capacity in AD.     

Reduced short-term memory capacity in Alzheimer's disease: the role of phonological, lexical, and semantic processing

Individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are often reported to have reduced verbal short-term memory capacity, typically attributed to their attention/executive deficits. However, these individuals also tend to show progressive impairment of semantic, lexical, and phonological processing which may underlie their low short-term memory capacity. The goals of this study were to assess the contribution of each level of representation (phonological, lexical, and semantic) to immediate serial recall performance in 18 individuals with AD, and to examine how these linguistic effects on short-term memory were modulated by their reduced capacity to manipulate information in short-term memory associated with executive dysfunction. Results showed that individuals with AD had difficulty recalling items that relied on phonological representations, which led to increased lexicality effects relative to the control group. This finding suggests that patients have a greater reliance on lexical/semantic information than controls, possibly to make up for deficits in retention and processing of phonological material. This lexical/semantic effect was not found to be significantly correlated with patients' capacity to manipulate verbal material in short-term memory, indicating that language processing and executive deficits may independently contribute to reducing verbal short-term memory capacity in AD.     

Variation in spatial language and cognition: exploring visuo-spatial thinking and speaking cross-linguistically

Languages differ strikingly in how they encode spatial information. This variability is realized with spatial semantic elements mapped across languages in very different ways onto lexical/syntactic structures. For example, satellite-framed languages (e.g., English) express MANNER: in the verb and PATH: in satellites, while verb-framed languages (e.g., French) lexicalize PATH: in the verb, leaving MANNER: implicit or peripheral. Some languages are harder to classify into these categories, rather presenting equipollently framed systems, such as Chinese (serial-verb constructions) or Greek (parallel verb- and satellite-framed structures in equally frequent contexts). Such properties seem to have implications not only on the formulation/articulation levels, but also on the conceptualization level, thereby reviving questions concerning the language-thought interface. The present study investigates the relative impact of language-independent and language-specific factors on spatial representations across three typologically different languages (English-French-Greek) combining a variety of complementary tasks (production, non-verbal, and verbal categorization). The findings show that typological properties of languages can have an impact on both linguistic and non-linguistic organization of spatial information, open new perspectives for the investigation of conceptualization, and contribute more generally to the debate concerning the universal and language-specific dimensions of cognition.     

Consequences of lexical stress on learning an artificial lexicon

Four experiments examined effects of lexical stress on lexical access for recently learned words. Participants learned artificial lexicons (48 words) containing phonologically similar items and were tested on their knowledge in a 4-alternative forced-choice (4AFC) referent-selection task. Lexical stress differences did not reduce confusions between cohort items: KAdazu and kaDAzeI were confused with one another in a 4AFC task and in gaze fixations as often as BOsapeI and BOsapaI. However, lexical stress did affect the relative likelihood of stress-initial confusions when words were embedded in running nonsense speech. Words with medial stress, regardless of initial vowel quality, were more prone to confusions than words with initial stress. The authors concluded that non-initial stress, particularly when wor segmentation is difficult, may serve as "noise" that alters lexical learning and lexical access.     

Using morphology when spelling in a shallow orthographic system: The case of Spanish

Deep orthographies usually represent morphology and phonology simultaneously; both resources are necessary for spelling. In shallow orthographies, such as Spanish, phonology would be enough to spell most words. However, morphological knowledge may also take part in spelling. This study examined how Spanish children in 1st (N = 148), 2nd (N = 155) and 3rd grade (N = 155) use morphological information to spell plural nouns and verbs. A word dictation task was designed. The task included high and low frequency plural nouns ending in “s” (morphological “-s” condition) and verbs in the 2nd person ending in “s” (morphological “-s” condition). A lexical condition including words with a final “s” which was not morphologically motivated was used as a control condition (lexical “-s” condition). The results show that, although Spanish spelling is influenced by phonology, morphological information is also used. These results are discussed in relation to current models of word spelling.     

Imagery skill and preference in bilinguals

A number of studies have reported differences in the performance of bilinguals and monolinguals in verbal tasks. It has been suggested that one source of this difference is a greater tendency among bilinguals to use non-verbal ways of representing events, because of the potential for confusions between their two verbal codes. In the present study, bilingual and monolingual college students were compared on three dimensions of self-reported aspects of imagery—control, vividness and preference—as well as on a performance measure of spatial manipulation skill. When these tasks were preceded by a nominally verbal activity (prose comprehension), there were no group differences on the self-report or objective imagery measures. In contrast, when they were preceded by an imagery rating task, some evidence of a compensatory reliance on spatial codes among bilinguals was obtained. Implications of these task induction effects on both subjective and performance measures of a skill were discussed.     

