The necessary, albeit belated, transition to computerized cognitive assessment

Cognitive assessment is a common and daily process in educational, clinical, or research settings, among others. Currently, most professionals use classic pencil-and-paper screenings, tests, and assessment batteries. However, as the SARS-CoV-2 health crisis has shown, the pencil-and-paper format is becoming increasingly outdated and it is necessary to transition to new technologies, using computerized cognitive assessments (CCA). This article discusses the advantages, disadvantages, and implications of this necessary transition that professionals should face in the immediate future, and encourages careful adoption of this change to ensure a smooth transition

Better to Be Alone than in Bad Company: Cognate Synonyms Impair Word Learning

The effects of cognate synonymy in L2 word learning are explored. Participants learned the names of well-known concrete concepts in a new fictional language following a picture-word association paradigm. Half of the concepts (set A) had two possible translations in the new language (i.e., both words were synonyms): one was a cognate in participants’ L1 and the other one was not. The other half of the concepts (set B) had only one possible translation in the new language, a non-cognate word. After learning the new words, participants’ memory was tested in a picture-word matching task and a translation recognition task. In line with previous findings, our results clearly indicate that cognates are much easier to learn, as we found that the cognate translation was remembered much better than both its non-cognate synonym and the non-cognate from set B. Our results also seem to suggest that non-cognates without cognate synonyms (set B) are better learned than non-cognates with cognate synonyms (set A). This suggests that, at early stages of L2 acquisition, learning a cognate would produce a poorer acquisition of its non-cognate synonym, as compared to a solely learned non-cognate. These results are discussed in the light of different theories and models of bilingual mental lexicon

Intelligence subcomponents and their relationship to general knowledge

Research on the different components of fluid intelligence and how they relate to each other is quite extensive. Meanwhile, when it comes to crystallized intelligence, only vocabulary size has been somewhat thoroughly studied, while other key components, such as general knowledge, remain largely unexplored. This study aims to further our understanding of general knowledge as a key component of crystallized intelligence, and of general intelligence as a whole, by exploring how it is influenced by other components of intelligence. To that end, we had 90 participants complete an extensive general knowledge questionnaire, as well as several tests aimed at measuring various components of intelligence, and computed linear regressions to examine how these various components influence general knowledge scores. Our results reveal that, even though general intelligence is able to predict general knowledge scores, only some specific components of intelligence have a direct positive impact on general knowledge. These findings are discussed in regard to intellectual investment theories on the relationship between fluid and crystallized intelligence

The effects of language and emotionality of stimuli on vocabulary learning

Learning new content and vocabulary in a foreign language can be particularly difficult. Yet, there are educational programs that require people to study in a language they are not native speakers of. For this reason, it is important to understand how these learning processes work and possibly differ from native language learning, as well as to develop strategies to ease this process. The current study takes advantage of emotionality—operationally defined as positive valence and high arousal—to improve memory. In two experiments, the present paper addresses whether participants have more difficulty learning the names of objects they have never seen before in their foreign language and whether embedding them in a positive semantic context can help make learning easier. With this in mind, we had participants (with a minimum of a B2 level of English) in two experiments (43 participants in Experiment 1 and 54 in Experiment 2) read descriptions of made-up objects—either positive or neutral and either in their native or a foreign language. The effects of language varied with the difficulty of the task and measure used. In both cases, learning the words in a positive context improved learning. Importantly, the effect of emotionality was not modulated by language, suggesting that the effects of emotionality are independent of language and could potentially be a useful tool for improving foreign language vocabulary learning

Letter-similarity effects in braille word recognition

Letter-similarity effects are elusive with common words in lexical decision experiments: viotin and viocin (base word: violin) produce similar error rates and rejection latencies. However, they are robust for stimuli often presented with the same appearance (e.g., misspelled logotypes such as anazon [base word: amazon] produce more errors and longer latencies than atazon). Here, we examine whether letter-similarity effects occur in reading braille. The rationale is that braille is a writing system in which the sensory information is processed in qualitatively different ways than in visual reading: the form of the word’s letters is highly stable due to the standardisation of braille and the sensing of characters is transient and somewhat serial. Hence, we hypothesised that the letter similarity effect would be sizable with misspelled common words in braille, unlike the visual modality. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a lexical decision experiment with blind adult braille readers. Pseudowords were created by replacing one letter of a word with a tactually similar or dissimilar letter in braille following a tactile similarity matrix (e.g., [ausor] vs [aucor]; baseword: [autor]). Bayesian linear mixed-effects models showed that the responses to tactually similar pseudowords were less accurate than to tactually dissimilar pseudowords—the response times (RTs) showed a parallel trend. This finding supports the idea that, when reading braille, the mapping of input information onto abstract letter representations is done through a noisy channel

