Affective iconic words benefit from additional sound–meaning integration in the left amygdala

Recent studies have shown that a similarity between sound and meaning of a word (i.e., iconicity) can help more readily access the meaning of that word, but the neural mechanisms underlying this beneficial role of iconicity in semantic processing remain largely unknown. In an fMRI study, we focused on the affective domain and examined whether affective iconic words (e.g., high arousal in both sound and meaning) activate additional brain regions that integrate emotional information from different domains (i.e., sound and meaning). In line with our hypothesis, affective iconic words, compared to their non‐iconic counterparts, elicited additional BOLD responses in the left amygdala known for its role in multimodal representation of emotions. Functional connectivity analyses revealed that the observed amygdalar activity was modulated by an interaction of iconic condition and activations in two hubs representative for processing sound (left superior temporal gyrus) and meaning (left inferior frontal gyrus) of words. These results provide a neural explanation for the facilitative role of iconicity in language processing and indicate that language users are sensitive to the interaction between sound and meaning aspect of words, suggesting the existence of iconicity as a general property of human language

The face and the faceness: Iconicity in the early faciasemiotics of Paul Ekman, 1957–1978

Paul Ekman is an American psychologist who pioneered the study of facial behaviour. Bringing together disciplinary history, life study, and history of science, this paper focuses on Ekman’s early research during the twenty-year period between 1957 and 1978. I explicate the historical development of Ekman’s semiotic model of facial behaviour, tracing the thread of iconicity through his life and works: from the iconic coding of rapid signs; through the eventual turn from classifying modes of iconic signification using gestalt categories to classifying modes of producing iconic sign-functions using minimal units; to the role and importance of iconicity for the study of the facial expression of emotion, both in terms of the similarities between iconic and analogue signs as well as the differences between facial coding and linguistic signification. In this intellectual genealogy, I argue not only that Ekman relied extensively upon conceptualizations and terminologies from semiotic thought for the creation of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), but also that the question of iconicity is the pivotal problem across the many discoveries and innovations in what I term ‘Ekmanian faciasemiotics’.    &nbsp

Processing Concrete and Abstract Relationships in Word Pairs

Malhi (2015) found a reverse concreteness, or abstractness, effect for word pairs in an iconicity judgment task. Per Vigliocco et al.’s (2009) theory of embodied abstract semantics, Malhi and Buchanan (2017) hypothesized that participants were taking a visualization approach (time-costly) towards the concrete word pairs and an emotional valence approach (time-efficient) towards the abstract word pairs. It was also hypothesized that the abstractness effect emerged not by considering single words in isolation but rather by considering the relationship between them. The goal of the present study was to test these hypotheses and to further investigate this reverse concreteness, or abstractness, effect. Results generally provided support for these hypotheses. An event-related potential (ERP) experiment revealed a dissociation between behavioural abstractness and neural concreteness. The results are interpreted using a proposed theory of flexible abstractness and concreteness effects (FACE)

A new artificial sign-space proxy for investigating the emergence of structure and categories in speech

