Processing gender agreement errors in pleasant and unpleasant words: An ERP study at the sentence level

In this study we examine the extent to which aspects such as the emotionality coded in words may interfere with the processing of gender agreement errors in a sentence grammaticality judgement task. We follow the methodological pattern of our previous experiments, using consistently the same kind of structure and task (gender agreement) and only emotional (pleasant vs unpleasant) words, in an attempt to clarify whether neural correlates and performance show similar patterns in positive and negative words. We found an emotional effect in the N400 time window for unpleasant adjectives as well as the classic grammaticality effects in the left anterior negativity (LAN) and the P600 components. Overall, our results confirm those of our previous studies in that the LAN and the P600 grammaticality effects are not influenced by the emotional valence of moderately arousing pleasant and unpleasant words, showing that during sentence reading morphosyntactic error detection seems to be encapsulatedThe present study was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (MINECO/FEDER; Grant Nos. PSI2015-65116-P) and a research grant from the Autonomous Government of Galicia (Consellería de Educación, Xunta de Galicia, grant code GRC 2015/006)S

Distraction by deviant sounds: disgusting and neutral words capture attention to the same extent

Several studies have argued that words evoking negative emotions, such as disgust, grab attention more than neutral words, and leave traces in memory that are more persistent. However, these conclusions are typically based on tasks requiring participants to process the semantic content of these words in a voluntarily manner. We sought to compare the involuntary attention grabbing power of disgusting and neutral words using them as rare and unexpected auditory distractors in a cross-modal oddball task, and then probing the participants’ memory for these stimuli in a surprise recognition task. Frequentist and Bayesian analyses converged to show that, compared to a standard tone, disgusting and neutral auditory words produced significant but equivalent levels of distraction in a visual categorization task, that they elicited comparable levels of memory discriminability in the incidental recognition task, and that the participants’ individual sensitivity to disgust did not influence the results. Our results suggest that distraction by unexpected words is not modulated by their emotional valence, at least when these words are task-irrelevant and are temporally and perceptually decoupled from the target stimuliThis work was supported by Research Grants PSI2014-54261-P, PSI2015-63525-P, and PSI2015-65116-P from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICINN), the Spanish State Agency for Research (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), as well as Grants 2017PFR-URV-B2-32 from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, and GRC 2015/006 from (Xunta de Galicia). Fabrice B. R. Parmentier’s contract at the University of the Balearic Islands is co-financed by the MICINN’s program for the incentivization and permanent incorporation of doctors (2016 call, Ref IEDI-2016-00742). Fabrice B. R. Parmentier is also an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the University of Western AustraliaS

A Study on the Psychological Wound of COVID-19 in University Students

Publication of this manuscript was supported by Regional Goverment of Galicia, Programa de Axudas para a Consolidación e Estruturación de Unidades de Investigación Competitivas e outras Accións de Fomento, Refs. ED431C 2018/2 and ED431B 2019/20An increasing number of studies have addressed the psychological impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the general population. Nevertheless, far less is known about the impact on specific populations such as university students, whose psychological vulnerability has been shown in previous research. This study sought to examine different indicators of mental health in university students during the Spanish lockdown; we also analyzed the main sources of stress perceived by students in relation to the COVID-19 crisis, and the coping strategies adopted when faced with the situation. Data was collected from 932 students (704 women) through a web-based platform. Measures of anxiety (i.e., GAD-7), depression (PHQ-9), irritability, and self-perceived change in mental health were administered, as well as ad hoc measures of stressors and coping strategies. Results indicated that students experienced considerable psychological problems during the confinement, with higher rates of emotional difficulties in women and undergraduate students than in men and postgraduates, respectively. Psychological distress was mainly related to several specific domains of stressors, as perceived by the participants: academic future, task overload, worsening of interpersonal conflicts, and restrictions in pleasant social contact; and far less related to the spread of the disease and its consequences for physical health. As regards coping strategies, both reframing skills and daily routines were shown to be the most effective. A path-analysis model integrating stressors, coping, and mental health revealed that coping strategies partially mediated the effect of stressors on psychological health. In general, results suggest that students’ psychological health was substantially affected by the COVID-19 situation and that the academic and relational changes were the most notable sources of stress. This study reinforces the need to monitor and promote mental health in university students to boost resilience in times of crisis. Our results on effective coping strategies may inform preventive programs aimed at helping students to deal with challenges like the COVID-19 pandemicS

