The unexplained nature of reading.

The effects of properties of words on their reading aloud response times (RTs) are 1 major source of evidence about the reading process. The precision with which such RTs could potentially be predicted by word properties is critical to evaluate our understanding of reading but is often underestimated due to contamination from individual differences. We estimated this precision without such contamination individually for 4 people who each read 2,820 words 50 times each. These estimates were compared to the precision achieved by a 31-variable regression model that outperforms current cognitive models on variance-explained criteria. Most (around 2/3) of the meaningful (non-first-phoneme, non-noise) word-level variance remained unexplained by this model. Considerable empirical and theoretical-computational effort has been expended on this area of psychology, but the high level of systematic variance remaining unexplained suggests doubts regarding contemporary accounts of the details of the mechanisms of reading at the level of the word. Future assessment of models can take advantage of the availability of our precise participant-level database

Emotion and language: valence and arousal affect word recognition

Emotion influences most aspects of cognition and behavior, but emotional factors are conspicuously absent from current models of word recognition. The influence of emotion on word recognition has mostly been reported in prior studies on the automatic vigilance for negative stimuli, but the precise nature of this relationship is unclear. Various models of automatic vigilance have claimed that the effect of valence on response times is categorical, an inverted U, or interactive with arousal. In the present study, we used a sample of 12,658 words and included many lexical and semantic control factors to determine the precise nature of the effects of arousal and valence on word recognition. Converging empirical patterns observed in word-level and trial-level data from lexical decision and naming indicate that valence and arousal exert independent monotonic effects: Negative words are recognized more slowly than positive words, and arousing words are recognized more slowly than calming words. Valence explained about 2% of the variance in word recognition latencies, whereas the effect of arousal was smaller. Valence and arousal do not interact, but both interact with word frequency, such that valence and arousal exert larger effects among low-frequency words than among high-frequency words. These results necessitate a new model of affective word processing whereby the degree of negativity monotonically and independently predicts the speed of responding. This research also demonstrates that incorporating emotional factors, especially valence, improves the performance of models of word recognition

Interactions between visual and semantic processing during object recognition revealed by modulatory effects of age of acquisition

The age of acquisition (AoA) of objects and their names is a powerful determinant of processing speed in adulthood, with early-acquired objects being recognized and named faster than late-acquired objects. Previous research using fMRI (Ellis et al., 2006. Traces of vocabulary acquisition in the brain: evidence from covert object naming. NeuroImage 33, 958–968) found that AoA modulated the strength of BOLD responses in both occipital and left anterior temporal cortex during object naming. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to explore in more detail the nature of the influence of AoA on activity in those two regions. Covert object naming recruited a network within the left hemisphere that is familiar from previous research, including visual, left occipito-temporal, anterior temporal and inferior frontal regions. Region of interest (ROI) analyses found that occipital cortex generated a rapid evoked response (~ 75–200 ms at 0–40 Hz) that peaked at 95 ms but was not modulated by AoA. That response was followed by a complex of later occipital responses that extended from ~ 300 to 850 ms and were stronger to early- than late-acquired items from ~ 325 to 675 ms at 10–20 Hz in the induced rather than the evoked component. Left anterior temporal cortex showed an evoked response that occurred significantly later than the first occipital response (~ 100–400 ms at 0–10 Hz with a peak at 191 ms) and was stronger to early- than late-acquired items from ~ 100 to 300 ms at 2–12 Hz. A later anterior temporal response from ~ 550 to 1050 ms at 5–20 Hz was not modulated by AoA. The results indicate that the initial analysis of object forms in visual cortex is not influenced by AoA. A fastforward sweep of activation from occipital and left anterior temporal cortex then results in stronger activation of semantic representations for early- than late-acquired objects. Top-down re-activation of occipital cortex by semantic representations is then greater for early than late acquired objects resulting in delayed modulation of the visual response

A normative study of acronyms and acronym naming

Acronyms are an idiosyncratic part of our everyday vocabulary. Research in word processing has used acronyms as a tool to answer fundamental questions such as the nature of the word superiority effect (WSE) or which is the best way to account for word-reading processes. In this study, acronym naming was assessed by looking at the influence that a number of variables known to affect mainstream word processing has had in acronym naming. The nature of the effect of these factors on acronym naming was examined using a multilevel regression analysis. First, 146 acronyms were described in terms of their age of acquisition, bigram and trigram frequencies, imageability, number of orthographic neighbors, frequency, orthographic and phonological length, print-to-pronunciation patterns, and voicing characteristics. Naming times were influenced by lexical and sublexical factors, indicating that acronym naming is a complex process affected by more variables than those previously considered