Effects of semantic clustering and repetition on incidental vocabulary learning

The present study intended to investigate, first, the impact of semantic clustering on the recall and recognition of incidentally learned words in a new language, and second, how the interaction between semantic clustering and frequency of occurrence may modulate learning. To that end, Spanish university students watched an intentionally created video which contained Spanish target words that were either semantically related to others of the set, or not semantically linked at all. Furthermore, frequency of appearance changed among target words (1|4|8). All these words were paired with pseudowords that appeared as on-screen text during the videos. Participants were completely naive to the phases and the procedure of the experiment. After viewing the video, participants completed a recall test and a recognition test. Results showed that words presented in semantically unrelated categories were better recalled and better recognized than those presented in semantic clusters, especially when the words were presented more often

The Nature of Word Associations in Sentence Contexts

How words are interrelated in the human mind is a scientific topic on which there is still no consensus, with different views on how word co-occurrence and semantic relatedness mediate word association. Recent research has shown that lexical associations are strongly predicted by the similarity of those words in terms of valence, arousal, and concreteness ratings. In the current study, we aimed at extending these results to more complex and realistic linguistic scenarios, since human communication is not done with word pairs, but rather through sentences. Hence, the aim of the current study was to verify whether valence, arousal, and concreteness also articulate sentence-level lexical representations. To this end, 32 native Spanish speakers were given cue words and asked to use them in sentences that would provide a meaningful context. The content words of the written sentences were then analyzed. Our results showed that the emotional dimensions (valence and arousal) and concreteness values of the cue words effectively predicted the same values of said dimensions of their sentences’ words. In sum, the similarity in the emotional dimensions and concreteness are crucial mechanisms behind word association in the human mind

The Spanish General Knowledge Norms

Published: 01 December 2016This study introduces the Spanish adaptation of the General Knowledge Norms first created by Nelson and Narens (1980) and updated by Tauber et al. (2013). Following a procedure akin to that used in preceding studies and testing comparable samples obtained from Spanish-speaking college students, the current study provides the first cross-cultural normative validation of a database of general knowledge questions. In a series of analyses we demonstrate the reliability of the current dataset by showing a high degree of consistency across cultures and languages, while also highlighting the usefulness and need for cross-cultural and cross-linguistic validations of general-knowledge question sets.This research has been partially funded by grants PSI2015-65689-P and SEV-2015-0490 from the Spanish Government, AThEME-613465 from the European Union and a personal fellowship given by the BBVA Foundation to the first author

Monolingual comparative normativity in bilingualism research is out of “control”: Arguments and alternatives

Accepted manuscript, to appeared in Applied Psycholinguistics: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/applied-psycholinguistics.Herein, we contextualize, problematize and offer some insights for moving beyond the problem of monolingual comparative normativity in (psycho)linguistic research on bilingualism. We argue that, in the vast majority of cases, juxtaposing (functional) monolinguals to bilinguals fails to offer what the comparison is supposedly intended to do: meet the standards of empirical control in line with the scientific method. Instead, the default nature of monolingual comparative normativity has historically contributed to inequalities in many facets of bilingualism research and continues to impede progress on multiple levels. Beyond framing our views on the matter, we offer some epistemological considerations and methodological alternatives to this standard practice that improve empirical rigor while fostering increased diversity, inclusivity and equity in our field

Monolingual comparative normativity in bilingualism research is out of “control”: Arguments and alternatives

Herein, we contextualize, problematize, and offer some insights for moving beyond the problem of monolingual comparative normativity in (psycho) linguistic research on bilingualism. We argue that, in the vast majority of cases, juxtaposing (functional) monolinguals to bilinguals fails to offer what the comparison is supposedly intended to do: meet the standards of empirical control in line with the scientific method. Instead, the default nature of monolingual comparative normativity has historically contributed to inequalities in many facets of bilingualism research and continues to impede progress on multiple levels. Beyond framing our views on the matter, we offer some epistemological considerations and methodological alternatives to this standard practice that improve empirical rigor while fostering increased diversity, inclusivity, and equity in our field