Noise on, voicing off: Speech perception deficits in children with specific language impairment

Speech perception of four phonetic categories (voicing, place, manner, and nasality) was investigated in children with specific language impairment (SLI) (n = 20) and age-matched controls (n = 19) in quiet and various noise conditions using an AXB two-alternative forced-choice paradigm. Children with SLI exhibited robust speech perception deficits in silence, stationary noise, and amplitude-modulated noise. Comparable deficits were obtained for fast, intermediate, and slow modulation rates, and this speaks against the various temporal processing accounts of SLI. Children with SLI exhibited normal “masking release” effects (i.e., better performance in fluctuating noise than in stationary noise), again suggesting relatively spared spectral and temporal auditory resolution. In terms of phonetic categories, voicing was more affected than place, manner, or nasality. The specific nature of this voicing deficit is hard to explain with general processing impairments in attention or memory. Finally, speech perception in noise correlated with an oral language component but not with either a memory or IQ component, and it accounted for unique variance beyond IQ and low-level auditory perception. In sum, poor speech perception seems to be one of the primary deficits in children with SLI that might explain poor phonological development, impaired word production, and poor word comprehension.     

Basic Information Processing Abilities at 11 years Account for Deficits in IQ Associated with Preterm Birth

Although it is well established that preterms as a group do poorly relative to their full-term peers on tests of global cognitive functioning, the basis for this relative deficiency is less understood. The present paper examines preterm deficits in core cognitive abilities and determines their role in mediating preterm/full-term differences in IQ. The performance of 11-year-old children born preterm (birth weight < 1750 g) and their full-term controls were compared on a large battery of 15 tasks, covering four basic cognitive domains — memory, attention, speed of processing and representational competence. The validity of these four domains was established using latent variables and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Preterms showed pervasive deficits within and across domains. Additionally, preterm deficits in IQ were completely mediated by these four cognitive domains in a structural equation model involving a cascade from elementary abilities (attention and speed), to more complex abilities (memory and representational competence), to IQ. The similarity of findings to those obtained with this cohort in infancy and toddlerhood suggests that preterm deficits persist — across time, across task, and from the non-verbal to the verbal period.     

Cognitive effects of language on human navigation

Language has been linked to spatial representation and behavior in humans, but the nature of this effect is debated. Here, we test whether simple verbal expressions improve 4-year-old children’s performance in a disoriented search task in a small rectangular room with a single red landmark wall. Disoriented children’s landmark-guided search for a hidden object was dramatically enhanced when the experimenter used certain verbal expressions to designate the landmark during the hiding event. Both a spatial expression (“I’m hiding the sticker at the red/white wall”) and a non-spatial but task-relevant expression (“The red/white wall can help you get the sticker”) enhanced children’s search, relative to uncued controls. By contrast, a verbal expression that drew attention to the landmark in a task-irrelevant manner (“Look at this pretty red/white wall”) produced no such enhancement. These findings provide further evidence that language changes spatial behavior in children and illuminate one mechanism through which language exerts its effect: by helping children understand the relevance of landmarks for encoding locations.     

Reading and Spelling Disabilities in Children with and Without a History of Early Language Delay: A Neuropsychological and Linguistic Study

Language delay is a frequent antecedent of literacy problems, and both may be linked to phonological impairment. Studies on developmental dyslexia have led to contradictory results due to the heterogeneity of the pathological samples. The present study investigated whether Italian children with dyslexia showed selective phonological processing deficits or more widespread linguistic impairment and whether these deficits were associated with previous language delay. We chose 46 children with specific reading deficits and divided them into two groups based on whether they had language delay (LD) or not (NoLD). LD and NoLD children showed similar, severe deficits in reading and spelling decoding, but only LD children showed a moderate impairment in reading comprehension. LD children were more impaired in phonological working memory and phonological fluency, as well as in semantic fluency, grammatical comprehension, and verbal IQ. These findings indicate the presence of a moderate but widespread linguistic deficit (not limited to phonological processing) in a subset of dyslexic children with previous language delay that does not generalize to all children with reading difficulties.     

