Action Words Research Articles

Auditory cortex sensitivity to the loudness attribute of verbs

The auditory cortex was shown to be activated during the processing of words describing actions with acoustic features. The present study further examines whether processing visually presented action words characterized by different levels of loudness, i.e. “loud” (to shout) and “quiet” actions (to whisper), differentially engage the auditory cortex. Twenty healthy participants were measured with magnetoencephalography (MEG) while reading inflected verbs followed by a short tone and semantic tasks. Based on the results of a localizer task, loudness sensitive temporal Brodmann areas A22, A41/42, and pSTS were inspected in the word paradigm. “Loud” actions induced significantly stronger beta power suppression compared to “quiet” actions in the left hemisphere. Smaller N100m amplitude related to tones following “loud” compared to “quiet” actions confirmed that auditory cortex sensitivity was modulated by action words. Results point to possible selective auditory simulation mechanisms involved in verb processing and support embodiment theories.

Too late to be grounded? Motor resonance for action words acquired after middle childhood

Though well established for languages acquired in infancy, the role of embodied mechanisms remains poorly understood for languages learned in middle childhood and adulthood. To bridge this gap, we examined 34 experiments that assessed sensorimotor resonance during processing of action-related words in real and artificial languages acquired since age 7 and into adulthood. Evidence from late bilinguals indicates that foreign-language action words modulate neural activity in motor circuits and predictably facilitate or delay physical movements (even in an effector-specific fashion), with outcomes that prove partly sensitive to language proficiency. Also, data from newly learned vocabularies suggest that embodied effects emerge after brief periods of adult language exposure, remain stable through time, and hinge on the performance of bodily movements (and, seemingly, on action observation, too). In sum, our work shows that infant language exposure is not indispensable for the recruitment of embodied mechanisms during language processing, a finding that carries non-trivial theoretical, pedagogical, and clinical implications for neurolinguistics, in general, and bilingualism research, in particular.

Abstract 247: Development and Evaluation of Standardized Communication for In-Hospital Resuscitation

Background: Recommendations for “standardized” communication during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) events to reduce interruptions in chest compressions (CCs) are lacking. We aimed to achieve consensus on standardized communication during in-hospital CPR, evaluate feasibility and potential to decrease CC pauses, mental task load, and frustration. Methods: Modified Delphi consensus surveys of International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation taskforce members to identify preferred communication for in-hospital cardiac arrest teams. Consensus was reached after-survey teleconference resolution by a team of interdisciplinary experts in communication and CPR. Feasibility was tested in 8 simulated CPR scenarios with physician team leaders randomized (1:1) to ‘standardized’ communication vs. “usual best practice”, closed loop communication. Team leaders watched a 3-min video and received a 10-min training on the assigned intervention before the CPR scenario. NASA task load index questionnaires were used to assess mental task load and frustration (0=lowest to 100=highest). Results: Modified Delphi consensus on standardized communication included: 1) preparing the team 15-30 seconds before interrupting CCs, 2) countdown for interruption synchronized with 5 CCs, 3) action words for stopping and resuming CCs, 4) action words for intubation and defibrillation. Among 8 CPR teams (4 standardized, 4 usual communication), median (Q1; Q3) CC interruption duration for rhythm check was significantly shorter, 5.3 (4.8; 6.8) vs. 9.4 (6.4; 13.0) sec for standardized vs. closed loop communication [p=0.02]. Median (Q1; Q3) scores of mental task load were 63 (33; 70) vs 85 (70; 96), [p=0.10] and frustration 10 (5; 34) vs 40 (26; 50) [p=0.11] for standardized vs. closed loop communication. Trained team leaders adhered to standardized phrases 77% of the time. Conclusion: Expert consensus for standardized communication during in-hospital CPR was achieved. Pilot simulation implementation of standardized communication demonstrated feasibility of team leader adherence, significantly decreased duration of CC interruption during rhythm checks, and a tendency to reduce team leader task load and frustration.

