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 However, as the SARS-CoV-2 health crisis has shown, the pencil-and-paper format is becoming increasingly outdated and it is necessary to transition to new technologies, using computerized cognitive assessments (CCA).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

Le programme de protection de la diversité ethnolinguistique

En 2007, le ministère de la Culture du gouvernement colombien s’est doté d’un « programme de protection de la diversité ethnolinguistique »(PPDE) destiné à construire une politique publique d’appui à l’usage et à la promotion des langues minoritaires. La Colombie est un des pays d’Amérique les plus riches en diversité linguistique puisqu’on y compte, outre l’espagnol et ses variantes régionales bien marquées, 65 langues amérindiennes, 2 créoles et la langue rom – parlée par quelques milliers ..

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

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

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

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

Two-legged rat: An analysis of insults in Spanish of Spain in the XXI century

Esta investigación analiza los insultos más frecuentemente recuperados en una prueba de disponibilidad léxica en el español actual de España. El objetivo es ofrecer un estudio desde una perspectiva cultural, cognitiva y lingüística e informar de ello a profesionales de la lengua. Para ello se elaboró un cuestionario digital donde los informantes debían escribir los tres primeros insultos que más frecuentemente usan. Se documentaron 1108 insultos diferentes. Posteriormente analizamos dicho listado de insultos fonética, morfológica, semántica, léxica y pragmáticamente. Asimismo, prestamos atención a aspectos culturales y sociales. Las principales conclusiones de este trabajo son que los insultos más usados son gilipollas, imbécil, cabrón/a, subnormal, hijoputa, tonto/a, idiota, puto/a, capullo/a, payaso/a. Se puede señalar al respecto que no hay apenas diferencias entre las respuestas de hombres y mujeres. Sobre la edad podemos indicar que la juventud usa más gilipollas y las personas más mayores, cabrón/a. En cuanto al origen geográfico se perciben variantes diatópicas de un mismo concepto. Desde el punto de vista fonético, el modo de articulación y la tensión articulatoria parecen mostrar una preferencia por oclusivas y fricativas que ofrecen mayor amenaza sonora. Morfológicamente los insultos apenas presentan productividad mediante la prefijación y triunfa principalmente la composición. Semánticamente destaca que las resemantizaciones, las extensiones de significado y las metáforas son los mecanismos más productivos. Hablando concretamente, parece que los temas culturalmente más ofensivos son las conductas socialmente reprobables y la ofensa a la capacidad mental. Socialmente se atestigua que ciertos comportamientos sexuales son más reprochados a mujeres que a hombres. Desde el punto de vista pragmático documentamos diferentes mecanismos atenuadores e intensificadores.This research analyzes the insults most frequently retrieved in a lexical availability test in contemporary Spanish from Spain. The aim was to offer an analysis from various perspectives: cultural, cognitive and linguistic and to inform language professionals about it. For this purpose, a questionnaire was developed. In this digital questionnaire the informers should write their three most common used insults. As a result, 1,108 different insults were documented. We later proceeded to analyze those from a phonetic, morphological, semantic, lexical and pragmatic point of view. Likewise, we paid attention to cultural and social aspects. The main conclusions of this work are that the insults most used in Spain are gilipollas, imbécil, cabrón/a, subnormal, hijoputa, tonto/a, idiota, puto/a, capullo/a, payaso/a. It can be noted that there are hardly any differences between the responses of men and women. Regarding age, youth use more asshole and older people,bastard. Regarding geographical origin, diatopic variants of the same concept are found. From a phonetic perspective, there is a preference for stops and fricatives consonants that offer greater threat than other sounds. Morphologically, insults hardly present productivity through prefixation and mainly composition is used. From a semantic perspective, it can noted that resemantizations, extensions of meaning and metaphors are the most productive mechanisms. Particularly speaking, it seems that the most culturally offensive topics are socially reprehensible behaviors and offenses to mental capacity. Socially it is attested that certain sexual behaviors are more reproached to women than to men. From the pragmatic view we document different attenuating mechanisms and intensifying mechanisms

Analysis of discrimination by linguistic profiling during callings to access rental housing in Spain

Este estudio busca determinar si existe discriminación lingüística hacia individuos percibidos como extranjeros por perfilado de su forma de hablar cuando llaman para acceder a pisos de alquiler. Trabajos anteriores apuntan a que esto es posible y ocurre en otros países. Nuestra investigación se basa en 288 llamadas telefónicas a anuncios de alquiler en tres ciudades con altos números de migración o turismo y otras tres que no. Se trazó un personaje homogéneo que todas las llamantes interpretaron para evitar que aspectos sociales o laborales fuesen distractores. En total, 8 potenciales candidatas hicieron 36 llamadas cada una. Dos de ellas hablaban una variedad peninsular y otra tenía origen dominicano. En este caso se quería comparar la diferencia de éxito entre diferentes variedades del español. También queríamos contrastar el efecto nativo y diferentes tipos de nacionalidades, por eso, el resto de llamantes eran de origen árabe, japonés, finlandés, alemán e italiano. Los resultados muestran que no hay diferencia entre nativas de español de diferentes variedades a la hora de acceder a oportunidades de visitar un piso. Tampoco se encuentra con hablantes de origen europeo. Sin embargo, las llamantes arabófona y japonesa tuvieron menos oportunidades de ver pisos y peor calidad de atención en las llamadas.This study seeks to determine whether there is linguistic discrimination against individuals perceived as foreigners by profiling their way of speaking when calling to rental flats. Previous works suggest that this is possible and occurs in other countries. Our research is based on phone calls to 288 rental ads in 3 cities with high migration or tourism numbers and 3 other cities with the opposite profile. A homogeneous role was drawn, and all the callers performed it to avoid social distractors. In total, 8 potential candidates made 36 calls each. Two of them were of Spanish origin and spoke a peninsular variety, and another was of Dominican origin. In this case, we wanted to compare the difference between communicative success between different varieties of Spanish. We also wanted to contrast the native/non-native effect and different types of nationalities, so the rest of the callers were of Arab, Japanese, Finnish, German and Italian origin. The results show that there is no difference between native Spanish speakers of different varieties when it comes to accessing opportunities to visit a flat. Neither are statistical differences found for speakers of European origin. However, the Arabic-speaking and Japanese callers had fewer opportunities to see the flats and, also, worse quality of service on the calls.Esta publicación es parte del proyecto de I+D+I PID2021-124673NA-I00 financiado por MICIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ y por FEDER Una manera de hacer Europa