The oral spelling profile of Posterior Cortical Atrophy and the nature of the graphemic representation

Spelling is a complex cognitive task where central and peripheral components are involved in engaging resources from many different cognitive processes. The present paper aims to both characterize the oral spelling deficit in a population of patients affected by a neurodegenerative condition and to clarify the nature of the graphemic representation within the currently available spelling models. Indeed, the nature of graphemic representation as a linear or multi-componential structure is still debated. Different hypotheses have been raised about its nature in the orthographic lexicon, with one positing that graphemes are complex objects whereby quantity and identity are separately represented in orthographic representations and can thus be selectively impaired. Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a neurodegenerative condition that mainly affects visuoperceptual and visuospatial functions. Spelling impairments are considered part of the disease. Nonetheless the spelling deficit has received little attention so far and often it has been interpreted in relation to peripheral impairments such as writing difficulties associated with visuoperceptual and visuospatial deficits. In the present study we provide a detailed characterization of the oral spelling profile in PCA. The data suggest that multiple deficits underpin oral spelling problems in PCA, with elements of surface and phonological dysgraphia but also suggesting the involvement of the graphemic buffer. A large phenotypic individual variability is reported. Moreover, the larger proportion and the specific nature of errors involving geminate (i.e., double) as compared to non-geminate (i.e., non-double) letters suggest that a further central impairment might be associated with the abstract graphemic representation of letter numerosity. The present study contributes to the clinical characterization of PCA and to the current debate in the cognitive literature on spelling models. Findings despite not definitive, support the hypothesis that graphemic representations are multidimensional mental objects that separately encode information about grapheme identity and quantity

Predočivost i subjektivna učestalost 500 procijenjenih riječi u Hrvatskoj leksičkoj bazi

Properties such as word class, length, phonological and morphological complexity, concreteness, frequency, age of acquisition, and imageability have to be controlled in research and clinical practice, since they strongly affect the speed and accuracy of language processing by monolinguals and bilinguals as well as by speakers with language disorders. The purpose of this paper is to present the online Croatian Lexical Database (Cro. Hrvatska leksička baza [HLB], http://polin–hlb.erf.hr/) that contains different (psycho)linguistic word properties, and to use the HLB to provide the first analyses about (1) the relationship between frequency and imageability for the rated 500 nouns, and (2) the influence of raters’ age, gender and education on their judgement. The results indicate a significant positive correlation between noun frequency and imageability, but no significant influence of the three non–linguistic rater factors on judgements about (psycho)linguistic property.Pojedina obilježja riječi, kao što su vrsta, duljina, fonološka i morfološka složenost, konkretnost, učestalost, dob usvajanja, predočivost itd., potrebno je kontrolirati u istraživanjima kao i u kliničkoj primjeni. Naime, prethodna istraživanja govore kako navedena obilježja riječi imaju značajan utjecaj na brzinu i točnost jezične obrade kod osoba s različitom jezičnom pozadinom – kod jednojezičnih i dvojezičnih govornika, govornika urednoga jezičnog razvoja, govornika s jezičnim poremećajima. Svrha je ovoga rada predstaviti Hrvatsku leksičku bazu – HLB (engl. Croatian Lexical Database) – dostupnu na internetskoj poveznici http://polin–hlb.erf.hr/, a koja sadržava (psiho)lingvistička obilježja riječi. Također, cilj je i dati prve podatke 1) o odnosu učestalosti i predočivosti na 500 procijenjenih riječi te 2) o utjecaju nelingvističkih čimbenika kao što su dob, spol i razina obrazovanja ispitanika na njihovu procjenu. Rezultati upućuju na značajnu pozitivnu korelaciju između učestalosti i predočivosti imenica, ali ne i na značajan utjecaj triju ispitanih nelingvističkih čimbenika ispitanika na procjenu tih obilježj