The learning, representation and processing of ambiguous words in bilinguals

En este trabajo se revisan los estudios que han investigado el procesamiento, la representación y el aprendizaje de palabras ambiguas (homónimas y polisémicas) en individuos bilingües. La evidencia disponible apoya la influencia mutua entre las dos lenguas del bilingüe, tanto en un nivel léxico como semántico. Más concretamente, destaca el impacto de la llamada “ambigüedad de traducción”, el cual se ve modulado por el nivel de competencia en la segunda lengua (L2). Se recogen además, las aportaciones de los distintos modelos de organización léxica bilingüe (Dijkstra y van Heuven, 2002; Kroll y Stewart, 1994; van Hell y De Groot, 1998), que parecen complementarse a la hora de explicar los resultados obtenidos. Para terminar, se corrobora la dificultad que encierra, en el ámbito educativo, el aprendizaje de palabras con varios significados y se concluye con algunas recomendaciones que facilitarían el aprendizaje de este tipo de palabras en la L2This study reviewed research on the processing of homonymous and polysemous words in bilingual individuals and assessed its contribution to knowledge of ambiguous word processing, representation, and learning in such individuals. Available evidence supports the mutual influence of each language at the lexical and the semantic level. Specifically, research shows the impact of translation ambiguity on bilingual processing. However, the impact varies depending on second language (L2) competence. These results are explained by the main models of bilingual lexical organization (Dijkstra and van Heuven, 2002; Kroll and Stewart, 1994; van Hell and De Groot, 1998), which are highlighted in this article. From an educational perspective, these studies illustrate the difficulty of learning words with multiple meanings; hence, some recommendations are made that would specifically facilitate the learning of these words in an L2S

Psycholinguistic and affective norms for 1,252 Spanish idiomatic expressions

This study provides psycholinguistic and affective norms for 1,252 Spanish idiomatic expressions. A total of 965 Spanish native speakers rated the idioms in 7 subjective variables: familiarity, knowledge of the expression, decomposability, literality, predictability, valence and arousal. Correlational analyses showed that familiarity has a strong positive correlation with knowledge, suggesting that the knowledge of the figurative meaning of an idiom is highly related to its frequency of use. Familiarity has a moderate positive correlation with final word predictability, indicating that the more familiar an idiom is rated, the more predictable it tends to be. Decomposability shows a moderate positive correlation with literality, suggesting that those idioms whose figurative meaning is easier to deduce from their constituents tend to have a plausible literal meaning. In affective terms, Spanish idioms tend to convey more negative (66%) than positive meanings (33%). Furthermore, valence and arousal show a quadratic relationship, in line with the typical U-shaped relationship found for single words, which means that the more emotionally valenced an idiom is rated, the more arousing it is considered to be. This database will provide researchers with a large pool of stimuli for studying the representation and processing of idioms in healthy and clinical populationsFunders: 1. Spain’s Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities: https://www.ciencia.gob.es/portal/site/MICINN/ PF: PID2019-107206GB-I00 JAH: RED2018-102615-T, PGC2018-098558-B-I00 2. Rovira i Virgili University: https://www.urv.cat/en/ PF: 2018PFR-URV-B2-32 3. Community of Madrid: https://www.comunidad.madrid JAH: H2019/HUM-5705 4. Galician Department of Education: https://www.edu.xunta.gal/portal/ IF: GRC 2015/006, ED431B 2019/2020S

Unraveling the mystery about the negative valence bias: does arousal account for processing differences in unpleasant words?