Word in Action. Democracy and Deliberation in Literary Practice in Polish Renaissance

This paper synthesizes relations between Polish democratic system and literary practice in the 16th century. The paper analyses phenomena that project social practice of deliberation on what is important to the community, including political community, and are rooted in the idea of noble democracy – idiosyncratic, mixed political system. The author focuses her interest on the idea of concordia. Consensualism was achieved through debates, political disputes or agons. Deliberative culture also encouraged other distinctive literary forms such as dialogs (political dialogs), polemical treatises, speeches or political satires.The paper underlines the significance of the Protestant Reformation to the Polish Renaissance culture, which introduced modernising tendencies and which expressed the ambitions of influence, participation, public activity, and co-deciding about the community. It stimulated modern way of thinking and shaped the model of discursive society and democratic Church.

Inclusion is an Action Word

Inclusion is an Action Word

Action verb processing specifically modulates motor behaviour and sensorimotor neuronal oscillations

Understanding action-related language recruits the brain’s motor system and can interact with motor behaviour. The current study shows MEG oscillatory patterns during verb-motor priming. Hand and foot verbs were followed by hand or foot responses, with faster reaction times for congruent conditions. In ROIs placed in the hand/arm and foot/leg portions of the sensorimotor cortex, this behavioural priming effect was accompanied by modulations in MEG oscillatory patterns preceding the responses. Power suppression in the alpha/beta frequency bands was reduced in congruent conditions in the body-part-specific ROIs. These results imply that the verb-motor priming effect may be a direct consequence of motor cortex contributions to action word processing.

Action Semantic Deficits and Impaired Motor Skills in Autistic Adults Without Intellectual Impairment.

Several studies indicate the functional importance of the motor cortex for higher cognition, language and semantic processing, and place the neural substrate of these processes in sensorimotor action-perception circuits linking motor, sensory and perisylvian language regions. Interestingly, in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), semantic processing of action and emotion words seems to be impaired and is associated with hypoactivity of the motor cortex during semantic processing. In this study, the relationship between semantic processing, fine motor skills and clinical symptoms was investigated in 19 individuals with ASD and 22 typically-developing matched controls. Participants completed two semantic decision tasks involving words from different semantic categories, a test of alexithymia (the Toronto Alexithymia Scale), and a test of fine motor skills (the Purdue Pegboard Test). A significant Group × Word Category interaction in accuracy (p < 0.05) demonstrated impaired semantic processing for action words, but not object words in the autistic group. There was no significant group difference when processing abstract emotional words or abstract neutral words. Moreover, our study revealed deficits in fine motor skills as well as evidence for alexithymia in the ASD group, but not in neurotypical controls. However, these motor deficits did not correlate significantly with impairments in action-semantic processing. We interpret the data in terms of an underlying dysfunction of the action-perception system in ASD and its specific impact on semantic language processing.

Assessing language-induced motor activity through Event Related Potentials and the Grip Force Sensor, an exploratory study

The link between language processing and motor systems has been the focus of increasing interest to Cognitive Neuroscience. Some classical papers studying Event Related Potentials (ERPs) induced by linguistic stimuli have found differences in electrophysiological activity when comparing action and non-action words; more specifically, a bigger p200 for action words. On the other hand, a series of studies have validated the use of a grip force sensor (GFS) to measure language-induced motor activity during both isolated words and sentence listening, finding that action words induce an augmentation in the grip force around 250–300 ms after the onset of the stimulus. The purpose of the present study is to combine both techniques to assess if the p200 is related to the augmentation of the grip force measured by a GFS. We measured ERP and GFS changes elicited by listening to action and non-action words while maintaining an active grasping task. Our results show that both the p200 and the grip force around 300 ms are bigger for action words, compared to non-action. We also report a statistical correlation between these measures. To our knowledge, this is the first study where the electrophysiological activity and the changes in the grip force induced by auditory language processing are put together, opening new venues of interpretation for the sensorimotor interaction in language processing.

