Trends in Usage-Based and Pragmatic Language Processing and Learning: A Bibliometric Analysis on Psycholinguistics and Second-Language Acquisition Studies

This chapter provides bibliometric analyses of novel trends in the research toward pragmatic aspects of language processing and learning in the studies of psycholinguistics and second-language acquisition. Growing interests in the relevant themes are shown with the analysis of the co-occurrence of keywords in a common literature and the bibliographic coupling between literatures. The emergence of novel experimental methodologies, including the application of neuroimaging and machine learning approaches to the psycholinguistic research, provides new opportunities of looking into the pragmatic aspects of language acquisition and invites new empirical research to validate the theories and extend the boundaries of second-language acquisition research in the real-world setting

Neuromarketing empirical approaches and food choice: A systematic review

Consumers' food choices are often driven by reasons of which consumers are not fully aware. Decision-making about food is influenced by a complex set of emotions, feelings, attitudes, and values that are impossible to assess simply by asking consumers their opinions. Indeed, traditional techniques, such as self-reports or interviews, mainly allow the measurement of conscious and rational reactions to a product or advertising. Recently, there has been a rapidly growing interest in the multidisciplinary field of “neuromarketing,” which takes advantage of neuroscientific techniques to study consumer behavior. This discipline applies neuroscientific methods and tools that allow the measurement of consumers' emotional and spontaneous reactions in a more objective and observable way. The aim of this paper is (a) to describe neuromarketing's underlying assumptions, techniques, and the advantages of this perspective, examining the scientific literature on the use of neuromarketing in food studies; and (b) to suggest best practices to apply this novel approach in the food marketing domain, with a specific focus on non-invasive methods. Finally, although the perception of nutritional elements has already been explored, the health content of labels, the presence of additives, and the evaluation of the information conveyed by food packaging remain other possible elements of interest in future food neuromarketing research

Slavic Psycholinguistics in the 21st Century

This article provides an update on research in Slavic psycholinguistics since 2000 following my first review (Sekerina 2006), published as a position paper for the workshop The Future of Slavic Linguistics in America (SLING2K). The focus remains on formal experimental psycholinguistics understood in the narrow sense, i.e., experimental studies conducted with monolingual healthy adults. I review five dimensions characteristic of Slavic psycholinguistics—populations, methods, domains, theoretical approaches, and specific languages—and summarize the experimental data from Slavic languages published in general non-Slavic psycholinguistic journals and proceedings from the leading two conferences on Slavic linguistics, FASL and FDSL, since 2000. I argue that the current research trends in Slavic psycholinguistics are (1) a shift from adult monolingual participants to special population groups, such as children, people with aphasia, and bilingual learners, (2) a continuing move in the direction of cognitive neuroscience, with more emphasis on online experimental techniques, such as eye-tracking and neuroimaging, and (3) a focus on Slavic-specific phenomena that contribute to the ongoing debates in general psycholinguistics. The current infrastructural trends are (1) development of psycholinguistic databases and resources for Slavic languages and (2) a rise of psycholinguistic research conducted in Eastern European countries and disseminated in Slavic languages

An integrated theory of language production and comprehension

Currently, production and comprehension are regarded as quite distinct in accounts of language processing. In rejecting this dichotomy, we instead assert that producing and understanding are interwoven, and that this interweaving is what enables people to predict themselves and each other. We start by noting that production and comprehension are forms of action and action perception. We then consider the evidence for interweaving in action, action perception, and joint action, and explain such evidence in terms of prediction. Specifically, we assume that actors construct forward models of their actions before they execute those actions, and that perceivers of others' actions covertly imitate those actions, then construct forward models of those actions. We use these accounts of action, action perception, and joint action to develop accounts of production, comprehension, and interactive language. Importantly, they incorporate well-defined levels of linguistic representation (such as semantics, syntax, and phonology). We show (a) how speakers and comprehenders use covert imitation and forward modeling to make predictions at these levels of representation, (b) how they interweave production and comprehension processes, and (c) how they use these predictions to monitor the upcoming utterances. We show how these accounts explain a range of behavioral and neuroscientific data on language processing and discuss some of the implications of our proposal

Linguistic and Nonverbal Abilities over Time in a Child Case of 22q11 Deletion Syndrome

The aim of this study is to profile the cognitive–linguistic performance of a male child (P.I.) with 22q11 deletion syndrome (22q11DS). Specifically, receptive and expressive language performance and nonverbal IQ (NVIQ) are described at two different time points—when P.I. was 6 and 10 years of age, respectively. Using case-based methodology, P.I.’s NVIQ and performance on global and structured language tasks are compared to typically developing children of the same chronological age and school-aged children with specific language impairment (SLI). The results show no improvement in NVIQ or vocabulary, but his morphosyntactic abilities did improve over time. The findings are discussed in relation to two hypotheses, either that the profile of language impairment in children with 22q11DS is distinctive to the syndrome or that there is co-morbidity with SLI. This is particularly important for speech–language therapists who have a primary role in diagnosing communication deficits and providing treatment