Language, thought, and real nouns

We test the claim that acquiring a mass-count language, like English, causes speakers to think differently about entities in the world, relative to speakers of classifier languages like Japanese. We use three tasks to assess this claim: object-substance rating, quantity judgment, and word extension. Using the first two tasks, we present evidence that learning mass-count syntax has little effect on the interpretation of familiar nouns between Japanese and English, and that speakers of these languages do not divide up referents differently along an individuation continuum, as claimed in some previous reports [Gentner, D., & Boroditsky, L. (2001). Individuation, relativity, and early word learning. In M. Bowerman, & S. Levinson (Eds.), Language acquisition and conceptual development (pp. 215-256). Cambridge University Press]. Instead, we argue that previous cross-linguistic differences [Imai, M., & Gentner, D. (1997). A cross-linguistic study of early word meaning: Universal ontology and linguistic influence. Cognition, 62, 169-200] are attributable to “lexical statistics” [Gleitman, L., & Papafragou, A. (2005). Language and thought. In K. Holyoak, & R. Morrison (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of thinking and reasoning (pp. 633-661). Cambridge University Press]. Speakers of English are more likely to think that a novel ambiguous expression like “the blicket” refers to a kind of object (relative to speakers of Japanese) because speakers of English are likely to assume that “blicket” is a count noun rather than a mass noun, based on the relative frequency of each kind of word in English. This is confirmed by testing Mandarin-English bilinguals with a word extension task. We find that bilinguals tested in English with mass-count ambiguous syntax extend novel words like English monolinguals (and assume that a word like “blicket” refers to a kind of object). In contrast, bilinguals tested in Mandarin are significantly more likely to extend novel words by material. Thus, online lexical statistics, rather than non-linguistic thought, mediate cross-linguistic differences in word extension. We suggest that speakers of Mandarin, English, and Japanese draw on a universal set of lexical meanings, and that mass-count syntax allows speakers of English to select among these meanings.     

When words and space collide: Spatial attention interacts with lexical access during word recognition

Recent research has suggested an important role for spatial attention in reading, however the nature of this influence is unclear. Further, it has been shown that intention to engage in linguistic processing can enhance lexical processing. Therefore, we developed a novel paradigm to examine the impact of spatial attention on primed and unprimed lexical processing. In a lexical decision task, targets were preceded by a cue to lexical access and spatial location simultaneously. Results indicated that on spatially valid trials, the lexical cuing effect was large and word processing was enhanced, suggesting that spatial attention influences lexical access. On spatially invalid trials, lexical cuing effects were significantly decreased, resulting in a spatial cuing by lexical cuing interaction. Results from this experiment provide evidence that spatial attention interacts with lexical access during word processing. This novel paradigm provides a new avenue for exploring the relations between spatial attention and reading processes.     

Speeded verbal responding in adults who stutter: are there deficits in linguistic encoding?

Linguistic encoding deficits in people who stutter (PWS, n=18) were investigated using auditory priming during picture naming and word vs. non-word comparisons during choice and simple verbal reaction time (RT) tasks. During picture naming, PWS did not differ significantly from normally fluent speakers (n=18) in the magnitude of inhibition of RT from semantically related primes and the magnitude of facilitation from phonologically related primes. PWS also did not differ from controls in the degree to which words were faster than non-words during choice RT, although PWS were slower overall than controls. Simple RT showed no difference between groups, or between words and non-words, suggesting differences in speech initiation time do not explain the choice RT results. The findings are consistent with PWS not being deficient in the time course of lexical activation and selection, phonological encoding, and phonetic encoding. Potential deficits underlying slow choice RTs outside of linguistic encoding are discussed. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will be able to (1) describe possible relationships between linguistic encoding processes and speech motor control difficulties in people who stutter; (2) explain the role of lexical priming tasks during speech production in evaluating the efficiency of linguistic encoding; (3) describe the different levels of processing that may be involved in slow verbal responding by people who stutter, and identify which levels could be involved based on the findings of the present study.     

A left cerebral hemisphere’s superiority in processing spatial-categorical information in a non-verbal semantic format

It has been shown that the left and right cerebral hemispheres (LH and RH) respectively process qualitative or “categorical” spatial relations and metric or “coordinate” spatial relations. However, categorical spatial information could be thought as divided into two types: semantically-coded and visuospatially-coded categorical information. We examined whether a LH’s advantage in processing semantic-categorical information is observed in a non-verbal format, and also whether semantic- and visuospatial-categorical processing are differentially lateralized. We manipulated the colors and positions of the standard traffic light sign as semantic- and visuospatial-categorical information respectively, and tested performance with the divided visual field method. In the semantic-categorical matching task, in which the participants judged if the semantic-categorical information of a successive cue and target was the same, a right visual field advantage was observed, suggesting a LH’s preference for processing semantic-categorical information in a non-verbal format. In the visuospatial-categorical matching task, in which the participants judged if the visuospatial-categorical information of a successive cue and target was identical, a left visual field advantage was obtained. These results suggest that the processing of semantic-categorical information is lateralized in LH, and we discuss the dissociation between the two types of categorical information.     