Imageability and Neighborhood Density Facilitate the Age of Word Acquisition in Czech.

Purpose The study examined the effects of imageability and phonological neighborhood density on the acquisition of word production in Czech, controlling for part-of-speech class, word length, and word frequency. Phonological neighborhood density is of interest because previous research has not examined highly inflected languages such as Czech. The effects of imageability on word acquisition are widely assumed, but only a few empirical studies examined such effects using child data directly. Method Data from the Czech norming study of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories ( Smolík, Turková, Marušincová, & Malechová, 2017 ) adaptation were used, and all nouns and action words in the data set were examined (total 359). Based on the norming sample of 493 children, the expected age of acquisition was calculated. Results A small but significant effect of neighborhood density (explaining 1.5% of unique variance) was found, as well as a robust effect of imageability (9% of unique variance). Imageability also accounted for the difference between nouns and verbs in the age of acquisition. Conclusion Imageability is a robust predictor of word age of acquisition that should be taken into account in future studies. The identifiability of the referent and the memory mechanisms are likely responsible for the strong imageability effect. Words with large phonological neighborhoods are acquired earlier, even in a language with complex inflectional morphology.

Words in action: investigating students’ language acquisition and emotional performance through embodied learning

ABSTRACT There is strong evidence that movement and learning are deeply interlinked supporting effective cognitive functioning and thinking. The link between movement and learning constitutes a new pedagogical paradigm in the contemporary field of language learning and specifically in the area of Embodied Pedagogy and learning. Embodied theories argue that body, next to the mind, is an essential factor in the learning process providing a positive impact on children’s academic growth and language development. This pedagogical concept may offer new ways of engaging students in learning by adopting teaching methods based on Embodied Cognition practice. With this in mind, a classroom movement-based learning intervention, called PanBoy, was developed for first and second graders in mainstream elementary schools. A total of 118 elementary students from six authentic classrooms, were involved in a three-month movement-based intervention in a language learning context. Findings based on statistical analysis of psychometric pre–post testing in language, in conjunction with teachers’ interviews, revealed significant gains in students’ academic achievements and showed improvement on students’ emotional engagement in the process. This study discusses the potential of this classroom intervention, based on embodied learning, as a new teaching practice method with low-cost ideas and easy implementation in real-context language environments.

Spontaneous Activation of Event Details in Episodic Future Simulation.

Episodic future simulation is supported by both the retrieval and recombination of episodic details. It remains unclear, however, how individuals retrieve episodic details from memory to construct possible future scenarios; for this people must use details related to the planned future events appropriately. A potentially relevant cognitive process is the spontaneous activation of intention observed in prospective memory (i.e., the intention superiority effect). Previous studies on prospective memory have shown that the approximation of retrieval opportunities for future intentions activate related information, suggesting that the intention superiority effect is context-sensitive. We hypothesized that the same cognitive process underlies future simulation—that is, details related to future events should spontaneously become activated at the appropriate moment of future simulation to make that simulation plausible. In Experiment 1, participants took part in future experiments and formed intentions to perform particular actions for the next experiments. Subsequently, they imagined events that could occur up until they arrived at the experimental room on the day of the next experiment. During this exercise, they did not imagine engaging in the required experimental task. We measured the conceptual activation of intention-related information via a recognition task using intended action words as targets. The results showed the intention superiority effect—concepts related to participants’ future intentions became active when envisioning future events approaching the next experiment. In Experiments 2 and 3, we ensured that the intention superiority effect in future simulation was context-sensitive by adding a control condition that required participants to imagine events other than the approaching future experiments. These results indicated that concepts related to the intended actions were spontaneously activated when imagined future events became both temporally and spatially close to the future simulation. Our finding suggests that spontaneous activation of details approaching the context of a future simulation helps in constructing plausible future scenarios.

