1,527 research outputs found

    Linking language and emotion: how emotion is understood in language comprehension, production and prediction using psycholinguistic methods

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    Emotions are an integral part of why and how we use language in everyday life. We communicate our concerns, express our woes, and share our joy through the use of non-verbal and verbal language. Yet there is a limited understanding of when and how emotional language is processed differently to neutral language, or of how emotional information facilitates or inhibits language processing. Indeed, various efforts have been made to bring back emotions into the discipline of psycholinguistics in the last decade. This can be seen in many interdisciplinary models focusing on the role played by emotion in each aspect of linguistic experience. In this thesis, I answer this call and pursue questions that remain unanswered in psycholinguistics regarding its interaction with emotion. The general trend that I am using to bring emotion into psycholinguistic research is straightforward. Where applicable and relevant, I use well-established tasks or paradigms to investigate the effects of emotional content in language processing. Hence, I focused on three main areas of language processing: comprehension, production and prediction. The first experimental chapter includes a series of experiments utilising the Modality Switching Paradigm to investigate whether sentences describing emotional states are processed differently from sentences describing cognitive states. No switching effects were found consistently in my 3 experiments. My results suggest that these distinct classes of interoceptive concepts, such as ‘thinking’ or ‘being happy’, are not processed differently from each other, suggesting that people do not switch attention between different interoceptive systems when comprehending emotional or cognitive sentences. I discuss the implications for grounded cognition theory in the embodiment literature. In my second experimental chapter, I used the Cumulative Semantic Interference Paradigm to investigate these two questions: (1) whether emotion concepts interfere with one another when repeatedly retrieved (emotion label objects), and (2) whether similar interference occurs for concrete objects that share similar valence association (emotion-laden objects). This could indicate that people use information such as valence and arousal to group objects in semantic memory. I found that interference occurs when people retrieve direct emotion labels repeatedly (e.g., “happy” and “sad”) but not when they retrieve the names of concrete objects that have similar emotion connotations (e.g., “puppy” and “rainbow”). I discuss my findings in terms of the different types of information that support representation of abstract vs. concrete concepts. In my final experimental chapter, I used the Visual World Paradigm to investigate whether the emotional state of an agent is used to inform predictions during sentence processing. I found that people do use the description of emotional state of an agent (e.g., “The boy is happy”) to predict the cause of that affective state during sentence processing (e.g., “because he was given an ice-cream”). A key result here is that people were more likely to fixate on the emotionally congruent objects (e.g., ice-cream) compared to incongruent objects (e.g., broccoli). This suggests that people rapidly and automatically inform predictions about upcoming sentence information based on the emotional state of the agent. I discuss our findings as a novel contribution to the Visual World literature. I conducted a diverse set of experiments using a range of established psycholinguistic methods to investigate the roles of emotional information in language processing. I found clear results in the eye-tracking study but inconsistent effects in both switching and interference studies. I interpret these mixed findings in the following way: emotional content does not always have effects in language processing and that effect are most likely in tasks that explicitly require participants to simulate emotion states in some way. Regardless, not only was I successful in finding some novel results by extending previous tasks, but I was also able to show that this is an avenue that can be explored more to advance the affective psycholinguistic field

    Is there a Relationship between Parents' Screen Usage and Young Children’s Development?

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    There has been growing concern over the links between children's screen time use and cognitive development (Halton, 2020). However, researchers have generally overlooked the possible impact of parental screen time, which might decrease the opportunities of learning and social interactions for young children. To address this gap, we investigated the relationship between parental screen use and toddlers’ development. However, the start of this thesis coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic, and a few experimental tasks had to be adapted online. Thus, this thesis examined first whether online paradigms can provide valid data (word recognition, word learning and language assessment). Second, the main objective was to explore the relationship between parental screen use and young children’s language skills, and to revisit the link between parental screen time and children’s empathy. Findings from Chapter 2 provide support for the reliability of online testing with children. These experiments point to promising avenues of investigation in early language studies, and to possibilities for reaching out to families around the world. Findings from Chapter 3 revealed no impact of parental phone text on children’s learning in a lab situation. However, they suggest that parental responses to technoference and attitudes towards smartphones may moderate the relationship between parental screen use and children’s development. When examining effects in real life, a first exploratory study indicated an effect of parental screen time (in real life) on children’s language vocabulary when assessed via a parental questionnaire, at least for children aged 16 months and above. A second study was conducted with more objective measures of screen time and children’s vocabulary knowledge, and no association was found between parental screen time and children’s language when assessed via a standardised face-to-face language test. Findings from Chapter 4 showed a negative association between children’s alone screen time and their cognitive empathy abilities. However, parental screen time was not related to children’s cognitive empathy. The experiments and studies reported in this thesis fail to reveal a robust association between parental screen time and early language, at least in the population that we have studied here. Importantly, the findings suggest how parental screen use may be a moderator in children’s development and not a causal factor. They demonstrate the need to investigate more precisely why and how parents use electronic devices such as mobile phones during interactions with their children, might directly influence early language and emotional development