From Words to Behaviour via Semantic Networks

The contents and structure of semantic networks have been the focus of much recent research, with major advances in the development of distributional models. In parallel, connectionist modeling has extended our knowledge of the processes engaged in semantic activation. However, these two lines of investigation have rarely brought together. Here, starting from a standard textual model of semantics, we allow activation to spread throughout its associated semantic network, as dictated by the patterns of semantic similarity between words. We find that the activation profile of the network, measured at various time points, can successfully account for response times in the lexical decision task, as well as for subjective concreteness and imageability ratings

Functional neuroanatomy of contextual acquisition of concrete and abstract words

The meaning of a novel word can be acquired by extracting it from linguistic context. Here we simulated word learning of new words associated to concrete and abstract concepts in a variant of the human simulation paradigm that provided linguistic context information in order to characterize the brain systems involved. Native speakers of Spanish read pairs of sentences in order to derive the meaning of a new word that appeared in the terminal position of the sentences. fMRI revealed that learning the meaning associated to concrete and abstract new words was qualitatively different and recruited similar brain regions as the processing of real concrete and abstract words. In particular, learning of new concrete words selectively boosted the activation of the ventral anterior fusiform gyrus, a region driven by imageability, which has previously been implicated in the processing of concrete words

Reading Through the Life Span:Individual Differences in Psycholinguistic Effects

The effects of psycholinguistic variables are critical to the evaluation of theories about the cognitive reading system. However, reading research has tended to focus on the impact of key variables on average performance. We report the first investigation examining variation in psycholinguistic effects across the life span, from childhood into old age. We analyzed the performance of a sample of 535 readers, aged 8-83 years in lexical decision and pronunciation tasks. Our findings show that the effects on reading of two key variables, frequency and AoA, decrease in size with increasing age over the life span. We observed the systematic modulation by age and reading ability of these and other psycholinguistic effects alongside a global U-shaped effect of age. Diffusion model analyses suggest that developmental speed-up in decision responses can be attributed to the increasing quality of evidence accumulation in reaction to words, while the ageing-related slowing can be attributed to decreasing efficiency of stimulus encoding or response execution processes. An analysis of spoken response durations furnishes a consistent picture in which the slowing of pronunciation responses with age can be attributed to slowing articulatory processes. We think our findings can be explained by theoretical accounts that incorporate learning as the basis for the development of structure in the reading system. However, an adequate theory shall have to include assumptions about both developmental learning and later ageing. Our results warrant a life span theory of reading

„Duboka leksikografija” – pomodnost ili prilika?

In recent years, we are witnessing staggering improvements in various semantic data processing tasks due to the developments in the area of deep learning, ranging from image and video processing to speech processing, and natural language understanding. In this paper, we discuss the opportunities and challenges that these developments pose for the area of electronic lexicography. We primarily focus on the concept of representation learning of the basic elements of language, namely words, and the applicability of these word representations to lexicography. We first discuss well-known approaches to learning static representations of words, the so-called word embeddings, and their usage in lexicography-related tasks such as semantic shift detection, and cross-lingual prediction of lexical features such as concreteness and imageability. We wrap up the paper with the most recent developments in the area of word representation learning in form of learning dynamic, context-aware representations of words, showcasing some dynamic word embedding examples, and discussing improvements on lexicography-relevant tasks of word sense disambiguation and word sense induction.Posljednjih smo godina svjedoci velikoga napretka u različitim zadatcima inteligentne obrade podataka koji je posljedica razvoja dubokoga učenja. ti zadatci uključuju i obradu slike, videa, govora te razumijevanje jezika. u ovome se radu raspravlja o prilikama i izazovima koje taj napredak omogućuje u području digitalne leksikografije. Veći se dio rada odnosi na učenje prikaza različitih elemenata jezika – riječi, leksema te izjava – i njihovu primjenu u leksikografiji. Prikazuju se dobro poznati postupci učenja statičkih vektorskih prikaza riječi te njihova primjena u zadatcima poput prepoznavanja semantičkih pomaka te predviđanja leksičkih značajka riječi. U radu se dalje govori o višejezičnoj razini učenja prikaza riječi te se rad zaključuje prikazom novijih postignuća u području strojnoga razumijevanja jezika – dinamičkih, kontekstnih prikaza riječi