En relación con las publicaciones presentadas en el Clabes I, donde se mencionan las nuevas estrategias implementadas para afrontar el desgranamiento, blended learning y tutorías; y Clabes II, en el que referimos a una ampliación y profundización tanto en las políticas como en las metodología a implementar desde dos niveles: Nacional desde el Rectorado de la Universidad y Local desde la Facultad Regional Resistencia; en esta oportunidad se presentan los resultados de la acción emprendida en el año 2012 en la línea de acceso e integración de alumnos a las carreras ofrecidas por la Facultad. En este sentido se puede decir que se ha reforzado la apuesta; la institución no conforme con las actividades desarrolladas al interior de la misma, organizó un ciclo de visitas a las escuelas de Nivel Medio de la Zona de influencia. La Facultad Regional Resistencia se viene desarrollando desde el año 2006 diferentes acciones tendientes a la disminución del desgranamiento de los alumnos en los primeros tramos de las carreras. Todas estas acciones, hacia adentro de la institución, es decir, saber cuáles son los motivos que llevan a los alumnos a desgranar en los primero años, realizar un seguimiento de los ingresantes a través del sistema de acción tutorial, utilizar en el seminario universitario metodologías que promuevan a la autorregulación. Todas iniciativas desarrolladas una vez que el alumno ha elegido la carrera y nuestra facultad. Si bien se han obtenido mejora en los resultados con las acciones antes mencionadas la Facultad inició un camino de articulación con el nivel medio en colaboración con las Direcciones de carrera y la Secretaría de Extensión Universitaria. Se organizaron y ejecutaron bajo el eslogan “la UTN va a las escuelas”, una serie de talleres informativos en los que participaron unos 3.000 alumnos de escuelas secundarias. Los talleres tienen como objetivos: generar un marco propicio para el ingreso y permanencia de los alumnos en la universidad, informar a los estudiantes acerca de las diferentes opciones de carrera que brinda la institución y proporcionar herramientas metodológicas que propicien una mejor inserción académica. Entendemos que estas acciones se enmarcan en la responsabilidad social que le compete a la Universidad, parafraseando a François Vallaeys (2007), la institución debe hacer una reflexión sobre sí misma de su accionar en su entorno social, un análisis de su responsabilidad y, sobre todo, de su parte de culpabilidad en los problemas crónicos de la sociedad. Los talleres se centraron en trabajar la autorregulación de los futuros estudiantes universitarios como una habilidad meta cognitiva que puede resultar clave para el éxito o el fracaso académico, según lo consideran algunos autores entre ellos Corral (2003). Si bien no se está en condiciones de afirmar cuánto influye esta habilidad en la definición de las estrategias utilizadas para la apropiación y retención de los contenidos y consecuentemente en el rendimiento academico, sin embargo los estudiantes que mayor comportamiento autorregulado demuestran obtienen un mejor rendimiento en las diferentes áreas académicas

Lexical comprehension within and across sign languages of Belgium, China and the Netherlands

There are hundreds of known sign languages around the world today, distinct languages each with its own historical and cultural context. Nevertheless, it is well known among signers who move through international spaces and across signing communities that a certain degree of mutual intelligibility is achievable during so-called cross-signing, even between historically unrelated sign languages. This has been explained by shared experiences, translanguaging competence and a higher degree of iconicity in the lexicons of sign languages. In this paper, I investigate one aspect of mutual intelligibility between four different sign languages: Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT), Flemish Sign Language (VGT), French-Belgian Sign Language (LSFB) and Chinese Sign Language (CSL). Through a comprehension task with NGT signs, I analyze how accurately signers of the four sign languages identify NGT signs in an experimental sign-to-picture matching task, matching one target sign to one of four meaning choices: one target meaning and three distractors based on either form-similarity or plausible iconicity-mapping to the target sign. The results show that signers of VGT and LSFB perform better than CSL signers on this task, which may be attributed to lexical overlap, shared iconic mappings and experiences, as well as language contact due to geographic proximity. It is found that misidentification of target meanings is mostly caused by distractors with iconically plausible mappings between form and meaning. Across the four languages, signers’ self-evaluations of their performance on the lexical comprehension task correlate with test scores, demonstrating that they generally judge their level of comprehension accurately.publishedVersio

Deaf and hearing children's picture naming Impact of age of acquisition and language modality on representational gesture

Stefanini, Bello, Caselli, Iverson, & Volterra (2009) reported that Italian 24-36 month old children use a high proportion of representational gestures to accompany their spoken responses when labelling pictures. The two studies reported here used the same naming task with (1) typically developing 24-46-month-old hearing children acquiring English and (2) 24-63-month-old deaf children of deaf and hearing parents acquiring British Sign Language (BSL) and spoken English. In Study 1 children scored within the range of correct spoken responses previously reported, but produced very few representational gestures. However, when they did gesture, they expressed the same action meanings as reported in previous research. The action bias was also observed in deaf children of hearing parents in Study 2, who labelled pictures with signs, spoken words and gestures. The deaf group with deaf parents used BSL almost exclusively with few additional gestures. The function of representational gestures in spoken and signed vocabulary development is considered in relation to differences between native and non-native sign language acquisition