    Conversations on Empathy

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    In the aftermath of a global pandemic, amidst new and ongoing wars, genocide, inequality, and staggering ecological collapse, some in the public and political arena have argued that we are in desperate need of greater empathy — be this with our neighbours, refugees, war victims, the vulnerable or disappearing animal and plant species. This interdisciplinary volume asks the crucial questions: How does a better understanding of empathy contribute, if at all, to our understanding of others? How is it implicated in the ways we perceive, understand and constitute others as subjects? Conversations on Empathy examines how empathy might be enacted and experienced either as a way to highlight forms of otherness or, instead, to overcome what might otherwise appear to be irreducible differences. It explores the ways in which empathy enables us to understand, imagine and create sameness and otherness in our everyday intersubjective encounters focusing on a varied range of "radical others" – others who are perceived as being dramatically different from oneself. With a focus on the importance of empathy to understand difference, the book contends that the role of empathy is critical, now more than ever, for thinking about local and global challenges of interconnectedness, care and justice

    Multilingual experience modulates resting-state functional connectivity and executive functioning in cognitive aging

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    Bi-/multilingualism has been found to act favourably on the cognitive aging (CA) trajectory due to the increased executive functioning demands that dual-language use exerts on the brain leading to contributions to neurocognitive reserve and resilience. There is a gap in the literature on how individual differences in the degree of multilingualism influence this trajectory. Furthermore, other lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise, have also been shown to influence CA, yet language experiences and lifestyle factors have rarely been examined together. This thesis aims to fill this gap by examining the unique influence of multilingual language engagement on intrinsic brain activity at-rest and working memory performance. A comprehensive language and lifestyle profile was calculated from native Norwegian multilingual speakers with English as one of their additional languages (n=90, mage=49,3, (SD=18.06), range 19-82. Resting-state Electroencephalography (rs-EEG) and working memory were assessed and regressed against a continuous measure of multilingualism (MLD) while controlling for other lifestyle-experiences. Results indicate a near-significant trend hinting that degree of multilingualism offsets the downwards aging trajectory of EEG coherence in alpha and gamma coherence across several electrode regions. A significant positive interaction between age and MLD was found for WM performance. An exploratory post-hoc analysis revealed a null relationship between functional connectivity and working memory. Results suggest that a higher degree of multilingualism leads to increased resilience against CA

    Évaluation et modulation des fonctions exĂ©cutives en neuroergonomie - Continuums cognitifs et expĂ©rimentaux