Many studies have found that the emotional content of words affects visual word recognition. However, most of them have only considered affective valence, finding inconsistencies regarding the direction of the effects, especially in unpleasant words. Recent studies suggest that arousal might explain why not all unpleasant words elicit the same behavior. The aim of the present research was to study the role of arousal in unpleasant word recognition. To do that, we carried out an ERP experiment in which participants performed a lexical decision task that included unpleasant words which could vary across three levels of arousal (intermediate, high, and very high) and words which were neutral in valence and had an intermediate level of arousal. Results showed that, within unpleasant words, those intermediate in arousal evoked smaller LPC amplitudes than words that were high or very high in arousal, indicating that arousal affects unpleasant word recognition. Critically, arousal determined whether the effect of negative valence was found or not. When arousal was not matched between unpleasant and neutral valenced words, the effect of emotionality was weak in the behavioral data and absent in the ERP data. However, when arousal was intermediate in both unpleasant and neutral valenced words, larger EPN amplitudes were reported for the former, pointing to an early allocation of attention. Interestingly, these unpleasant words which had an intermediate level of arousal showed a subsequent inhibitory effect in that they evoked smaller LPC amplitudes and led to slower reaction times and more errors than neutral words. Our results highlight the relevance that the arousal level has for the study of negative valence effects in word recognitionThis study was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (PID2019-107206GB-I00 and RED2018-102615-T), the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2019-110583GB-I00), the Autonomous Government of Galicia (Consellería de Educación, Xunta de Galicia, GRC 2015/006), and the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (2019PFR-URV-B2-32)S

So far but yet so near: examining the buffering effect of perceived social support on the psychological impact of Spanish lockdown

The main objective of this study was to examine the moderating or buffering effect of social support (SS) perceived by university students on the psychological impact of lockdown on mental health. Specifically, a total of 826 participants (622 women) completed an online survey that included standardized measures of anxiety (Generalised Anxiety Disorder-7), depression (Patient Health Questionnaire-9), and irritability (Brief Irritability Test), as well as measures of stressors, perceived SS, and self-perceived change in mental health. The results of hierarchical regression analyses suggest that SS contributes toward attenuating the negative impact of academic stressors, general overload, and interpersonal conflict on the indicators of psychological well-being; however, moderation analysis only confirms the buffering effect for symptoms of anxiety. In conclusion, it is suggested that SS networks need to be strengthened as a basic means of protecting health and well-being during unexpected disastersPublication of this manuscript was supported by Regional Government of Galicia, Programa de Axudas para aConsolidación e Estruturación de Unidades de Investigación Competitivas e outras Accións de Fomento, Refs.ED431C 2018/2 and ED431B 2019/20S

The mechanisms underlying grammatical gender selection in language production: a meta-analysis of the gender congruency effect

Grammatical gender retrieval during language production has been largely addressed through the picture-word interference (PWI) paradigm, with the aim of capturing the so-called gender congruency effect (GCE). In the PWI paradigm, participants name target pictures while ignoring superimposed written distractor nouns. The GCE shows faster responses when target and distractor nouns share the same gender than when gender differs. Yet, the locus of this effect is not clear: it might be either due to the selection of a determiner or due to the selection of a gender node at the lemma level, which may be primed or delayed by competition. Importantly, many of those who argue that the GCE is not a genuine effect of gender conclude that gender is a feature that is retrieved automatically. Such a claim is controversial since the PWI paradigm has been seen as too complex and perhaps not sensitive enough to capture small effects. Besides, for Romance languages, mixed results draw a complex picture with effects occurring mainly in the opposite direction, i.e., a gender incongruency effect (GIE). In the present study, we conducted a meta-analysis of the 18 studies that have addressed this issue. The results confirm the existence of the GCE as a determiner effect in Germanic/Slavic languages, while little support is found for the GIE in Romance languages. Nevertheless, we argue that the absence of gender effects in Germanic and Slavic languages within the PWI paradigm cannot be taken as evidence of an absence of priming/competition during gender selection and thus as evidence of an automatic selection of gender. Parametric replication of previous studies, especially those featuring bound morphemes, together with the use of other measuring techniques such as event related potentials are suggested as a way forwardThis work was supported by the Government of Spain, Spanish Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, through the Training program for Academic Staff (Ayudas para la Formación del Profesorado Universitario, FPU [FPU16/06983]); the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [research project PID2019-110583GB-I00]; the Galician Government [grant for research groups ED431B 2019/2020]; and the Foundation for Science and Technology of Portugal [IF / 00784/2013 / CP1158 / CT0013]. Finally, the study has also been partially supported by the FCT and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds and co-financed by FEDER- European Regional Development Fund through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement [POCI-01-0145- FEDER-007653]S