Interview, Story, Conversation, or Poem? Reframing the Medical Consultation

Interview, Story, Conversation, or Poem?Reframing the Medical Consultation John Blair Corbett (bio) The issue of communication between healthcare provider and patient has long been considered problematical. The idea that a doctor should develop a reassuring bedside manner is first attested in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1869, and more recently a vigorous academic industry has arisen to teach novice doctors and nurses how to interact effectively and empathically with their patients and to assess their competences in this respect (for example, see Maguire; Lloyd and Bor; Li and Corbett). In 1995, Ong and colleagues set out an influential framework for effective communicative interventions; it takes into consideration many issues of various perspectives: background variables such as culture, doctor-patient relationship, and disease characteristics; "actual content of communication" such as communication behaviors and instrumental versus affective behaviors (903); and patient outcomes both short-term and intermediate, including satisfaction, compliance, and psychiatric morbidity. Such a framework informs the communication skills training materials produced by Celia Roberts and Becky Moss for King's College London, Doing the Lambeth Talk and Words in Action, which are both designed to support empathic and effective communication for healthcare providers whose patients inhabit a diverse, multicultural environment, present with a range of symptoms, and whose care, at times, requires astute negotiation. Roberts and her colleagues draw on the linguistic tradition of conversation analysis (CA) to indicate how, in real-life consultations, participants in interaction express humor, listen attentively, reassure, persuade, and negotiate action plans, bearing in mind that the discursive conventions followed by provider and patient are culturally relative and often idiosyncratic. While allowing for the utility of such materials, John Skelton raises the difficulty of generalizing from individual interactions, no matter how effective those interactions might be, and he points to the inherent subjectivity about what might be considered good practice in such interactions. He observes that even apparently uncontroversial advice like "make proper eye contact with the patient" begs all sorts of questions about who decides how much eye contact is proper, particularly when, in some cultures, [End Page 1] avoidance of eye contact can be understood as a gesture of respect towards someone in authority. Skelton reminds us that "something as context bound as a dialogue between two people is a fragile, momentary and personal thing, which resists interpretation" (48). Skelton argues, reasonably, any dialogue resists generalized, or decontextualized interpretation, and that the atomized constituents of doctor-patient interactions should not be packaged as a banal checklist of verbal and paralinguistic behaviors to be slavishly adhered to. Even so, he does acknowledge the value of trainees attending to the characteristic features of medical communication, drawing on the Social Science disciplines of sociolinguistics, conversational analysis, and pragmatics to illuminate how dialogue works. He is far from alone in doing so; for example, as noted earlier, Roberts and Moss use conversation analysis in their explorations of medical communication, and many other educators, such as Brian Brown, Paul Crawford, and Ronald Carter, appeal to both conversation analysis and philosophy in their discussion of the language of consultations. Brown, Crawford, and Carter, like Skelton, note the variable nature of individual interactions, though they follow Julian Barratt in identifying certain generalizable interactional styles exhibited by types of patients who presented at walk-in clinics, whom they characterize as "seekers," "clinical presenters," "confirmers," and "anticipators" (95–96). Barratt's study suggests that nurses adapt their interactional strategies to respond appropriately to these and other generalized styles. Thus, despite the context-bound nature of any dialogue, there is enough predictability in the healthcare encounter for Brown, Crawford, and Carter to affirm that "the fine-grained study of conversational encounters in health care yields information of potential importance to policymakers, educators and practitioners as well as clients themselves" (94). Alongside the Social Sciences, many works of Humanities have long provided medical educators with ways of approaching communication skills. For instance, Kieran Sweeney takes the metaphor of the Rubik's cube to suggest that any medical consultation is a six-sided construct (with each side representing a "forum"): the construction of a patient narrative, the dispensing of biomedical advice, disingenuousness about the rational nature of medical consulting, the rationing of medical resources...

The impact of spoken action words on performance in a cross-modal oddball task.