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    Des Ă©tudes en neuroergonomie ont montrĂ© que le pilote d’avion pouvait commettre des erreurs en raison d’une incapacitĂ© transitoire Ă  faire preuve de flexibilitĂ© mentale. Il apparait que certains facteurs, tels qu’une forte charge mentale ou une pression temporelle importante, un niveau de stress trop Ă©levĂ©, la survenue de conflits, ou une perte de conscience de la situation, peuvent altĂ©rer temporairement l’efficience des fonctions exĂ©cutives permettant cette flexibilitĂ©. Depuis mes travaux initiaux, dans lesquels je me suis intĂ©ressĂ© aux conditions qui conduisent Ă  une nĂ©gligence auditive, j’ai souhaitĂ© dĂ©velopper une approche scientifique visant Ă  quantifier et limiter les effets dĂ©lĂ©tĂšres de ces diffĂ©rents facteurs. Ceci a Ă©tĂ© fait Ă  travers l’étude des fonctions exĂ©cutives chez l’ĂȘtre humain selon le continuum cognitif (du cerveau lĂ©sĂ© au cerveau en parfait Ă©tat de fonctionnement) et le continuum expĂ©rimental (de l’ordinateur au monde rĂ©el). L’approche fondamentale de l’étude des fonctions exĂ©cutives en neurosciences combinĂ©e Ă  l’approche neuroergonomique graduelle avec des pilotes et des patients cĂ©rĂ©bro-lĂ©sĂ©s, a permis de mieux comprendre la maniĂšre dont ces fonctions sont mises en jeu et altĂ©rĂ©es. Cette connaissance Ă  contribuer par la suite Ă  la mise en place de solutions pour prĂ©server leur efficacitĂ© en situation complexe. AprĂšs avoir rappelĂ© mon parcours acadĂ©mique, je prĂ©sente dans ce manuscrit une sĂ©lection de travaux rĂ©partis sur trois thĂ©matiques de recherche. La premiĂšre concerne l’étude des fonctions exĂ©cutives impliquĂ©es dans l’attention et en particulier la façon dont la charge perceptive et la charge mentale peuvent altĂ©rer ces fonctions. La deuxiĂšme correspond Ă  un aspect plus appliquĂ© de ces travaux avec l’évaluation de l’état du pilote. Il a Ă©tĂ© question d’analyser cet Ă©tat selon l’activitĂ© de pilotage elle-mĂȘme ou Ă  travers la gestion et la supervision d’un systĂšme en particulier. La troisiĂšme et derniĂšre thĂ©matique concerne la recherche de marqueurs prĂ©dictifs de la performance cognitive et l’élaboration d’entraĂźnements cognitifs pour limiter les troubles dysexĂ©cutifs, qu’ils soient d’origine contextuelle ou lĂ©sionnelle. Ces travaux ont contribuĂ© Ă  une meilleure comprĂ©hension des troubles cognitifs transitoires ou chroniques, mais ils ont aussi soulevĂ© des questions auxquelles je souhaite rĂ©pondre aujourd’hui. Pour illustrer cette rĂ©flexion, je prĂ©sente en derniĂšre partie de ce document mon projet de recherche qui vise Ă  dĂ©velopper une approche multifactorielle de l’efficience cognitive, Ă©thique et en science ouverte

    Decisions, decisions, decisions: the development and plasticity of reinforcement learning, social and temporal decision making in children

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    Human decision-making is the flexible way people respond to their environment, take actions, and plan toward long-term goals. It is commonly thought that humans rely on distinct decision-making systems, which are either more habitual and reflexive or deliberate and calculated. How we make decisions can provide insight into our social functioning, mental health and underlying psychopathology, and ability to consider the consequences of our actions. Notably, the ability to make appropriate, habitual or deliberate decisions depending on the context, here referred to as metacontrol, remains underexplored in developmental samples. This thesis aims to investigate the development of different decision-making mechanisms in middle childhood (ages 5-13) and to illuminate the potential neurocognitive mechanisms underlying value-based decision-making. Using a novel sequential decision-making task, the first experimental chapter presents robust markers of model-based decision-making in childhood (N = 85), which reflects the ability to plan through a sequential task structure, contrary to previous developmental studies. Using the same paradigm, in a new sample via both behavioral (N = 69) and MRI-based measures (N = 44), the second experimental chapter explores the neurocognitive mechanisms that may underlie model-based decision-making and its metacontrol in childhood and links individual differences in inhibition and cortical thickness to metacontrol. The third experimental chapter explores the potential plasticity of social and intertemporal decision-making in a longitudinal executive function training paradigm (N = 205) and initial relationships with executive functions. Finally, I critically discuss the results presented in this thesis and their implications and outline directions for future research in the neurocognitive underpinnings of decision-making during development

    Recent Advances in Research on Island Phenomena

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    In natural languages, filler-gap dependencies can straddle across an unbounded distance. Since the 1960s, the term “island” has been used to describe syntactic structures from which extraction is impossible or impeded. While examples from English are ubiquitous, attested counterexamples in the Mainland Scandinavian languages have continuously been dismissed as illusory and alternative accounts for the underlying structure of such cases have been proposed. However, since such extractions are pervasive in spoken Mainland Scandinavian, these languages may not have been given the attention that they deserve in the syntax literature. In addition, recent research suggests that extraction from certain types of island structures in English might not be as unacceptable as previously assumed either. These findings break new empirical ground, question perceived knowledge, and may indeed have substantial ramifications for syntactic theory. This volume provides an overview of state-of-the-art research on island phenomena primarily in English and the Scandinavian languages, focusing on how languages compare to English, with the aim to shed new light on the nature of island constraints from different theoretical perspectives