The roles of different executive functioning skills in young children’s mental computation and applied mathematical problem-solving

This study investigated the relationships of four executive functioning skills (including verbal working memory, spatial working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility) with young children’s mental computation and applied mathematical problem-solving. Two hundred and twenty-five Chinese kindergarteners were tested with a battery of general cognitive, executive functioning and mathematics skills. Results showed that when children’s age, gender, non-verbal intelligence, and listening comprehension skills were controlled, verbal working memory and cognitive flexibility were significant correlates of mental computation, whereas verbal working memory, spatial working memory, and cognitive flexibility were significant correlates of applied mathematical problem-solving. Inhibitory control was not significantly associated with the two domains of mathematics under investigation. The findings highlight the differential roles of different executive functioning skills in early mathematical skills and offer practical implication for helping young children in learning complex mathematical skills.     

Who discovered the Flynn effect? A review of early studies of the secular increase of intelligence

Flynn has been credited with having discovered the increase in IQs that has been reported in a number of countries during most of the twentieth century and that has come to be known as “the Flynn effect”. This paper documents and discusses a number of reports of increases in IQs that were published from 1936 onwards before the phenomenon was rediscovered by  and . These early reports showed that the Flynn effect is fully present in pre-school children, does not increase during the school age years, and is greater for non-verbal abilities than for verbal abilities.     

Asymmetric prefrontal cortex functions predict asymmetries in number space

Little is known about the neuropsychological factors that contribute to individual differences in the asymmetric orientation along the mental number line. The present study documents healthy subjects’ preference for small numbers over large numbers in a random number generation task. This preference, referred to as “small-number bias” (SNB), varied with prefrontal functional lateralization: it was larger in participants with over-proportionately better performance in design fluency compared to letter fluency than in participants with over-proportionately better performance in letter fluency when compared to design fluency. Asymmetries in learning and memory tasks (verbal vs. non-verbal) were not related to direction or size of the SNB. We conclude that hemispheric asymmetries of specifically prefrontal executive functions are predictive of an individual’s lateral orientation bias along the mental number line. Therefore, the focus on parietal contributions to spatial-numerical associations may not be justified. Random number generation may be a helpful method to further explore these associations uncontaminated by the asymmetric involvement of response effectors.     

A probabilistic model of semantic plausibility in sentence processing

Experimental research shows that human sentence processing uses information from different levels of linguistic analysis, for example, lexical and syntactic preferences as well as semantic plausibility. Existing computational models of human sentence processing, however, have focused primarily on lexico-syntactic factors. Those models that do account for semantic plausibility effects lack a general model of human plausibility intuitions at the sentence level. Within a probabilistic framework, we propose a wide-coverage model that both assigns thematic roles to verb–argument pairs and determines a preferred interpretation by evaluating the plausibility of the resulting ( verb , role , argument ) triples. The model is trained on a corpus of role-annotated language data. We also present a transparent integration of the semantic model with an incremental probabilistic parser. We demonstrate that both the semantic plausibility model and the combined syntax/semantics model predict judgment and reading time data from the experimental literature.     

Language and executive functioning skills of students with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and in reading comprehension difficulties (RCD)

The aim of this work was to study the specificity of deficits in linguistic and executive functioning of students with ADHD and with RCD and to determine the profile of deficits in the comorbid group (ADHD+RCD). Participants in the study were 84 students, ages 12-16 years divided into four groups with an equal number of subjects (N= 21): ADHD, RCD, ADHD+RCD and comparison group (without ADHD and without RCD). We measured vocabulary, oral comprehension, lexical access, verbal and visual working memory, inhibition and attention. The results show that the ADHD+RCD group presents the most important linguistic deficits, followed by the RCD group. On the other hand, the three clinical groups (ADHD, RCD and ADHD+RCD) display greater performance problems in working memory than the comparison group, whereas the two groups with ADHD had more problems in attention and inhibition. These results suggest the dissociation of linguistic and executive deficits that affect the RCD group and ADHD group to a greater extent, respectively. Lastly, the comorbid group showed deficits both in language and in executive skills. We discuss the implications of these findings for designing interventions.