In this study a cross-modal oddball task was employed to study the effect that words spoken either non-urgently or urgently would have on a digit categorization task and if women would exhibit greater behavioral inhibitory control. The words were unrelated to the task itself, but related to the action required to complete the task. Forty participants (21 women) conducted a computerized categorization task while exposed to a sinewave tone as a standard stimulus (75% of the trials) or a to-be ignored word (press, stop) spoken either non-urgently or urgently as unexpected auditory deviant stimulus (6.25% trials for each category). Urgent words had sharp intonation and an average fundamental frequency (F0) ranging from 191.9 (stop) to 204.6 (press) Hz. Non-urgent words had low intonation with average F0 ranging from 103.9.9 (stop) to 120.3 (press) Hz. As expected, deviant distraction and longer response times were found by exposure to the word stop, but deviant distraction was not found to be significant with the word press or due to intonation. While the results showed that women had in general longer reaction times, there were no gender differences found related to the deviant distraction caused by word or intonation. The present results do not support the hypothesis that women have greater behavioral inhibitory control, but there was evidence that the meaning of the word could influence response times.

Linking action words and body movements: Evidence from behavioral oscillations

Linking action words and body movements: Evidence from behavioral oscillations

Flexibility in Language Action Interaction: The Influence of Movement Type.

Recent neuropsychological studies in neurological patients and healthy subjects suggest a close functional relationship between the brain systems for language and action. Facilitation and inhibition effects of motor system activity on language processing have been demonstrated as well as causal effects in the reverse direction, from language processes on motor excitability or performance. However, as the documented effects between motor and language systems were sometimes facilitatory and sometimes inhibitory, the “sign” of these effects still remains to be explained. In a previous study, we reported a word-category-specific differential impairment of verbal working memory for concordant arm- and leg-related action words brought about by complex sequential movements of the hands and feet. In this article, we seek to determine whether the sign of the functional interaction between language and action systems of the human brain can be changed in a predictable manner by changing movement type. We here report that the sign of the effect of motor movement on action word memory can be reversed from interference to facilitation if, instead of complex movement sequences, simple repetitive movements are performed. Specifically, when engaged in finger tapping, subjects were able to remember relatively more arm-related action words (as compared to control conditions), thus documenting an enhancement of working memory brought about by simple hand movements. In contrast, when performing complex sequences of finger movements, an effector-specific degradation of action word memory was found. By manipulating the sign of the effect in accord with theory-driven predictions, these findings provide support for shared neural bases for motor movement and verbal working memory for action-related words and strengthen the argument that motor systems play a causal and functionally relevant role in language processing semantically related to action.

THE PAEDIATRICIAN AS A LEADER: AN EDUCATIONAL INTERVENTION FOR HIGH-VALUE CARE

Abstract BACKGROUND The CanMEDS framework for physician competency defines necessary competencies of medical practice, laying the foundation for medical education and subsequent practice in Canada to meet patient needs. The role of Leader highlights the importance of quality improvement, stewardship, health care resource allocation and ability to apply evidence and management processes to facilitate cost-appropriate care. Educational innovations in this domain have not previously been described. OBJECTIVES To evaluate the impact of an educational intervention developed to foster stewardship of health care resources for paediatricians in training. DESIGN/METHODS An educational workshop on high-value care was created for general paediatric residents. Prior to workshop development, the study team procured local costing information from microbiology, general chemistry/laboratory, pharmacy, and radiology. During the workshop, individual, small group and interactive activities were used to explore clinical decision making and associated costs, radiation dosing, and non-monetary implications of care. A pocket-card reference was developed for use during the exercises. To assess the impact of the workshop, participants completed a post-workshop reflection asking them to identify lessons learned and an action plan for providing high-value care. Qualitative exploration of statements was conducted using thematic analysis; individual responses were coded and grouped into three overarching themes for both lessons learned and action plan. RESULTS Forty-three learners participated in the workshop. Post-workshop reflections yielded 93 lessons learned statements, and 67 action plan statements. Lessons learned were grouped into three themes: Scope, Content and Judgement Statements. Within Scope, most statements were general (80%) versus specific. Content areas most frequently cited included cost (61%), diagnostic imaging (28%) including radiation exposure (14%), and non-monetary costs of care (17%). Inferences about aspects of learnings, such as those referring to expense, value or waste, were labelled as Judgement Statements, and were present in 50% of the responses. Action plan statements were grouped into themes of Scope, Content and Action Words. Responses were again generally focused (87%). Most frequent Content subtheme responses were: tests (37%), non-monetary costs of care (21%), and diagnostic imaging (12%). Action words were grouped into seven categories as depicted in Figure 1, with Consider as most frequent (46%). CONCLUSION Reflections on non-monetary costs and action plans that consider how investigations might change management seemed to resonate with our single centre paediatric trainees. Longitudinal follow-up may help identify most impactful components of this educational workshop.

