10 research outputs found
Connections of Grasping and Horizontal Hand Movements with Articulation in Czech Speakers
We have recently shown in Finnish speakers that articulation of certain vowels and consonants has a systematic influence on simultaneous grasp actions as well as on forward and backward hand movements. Here we studied whether these effects generalize to another language, namely Czech. We reasoned that if the results generalized to another language environment, it would suggest that the effects arise through other processes than language-dependent semantic associations. Rather, the effects would be likely to arise through language-independent interactions between processes that plan articulatory gestures and hand movements. Participants were presented with visual stimuli specifying articulations to be uttered (e.g., A or I), and they were required to produce a manual response concurrently with the articulation. In Experiment 1 they responded with a precision or a power grip, whereas in Experiment 2 they responded with a forward or a backward hand movement. The grip congruency effect was fully replicated: the consonant [k] and the vowel [alpha] were associated with power grip responses, while the consonant [t] and the vowel [i] were associated with precision grip responses. The forward/backward congruency effect was replicated with vowels [alpha], [o], which were associated with backward movement and with [ i], which was associated with forward movement, but not with consonants [k] and [ t]. These findings suggest that the congruency effects mostly reflect interaction between processes that plan articulatory gestures and hand movements with an exception that the forward/backward congruency effect might only work with vowel articulation.Peer reviewe
Congruency effect between articulation and grasping in native English speakers
Previous studies have shown congruency effects between
specific speech articulations and manual grasping actions. For
example, uttering the syllable [kɑ] facilitates power grip
responses in terms of reaction time and response accuracy. A
similar association of the syllable [ti] with precision grip has
also been observed. As these congruency effects have been to
date shown only for Finnish native speakers, this study explored
whether the congruency effects generalize to native speakers of
another language. The original experiments were therefore
replicated with English participants (N=16). Several previous
findings were reproduced, namely the association of syllables
[kɑ] and [ke] with power grip and of [ti] and [te] with precision
grip. However, the association of vowels [ɑ] and [i] with power
and precision grip, respectively, previously found for Finnish
participants, was not significant for English speakers. This
difference could be related to ambiguities of English
orthography and pronunciation variations. It is possible that for
English speakers seeing a certain written vowel activates
several different phonological representations associated with
that letter. If the congruency effects are based on interactions
between specific phonological representations and grasp
actions, this ambiguity might lead to weakening of the effects
in the manner demonstrated here
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Word Order and Case Inflection in Czech: On-line Sentence Comprehension in Children and Adults
CT Brain Perfusion in the Prediction of Final Infarct Volume: A Prospective Study of Different Software Settings for Acute Ischemic Core Calculation
CT perfusion (CTP) is used for the evaluation of brain tissue viability in patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS). We studied the accuracy of three different syngo.via software (SW) settings for acute ischemic core estimation in predicting the final infarct volume (FIV). The ischemic core was defined as follows: Setting A: an area with cerebral blood flow (CBF) < 30% compared to the contralateral healthy hemisphere. Setting B: CBF < 20% compared to contralateral hemisphere. Setting C: area of cerebral blood volume (CBV) < 1.2 mL/100 mL. We studied 47 AIS patients (aged 68 ± 11.2 years) with large vessel occlusion in the anterior circulation, treated in the early time window (up to 6 h), who underwent technically successful endovascular thrombectomy (EVT). FIV was measured on MRI performed 24 ± 2 h after EVT. In general, all three settings correlated with each other; however, the absolute agreement between acute ischemic core volume on CTP and FIV on MRI was poor; intraclass correlation for all three settings was between 0.64 and 0.69, root mean square error of the individual observations was between 58.9 and 66.0. Our results suggest that using CTP syngo.via SW for prediction of FIV in AIS patients in the early time window is not appropriate