Attentional processing and recall of emotional words

Se llevaron a cabo tres experimentos para evaluar la atencióna palabras de diferente valor emocional. Se trabajó conun paradigma experimental de doble tarea, registrandolos tiempos de respuesta ante tonos, los cuales fueronpresentados durante la lectura de palabras. El recuerdotambién fue evaluado a través de una prueba de memoriaintencional inmediata. Los resultados revelan que ni el valor,ni la excitación de las palabras, afectan la atención de losparticipantes. Solamente, en el tercer experimento, en elque las palabras pertenecieron a dos categorías semánticasespecíficas (sexual y riesgo de muerte) las mujeres mostraronsignificativamente mayor RTS ante palabras amenazadoras.No obstante, se observaron diferencias significativas enel recuerdo inmediato posterior, para los diferentes tiposde palabras en los tres experimentos. Los estudios futurosdeben tener en cuenta: ( a) la situación diferencial de laspalabras e imágenes para captar la atención, (b) la influenciadiferencial de valencia, así como la excitación, en el recuerdode palabras emocionales y (c) los efectos diferenciales de lacategoría semántica de la atención prestada a estas palabrasde hombres y mujeres

The role of animacy in european portuguese relative clause attachment: evidence from production and comprehension tasks

En este trabajo se evaluó el papel de la animacidad en la desambiguación de cláusulas de relativo con doble antecedente en portugués europeo (PE). El estudio de cómo resuelve el procesador este tipo de ambigüedades ha sido objeto de gran interés en la investigación; sin embargo, en PE ésta ha sido escasa y poco consistente. Además, dado que la literatura más reciente ha destacado la relevancia de variables extrasintácticas en este proceso, se realizaron dos estudios con el objetivo de evaluar las estrategias de adjunción en PE manipulando la animacidad de los nombres del sintagma nominal complejo. En el estudio 1 se empleó una tarea de compleción de frases y en el estudio 2 una tarea de lectura auto-administrada. En ambos, los resultados revelaron una preferencia significativa por la estrategia de adjunción alta. No obstante, el tipo de estrategia fue modulado por la animacidad de los nombres, de manera que se prefirió la estrategia de adjunción baja cuando el primer nombre era inanimado y el segundo animado. Estos resultados arrojan luz sobre el uso de estas estrategias en PE y parecen apoyar la idea de que, en fases relativamente tempranas del procesamiento, el procesador atiende a información no exclusivamente sintácticaThis work presents an analysis of the role of animacy in attachment preferences of relative clauses to complex noun phrases in European Portuguese (EP). The study of how the human parser solves this kind of syntactic ambiguities has been focus of extensive research. However, what is known about EP is both limited and puzzling. Additionally, as recent studies have stressed the importance of extra-syntactic variables in this process, two experiments were carried out to assess EP attachment preferences considering four animacy conditions: Study 1 used a sentence-completion-task, and Study 2 a self-paced reading task. Both studies indicate a significant preference for high attachment in EP. Furthermore, they showed that this preference was modulated by the animacy of the host NP: if the first host was inanimate and the second one was animate, the parser’s preference changed to low attachment preference. These findings shed light on previous results regarding EP and strengthen the idea that, even in early stages of processing, the parser seems to be sensitive to extra-syntactic informationS