Gesture for generalization: gesture facilitates flexible learning of words for actions on objects.

Verb learning is difficult for children (Gentner, ), partially because children have a bias to associate a novel verb not only with the action it represents, but also with the object on which it is learned (Kersten & Smith, ). Here we investigate how well 4- and 5-year-old children (N = 48) generalize novel verbs for actions on objects after doing or seeing the action (e.g., twisting a knob on an object) or after doing or seeing a gesture for the action (e.g., twisting in the air near an object). We find not only that children generalize more effectively through gesture experience, but also that this ability to generalize persists after a 24-hour delay.

Representation of action semantics in the motor cortex and Broca’s area

Previous studies have shown that both reading action words and observing actions engage the motor cortex and Broca’s area, but it is still controversial whether a somatotopic representation exists for action verbs within the motor cortex and whether Broca’s area encodes action-specific semantics for verbs. Here we examined these two issues using a set of functional MRI experiments, including word reading, action observation and a movement localiser task. Results from multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) showed a somatotopic organisation within the motor areas and action-specific activation in Broca’s area for observed actions, suggesting the representation of action semantics for observed actions in these neural regions. For action verbs, however, a lack of finding for the somatotopic activation argues against semantic somatotopy within the motor cortex. Furthermore, activation patterns in Broca’s area were not separable between action verbs and unrelated verbs, suggesting that Broca’s area does not encode action-specific semantics for verbs.

Object-Oriented Context Description for Movie Based Context-Aware Language Learning

Context-aware ubiquitous learning is a promising way to learn languages; however, it requires developers and operators of much effort to construct, deploy, and use the specialized system. As its alternative, this paper proposes movie based context-aware language learning (MBCALL) that enables learners to learn languages through quizzes generated along virtual contexts occurring in the movie to be replayed. Since full automatic context capturing from the movie is impossible, the authors define an object-oriented context model (OOCM) and also a textual context description language subject to the OOCM to describe the movie context easily by human work. The OOCM introduces the case grammar concept of natural language processing. This enables quiz generation based on types of the words for objects, actions, and modes found in the movie. Evaluation with a small movie by three subjects shows that the OOCM can guide them to enrich information included in the movie context; therefore, we can generate more types of quizzes based on the movie context.

Response Hand Differentially Affects Action Word Processing.

Recent approaches in the tradition of theories of semantic and conceptual “grounding” emphasize the role of perceptual and motor knowledge in language as well as action understanding. However, the role of the two cerebral hemispheres in integrating action-motor and language processes is not clear yet. The present study looked at the influence of a simultaneous motor tapping task on word processing. In a lexical decision task, uni-manual and bi-manual hand-related, and foot-related action verbs were presented in the left and right visual half-field. A group of healthy participants performed tapping with the left hand and lexical decisions with their right hand. In a second group of participants, the reversed hand response pattern was applied. The results showed that response hand had an influence on functional lateralization of word processing when responses were executed with the non-dominant hand. Projecting words to the ipsilateral hemisphere relative to the hemisphere performing lexical decisions led to significantly decreased performance. The results showed that left hand responses led to an increased accuracy for hand-related in contrast to foot-related action verbs. The findings suggest an influence of response hand on action word processing.