    Audiovisual speech perception in cochlear implant patients

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    Hearing with a cochlear implant (CI) is very different compared to a normal-hearing (NH) experience, as the CI can only provide limited auditory input. Nevertheless, the central auditory system is capable of learning how to interpret such limited auditory input such that it can extract meaningful information within a few months after implant switch-on. The capacity of the auditory cortex to adapt to new auditory stimuli is an example of intra-modal plasticity — changes within a sensory cortical region as a result of altered statistics of the respective sensory input. However, hearing deprivation before implantation and restoration of hearing capacities after implantation can also induce cross-modal plasticity — changes within a sensory cortical region as a result of altered statistics of a different sensory input. Thereby, a preserved cortical region can, for example, support a deprived cortical region, as in the case of CI users which have been shown to exhibit cross-modal visual-cortex activation for purely auditory stimuli. Before implantation, during the period of hearing deprivation, CI users typically rely on additional visual cues like lip-movements for understanding speech. Therefore, it has been suggested that CI users show a pronounced binding of the auditory and visual systems, which may allow them to integrate auditory and visual speech information more efficiently. The projects included in this thesis investigate auditory, and particularly audiovisual speech processing in CI users. Four event-related potential (ERP) studies approach the matter from different perspectives, each with a distinct focus. The first project investigates how audiovisually presented syllables are processed by CI users with bilateral hearing loss compared to NH controls. Previous ERP studies employing non-linguistic stimuli and studies using different neuroimaging techniques found distinct audiovisual interactions in CI users. However, the precise timecourse of cross-modal visual-cortex recruitment and enhanced audiovisual interaction for speech related stimuli is unknown. With our ERP study we fill this gap, and we present differences in the timecourse of audiovisual interactions as well as in cortical source configurations between CI users and NH controls. The second study focuses on auditory processing in single-sided deaf (SSD) CI users. SSD CI patients experience a maximally asymmetric hearing condition, as they have a CI on one ear and a contralateral NH ear. Despite the intact ear, several behavioural studies have demonstrated a variety of beneficial effects of restoring binaural hearing, but there are only few ERP studies which investigate auditory processing in SSD CI users. Our study investigates whether the side of implantation affects auditory processing and whether auditory processing via the NH ear of SSD CI users works similarly as in NH controls. Given the distinct hearing conditions of SSD CI users, the question arises whether there are any quantifiable differences between CI user with unilateral hearing loss and bilateral hearing loss. In general, ERP studies on SSD CI users are rather scarce, and there is no study on audiovisual processing in particular. Furthermore, there are no reports on lip-reading abilities of SSD CI users. To this end, in the third project we extend the first study by including SSD CI users as a third experimental group. The study discusses both differences and similarities between CI users with bilateral hearing loss and CI users with unilateral hearing loss as well as NH controls and provides — for the first time — insights into audiovisual interactions in SSD CI users. The fourth project investigates the influence of background noise on audiovisual interactions in CI users and whether a noise-reduction algorithm can modulate these interactions. It is known that in environments with competing background noise listeners generally rely more strongly on visual cues for understanding speech and that such situations are particularly difficult for CI users. As shown in previous auditory behavioural studies, the recently introduced noise-reduction algorithm "ForwardFocus" can be a useful aid in such cases. However, the questions whether employing the algorithm is beneficial in audiovisual conditions as well and whether using the algorithm has a measurable effect on cortical processing have not been investigated yet. In this ERP study, we address these questions with an auditory and audiovisual syllable discrimination task. Taken together, the projects included in this thesis contribute to a better understanding of auditory and especially audiovisual speech processing in CI users, revealing distinct processing strategies employed to overcome the limited input provided by a CI. The results have clinical implications, as they suggest that clinical hearing assessments, which are currently purely auditory, should be extended to audiovisual assessments. Furthermore, they imply that rehabilitation including audiovisual training methods may be beneficial for all CI user groups for quickly achieving the most effective CI implantation outcome
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